Status of GAP Components This section reviews the status of the constituent parts, or components needed, to conduct Gap Analysis. Gap Analysis was begun with a focus on the terrestrial environment, however, the development of information and analyses must logically be extended to the aquatic environment; the aquatic component of Gap Analysis is also treated in this section. The status of analyses of the GAP data layers is discussed in the "Products" section of this report. Partnerships Interagency collaboration has been a hallmark of GAP work. One important result of the Gap Analysis Program is the overwhelming cooperation, interaction, and support received from all sectors of the natural resources conservation community. Collaboration at the national and state levels is now serving as a significant catalyst in eliminating institutional barriers among and between zoologists, land managers, botanists, policy analysts, ecologists, planners, remote sensing experts, agency managers, geographers, information experts, computer scientists, and others involved with conservation biology. Of primary importance is that public agencies (local, state, federal) and private organizations are coming together around GAP information, in no small part because they are all mutually involved in its development. This coalescing is being facilitated by new science and better technology as well as the setting of standard methods, definitions, and database formats, including careful peer-review of products and procedures. The GAP partnership model contains the key elements identified by the National Research Council's Mapping Science Committee as necessary to promote the National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI): shared responsibilities, shared cost, shared benefits, and shared control (National Research Council 1994). The utility of the GAP effort is being further extended via the application of consistent spatial data through its partnership infrastructure, meeting the call for nationally coordinated spatial data (National Research Council 1993).
At the national level, GAP has received major support from the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) since 1993. From an operational standpoint, GAP maintains a closely integrated working relationship with the MRLC agency members. Of particular significance has been GAP's relationship with the EPA Land Cover group, the U.S. Geological Survey's Earth Resources Observation System Data Center (EROS Data Center, or EDC), the Conservation Science Division of The Nature Conservancy, and with the Defenders of Wildlife. Collaboration between the Environmental Systems Research Institute, EROS, and GAP has produced a prototype compact disk (CD) for the distribution of GAP data using the results from the Utah project. For the purposes of basic research, GAP participates as a member in the Biodiversity Research Consortium (BRC). The Gap Analysis Program works with the Federal Geographic Data Committee's Vegetation Subcommittee (FGDC) and the Ecological Society of America's Vegetation Panel (ESA). Each of these partnerships is discussed briefly in the sections that follow.
The DoD support has come in the form of DoD Legacy Resources Program grants used to fund GAP projects in Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Texas and to support the development of consolidated Alliance-level descriptions for the Midwest and the Southeast U.S. The DoD contribution in FY 1994 was $470,000 and in FY 1995 it was $559,000. Of the total funds granted during this period about $103,000 (10%) was absorbed by the NBS as overhead. In March 1995, the Upper Midwest GAP principal investigator (Frank D'Erchia) made a presentation on GAP concepts, methods, and products to DoD biologists at a session of the North American Wildlife Conference. In July 1995, the Washington State GAP principal investigator (Chris Grue) and the GAP Home Page manager (Brian Biggs) participated in a DoD Legacy Program conference. Chris Grue made a formal presentation to installation commanders and natural resources managers on GAP information and tools. Brian Biggs operated a continuous interactive demonstration of how to access GAP data over the Internet and how to use the Utah GAP CD-ROM. Gap Analysis researchers at Utah State University are working with the DoD to create an electronic environmental information system for the Mojave ecoregion. This includes generating a single mosaic of GAP land cover data for the region as a digital base map, and linking 29 DoD installations to an information system containing multiple layers of environmental data. A project stepping GAP data up to higher resolutions is under way for Camp Pendleton. This project involves GAP researchers along with researchers from the Harvard School of Architecture and Planning, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the San Diego Council of Governments, and the Biodiversity Research Consortium. The GAP data for the area is being used as a foundation for mapping natural plant communities at a one hectare minimum mapping unit. These data will be used to project a variety of land use and land cover scenarios to the year 2025. The DoD support has been vital in expediting the GAP process for an area covering almost 10 percent of the U.S. The DoD is among the largest of the public land management agencies in the U.S., and many of these lands are of high quality for natural habitat. The agency has demonstrated a commitment to the development of contextual as well as site-specific biogeographic data for informed management of, and operations on, these lands. The Gap Analysis Program is committed to providing the DoD installation managers with data, tools, and analyses. Data from each GAP state project will be provided to each DoD installation as it becomes available.
