DIGITAL MAPPING
Tools of the Trade Digital maps point conservation in the right direction
Let’s say you want to do some important work to protect nature. You have a team of smart, dedicated people to help. And you have resources to make an impact if you pick your spots. Where do you start? How do you pick those spots? The answers can determine whether you make a meaningful difference or none at all. At The Nature Conservancy in Missouri, the first step is often a map. Usually, many maps, digitally rendered, layered on top of each other and infused with multiple datasets. They’re images that can be moved and examined, highlighting where crucial considerations overlap. These maps, or web tools, help TNC and our partners set priorities and figure out where to deploy limited resources for maximum results. Staff regularly use and contribute data to
existing tools. When no tool exists, they create them. The Conservancy has helped build multiple web tools over the years. They help us pick our spots. Three Examples of Web Tools Our Missouri Staff Use Interior Highlands Threat Assessment Tool: The Interior Highlands are a wonder of biodiversity. The cave-filled region runs southwest across Missouri in a wide band from the St. Louis metro into Oklahoma and Arkansas. More than 200 species of the fish, freshwater mussels, crayfish, vascular plants and insects that live there live nowhere else. A stunning 51% of the Mississippi River Basin’s native freshwater species of fish—more than 190 in all—swim through its streams and rivers. That seems like a good place to protect, right? But we have to figure out where
to focus. The threat assessment tool cross-references data about high and low biodiversity in the region with data about high and low threat levels. Staff on TNC’s three-state Interior Highlands team incorporate that information in maps, identifying places that fall within a range, from high biodiversity and high threat to low biodiversity and low threat. “We have to be really targeted and efficient, because there is no time to waste,” says Megan Buchanan, TNC director of resilient lands in Missouri. “This gives us the information we need to move quickly in a region that is one of the most biodiverse in the world.” The team is now using their findings to develop a portfolio of projects and strategies to reconnect rivers and protect key places within the region’s karst landscape, a porous geography that features caves, sinkholes and springs.
8 MISSOURI : ACTION AND IMPACT
THIS PAGE Baldcypress trees grow in a swamp in southern Missouri. © Byron Jorjorian
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