The EPA-LC has provided broad-based critical support for GAP in the areas of state projects, data acquisition, basic research, equipment, and personnel. While this partnership is based on the MRLC goal (see the MRLC section below of this report), the integration of GAP and EPA-LC has had, and continues to have, the greatest yield for the production of consistent national land cover maps of the U.S. at a 1:100,000 scale. Although the items specifically funded by EPA-LC are listed below, the two programs are working so closely together that there is more to the partnership than just these items. One example of this robust cooperative relationship can be seen in the funding for the acquisition and preprocessing of the MRLC TM images which was shared evenly between EPA-LC and GAP. It was this close relationship that allowed for the largest civilian purchase of Landsat TM imagery, and the only complete collection of TM imagery for the coterminous U.S. Another example is the joint support for an MRLC liaison staff position by these two programs which:
This position is a direct result of the EPA-LC and GAP partnership and is the single most important MRLC element in achieving a truly integrated National Spatial Data Infrastructure through partnerships, envisioned by the National Research Council (1994). In FY 1994, EPA-LC provided GAP with a total of $906,794. Of this, $742,590 was used to assist GAP land cover mapping projects in: Indiana, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Pennsylvania, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin In addition, $29,484 was used to support the MRLC Liaison position, $44,045 was used to purchase three sets of aerial video equipment (which are shared among all GAP state projects), and $90,679 (10%) was absorbed by the NBS as overhead. In FY 1995, EPA-LC provided GAP with a total of $365,000. Of this, $237,000 is being used to assist GAP land cover mapping projects in Nebraska, North Carolina, and Virginia. In addition, $22,000 is being used to develop micro-computer-based software for visualizing GAP land cover data in a virtual reality environment (through the Minnesota Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit), $60,545 is being used to support the MRLC Liaison position, and $45,455 (about 10%) has been absorbed by the NBS as overhead.
The purpose of the MRLC is the development of a flexible land characteristics database through the coordinated ongoing activities of member programs. The partners in the MRLC are:
The MRLC is constituted by a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), and membership in the MRLC is open to other federal programs. For example, in late 1995, the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) indicated its intent to join the MRLC by becoming a signatory of the MOU. The organizational relationships of the MRLC partner programs are shown in Figure 7. Through their activities, the MRLC partners are continuing to develop a flexible database of information characterizing land cover at multiple resolutions. There is ongoing development of consortium protocols for accuracy assessment, land cover legends, spectral classification of imagery, and product definition. In addition, the consortium members continue to better define roles for a more efficient division of labor as well as improve upon a strategy for database development.
The partnership shared between The Nature Conservancy (TNC, here includes the Natural Heritage Network) and GAP spans all levels of data, analysis, and institutional cooperation-building. The partnership is rooted in the concept of the complementary "fine-filter" and "coarse-filter" conservation strategies (Jenkins 1985, Noss 1987). The GAP approach expands upon the coarse-filter strategy in providing, for the first time, comprehensive spatial data of natural vegetation types, vertebrate species distributions, and conservation lands, which serve as the basic information sets for (a) filtering out those general habitat types or species that warrant further, more localized, conservation planning, and (b) showing those areas where intensive human developments will conflict least with natural biological processes (Scott et al. 1987, 1993).
Figure 7. The organizational structure of the MRLC. A primary focal point in the TNC/GAP partnership has been on developing a standardized classification of natural terrestrial land cover. GAP has funded TNC to compile a first approximation of Alliance-level land cover types, their descriptions, and supporting literature for the Western, Northeastern, Southeastern, and Midwestern regions of the U.S. These constitute the most basic land unit that GAP is mapping and are a major achievement in the history of vegetation science in the U.S. Additionally, TNC and GAP worked together to foster the adoption of the Natural Land Cover Classification System (NLC) by the Federal Geographic Data Committee's Vegetation Subcommittee (FGDC-VS) and in forming the ESA Vegetation Panel, which are ongoing activities. Another cooperative project, which includes the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, is a pilot effort to map the vegetation of Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge at a 1:24,000 scale. See section below on the USFWS partnership with GAP for more about this project. Individual GAP state projects also work in close partnerships with the state chapters of The Nature Conservancy as well as with the Natural Heritage programs in each state (see the list of state partners). Additionally, the GAP director serves on TNC's science advisory board.
Defenders of Wildlife (DW) has been an active partner since the GAP concept was first published in 1987 by Scott et al. This partnership has dealt primarily with: (a) building bridges between scientists, land managers, and policy-makers, with emphases on getting scientists interested in helping land managers and getting the managers interested in using the science; (b) developing collaborative planning processes which use GAP data and which include all interest groups (industries, resource users, land managers, policy-makers, scientists); (c) incorporating social and economic criteria into the planning processes along with biogeographic information; and (d) fostering the application of GAP tools for education. Because of the unique relationship that Defenders of Wildlife has with many state fish and wildlife agencies (the state Watchable Wildlife program, developed by DW and implemented by state fish and wildlife agencies, is just one example), DW has been able to play a crucial role in developing cooperative relationships between GAP and many of these agencies. This bridge to state fish and wildlife agencies has proven to be one of the most significant in serving the needs of state government clients. In collaboration with BioSystems Analysis (later with McCollum Associates), DW produced the report "Draft Recommendations for Implementing Gap Analysis: A Report to the National Biological Service" (Vickerman and Smith 1995). The report is based on a nationwide survey of users of GAP data, workshops, literature reviews, and interviews with scientists, land managers, resource users, and policy-makers. It provides detailed analysis and recommendations covering:
The report concludes:
In developing the application of GAP data for biodiversity planning, DW is playing a facilitating role in the Oregon Biodiversity Project. The goals of this project are to: (a) establish a collaborative state-wide process for conserving biodiversity, (b) do so by providing a regional economic, social, and biological context in which to make local, site-specific decisions, and (c) identify long-term management options for landowners and resource managers to avoid endangered species listings. Participants in the Oregon Biodiversity Project include representatives from the forest products, livestock, and engineering industries as well as from the public sector. It could result in a generic templet for state-level biodiversity planning in the U.S. The use of GAP information for educational purposes is another critical area in which DW has taken a lead role. Defenders of Wildlife is filling some of the need for public education material. This information covers the scientific issues of biodiversity, the technical aspects of GAP, and the relevance of using such information in problem-solving (e.g., Hudson 1991). A brief annual status report on GAP is produced by DW for general audiences. One of the most exciting areas of education and outreach is the Washington State NatureMapping project. Recognizing its potential, DW is collaborating with Karen Dvornich (WA-GAP coordinator and innovator of NatureMapping) on development and promotion of NatureMapping around the country as a citizen's stewardship program, and with linking it to the successful DW Watchable Wildlife Program.
The Environmental Systems Research Institute and the EROS Data Center collaborated with GAP on the development of a compact disk (CD) for the distribution of GAP data. The completed data for the Utah Gap Analysis Project was published on a CD and has substantial yield in both the actual dissemination of GAP data and in the development of a standard format for a similar product from each Gap Analysis project.
The BRC was formed in March of 1993 to research the technical capabilities needed to assess and manage risks to biodiversity. The BRC membership is shown in Table 2.
Table 2. Members of the Biodi versity Research Consortium. A major BRC effort is to build a database of the distributions of birds, mammals, amphibians, reptiles, fish, trees, butterflies, and freshwater mollusks using the EPA EMAP hexagon as a unit of record. The database can also be displayed as a map product. Pilot projects have been completed in Oregon and Pennsylvania. Six additional states (Washington, California, Maryland, Delaware, Virginia, and West Virginia) have been started. These data are being built as part of, or are using, the GAP state project data. The BRC has begun analyses of the Oregon data set to identify hot spots of species richness in Oregon and areas in which all vegetation cover types are represented. The data are also being analyzed to find out how well special management of one class of species would conserve other elements of biodiversity. A preliminary report describing the status and degree of representation of vegetation types within special management areas has also been prepared. The head of the BRC Analysis Team (Dr. A. Ross Kiester) and others have a manuscript in press in Conservation Biology that describes the BRC analysis of the Idaho Gap Analysis species and vegetation data sets. Several quantitative methods (greedy heuristic, exact set coverage, simulated annealing, and linear integer programming) are used to select complementary sets of areas in which most or all of the set of species is represented (Kiester et al. in press). Also, the BRC has facilitated analysis for a manuscript submitted to Biological Conservation that compares the efficiency and spatial outcomes of 19 different quantitative approaches to selecting potential reserve networks, using the Oregon species data set as a standard (Camm et al. in press).
The Federal Geographic Data Committee was established in 1990 through the Office of Management and Budget's revised Circular A-16 and is responsible for promoting and coordinating the development, use, sharing, and dissemination of GIS data across all federal government agencies. The FGDC-VS is made up of representatives from a wide spectrum of federal agencies that are engaged in land cover mapping. A central responsibility is to: "Determine which categories of vegetative data are to be included in the national digital database and recommend the addition of other categories of vegetation data not currently being collected" (Lund 1995). Prior to early 1995, there was little genuine "buy-in" to the standards suggested by the FGDC-VS, particularly among mapping programs focused on ecological parameters. The standards then suggested were similar to the Anderson et al. (1976) "Level II," which is often too general for ecologically-based planning, research, and management of the natural environment. While all mapping programs could generalize their classified land cover data to these standards, there were still many different activities mapping at much finer levels of thematic detail which were not compatible. The more generalized such categories become, the less applicable they are for specific applications. As a member of the FGDC-VS, the GAP national coordinator facilitated both the momentum and the substance of the FGDC-VS's recent move to adopt the Natural Land Cover Classification System. The recent direction taken by the FGDC-VS is significant in that it harmonizes land cover mapping activities not only among federal agencies, but across the major private ecological inventory activities as well. Of greatest importance, though, is that while there has been widespread recognition for "ecosystem" management in the U.S., there has been no consistent, agreed-upon set of equivalent land unit types. Now, through the nation's main spatial data umbrella organization, the federal community is provided with standards for identifying and labeling equivalent categories of assemblages of species and their attributes. These standardized land unit types (natural communities or alliances of natural communities) can be used to characterize natural systems (see Jennings in press).
In contributing to the development of the ESA Vegetation Panel, the Gap Analysis Program has developed a strong partnership with this professional society. With the development and widespread application of the NLC, there was a clear need for a professional-society-based system for maintaining its structure and taxonomy within a peer-review arena, as science provides greater knowledge of ecological systems over time. The model for this is the way taxonomies of species are maintained by professional societies. For example, the American Ornithologist's Union periodically provides updates to a standardized taxonomy of birds. As a member of the ESA, Jennings has played a role in establishing the ESA Vegetation Panel, and he continues to be active as Panel vice-chair. GAP, along with the BLM and EPA, provides limited support for staff, through the ESA's Sustainable Biosphere Initiative, to assist the Panel (Barber 1995).
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) is the original supporter of GAP. The FWS Divisions of Refuges and Real Estate, in particular, recognized early in the development and proof-of-concept phase for GAP that synoptic biogeographic data is a primary piece of the conservation puzzle missing from their toolbox. Questions such as: "What is the ecological context of a given National Wildlife Refuge? How do the elements of biodiversity present within a given refuge and their management relate to the overall network of conservation lands in the larger region? and, How are public funds best spent to complement the overall mix of existing conservation lands and management activities, regardless of which agency is administering which parcel?" could not be answered easily without meso-scale geographic data. Field personnel are directly involved with GAP projects in almost all states. The FWS continues to be both a primary partner and a primary client of GAP, playing a particularly central role in the Indiana, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, and Nebraska GAP state projects. As discussed above in the section on the TNC partnership, a cooperative pilot project is under way with FWS and TNC to map the vegetation of Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge at a 1:24,000 scale. This pilot will provide the experience and set initial standards for mapping all National Wildlife Refuges in a manner that would be thematically and spatially nested within the smaller-scale GAP land cover data, providing multi-resolution geographic information of these Department of Interior lands as well as the broader ecological matrix surrounding them.
This program endeavors to map the vegetation of most national parks at a 1:24,000 scale. GAP has worked with NPVMP staff on the review and adoption of the Natural Land Cover Classification System (NLC) to ensure correspondence among the thematic categories mapped by GAP and NPVMP. The two programs continue to coordinate the development and acceptance of the NLC through both the FGDC and the ESA Vegetation Panel. Products from the NPVMP will provide an invaluable higher-resolution set of independently-derived land cover data by which to check the GAP data. At the same time, GAP data will provide users of national park land cover maps with the broader ecological context of the NPVMP data. |
