Welcome to the Southeast Region GIS Website
The Southeast Region GIS Steering Committee welcomes you to the Southeast Region GIS website. This site is a great way to stay tapped into the GIS knowledge base in the region. Our Projects link takes you to a page featuring examples of GIS work throughout the region. Our region has some great talent and this page is your chance to see the results of their hard work. Can't figure it out? Our Support page is filled with links to the GIS gurus in the region. Our ATSCs (area technical support centers) are your connection to solving the many complex problems associated with GIS. One of the greatest challenges in GIS is finding accurate spatial data. Our Data Links page is your connection to the best spatial data in the region. Finally, our Contacts page displays the most up-to-date list of GIS users in the Southeast Region. Thanks for visiting and please bookmark this site. We will strive to keep it fresh with the information you need to produce great results!
Louisiana's Coastal Wetlands Restoration Projects Monitored Using GIS
Robert Greco - Louisiana Ecological Services - Lafayette, LA
Louisiana has over 40% of the coastal wetlands in the lower 48 States, yet has suffered over 90% of the nation's coastal wetland loss. Louisiana Ecological Services is using GIS to identify areas of greatest wetland loss and to evaluate wetland restoration projects. One of those projects, Collicon Lake (http://lacoast.gov/reports/project/3890796~1.pdf) is part of the Grand-White Lake Land Bridge Protection project, funded through the Coastal Wetlands Planning, Protection, and Restoration Act (CWPPRA, http://lacoast.gov/new/About/Default.aspx). Read more...
Southeast Region Celebrates 15 Years of GIS Training
For the past 15 years the Southeast Region GIS Committee has organized and hosted a GIS training for USFWS GIS users in the southeast. For three days users throughout the Region convene in Cookeville, Tennessee, to sharpen their GIS skills and network with other GIS users. This training is probably one of the most affordable offered by the Service. There are no registration fees and per diem rates in Cookeville are some of the lowest in the country. Combine that with a location that is within driving distance for most attendees and you have a cost effective training solution.
The Committee has strived to create a training that caters to all levels of expertise. Intro to GIS and Intermediate GIS are 3 day courses that are offered annually and deliver the fundamentals and the next step respectively. Also offered are a suite of advanced topics including spatial analyst, cartographic design, modeling tools, GPS and presentations on several specialized applications.
Hundreds of Service employees have taken advantage of this free training and have applied it to their daily workflow. Any open seats are offered to other State and Federal Agencies and they are quickly filled. Thanks to the strong support from our Regional Directorate we have been able to offer quality training in a university setting at a very low cost.
This year’s training is from May 21-23. Sessions are filling up quickly so be sure to view the agenda on our website and contact Matt Snider at matthew_snider@fws.gov to register.
Southeast Region Leads GIS Efforts for Wildlife Recovery During Gulf Oil Spill
From the end of April through November, 2010, GIS specialists from the Southeast Region led the mapping efforts for the Wildlife Response Unit during the Gulf Oil Spill. Jason Duke, GIS coordinator for the SE Region assembled a rotating team of over 50 GIS specialists from every region in the Service to provide mapping and analysis for wildlife responders recovering injured birds.
Over a three month period, the team created over 500 map products for field personal, managers and other agencies to assist in the response.
View map examples:
Daily Oil Impact Assessment Map - Houma Sector
Daily OIl Impact Assessment Map - Mobile Sector
Bird Collection Analysis - Houma Sector
Live Oiled Bird Collection Sites Map - Houma Sector
FWS Honored for GIS Work During Gulf Oil Spill
US Fish and Wildlife Service has been selected to receive a Special Achievement in GIS (SAG) award at the 2011 Esri International User Conference. This award is given to user sites around the world to recognize outstanding work with GIS technology. The FWS GIS efforts during the Gulf Oil Spill stood out from more than 100,000 others.
Mark Endries of the Asheville Field Office receives Honorable Mention in ESRI Map Competition
Map Title: Using GIS to Develop a Priority Work Area Map in Western North Carolina
Description: The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Asheville Field Office (AFO) is responsible for implementing listing, recovery, and permit activities for federally listed endangered and threatened species and species of concern in the greater Western North Carolina (WNC). These activities include conserving and restoring the ecosystems these species depend on, reducing impacts to fish and wildlife and their habitats, and conducting education and outreach activities to support fish and wildlife conservation. In an effort to prioritize the work area of the AFO and share this information with AFO stakeholders, we used GIS to develop a work area habitat prioritization model. This model ranks the AFO office work area landscape on a 1-10 scale based upon the fish and wildlife priorities of the AFO staff. To construct this model we collected the best available data on fish and wildlife locations and habitats, ranked the datasets based upon the office staff priorities, and combined them to produce our final habitat prioritization model. We hope that this model will assist in office activities such as determining ways to avoid or minimize project impacts by evaluating alternative placements or alignments, assess direct, secondary, and cumulative impacts to habitat and wildlife resources, and help to identify appropriate parcels for public land acquisition. Furthermore, we hope that this model will aid in educating USFWS stakeholders in understanding the AFO fish and wildlife priorities.
White-Nose Syndrome Creeps Towards the Southeast Region
Tens of thousands of hibernating bats died in the Northeast during the winter of 2007-2008, and we don’t know why. In and around caves and mines in Vermont,eastern and upstate New York, western Massachusetts, and northwestern Connecticut, biologists found sick, dying, and dead bats in unprecedented numbers,including several hundred endangered Indiana bats, all apparently infected by a fungus that often forms white tufts on the bats’ muzzles, giving it the name “white-nose syndrome,” or WNS..
The map below is an example of products created by GIS staff to track and forecast the progression of white-nose syndrome in the Southeast Region.
More information on white-nose syndrome
Southeast Region GIS Provides Support for the Southeast Aquatic Resources Partnership - SARP
The Southeast Aquatic Resources Partnership (SARP) is a regional collaboration of natural resource and science agencies, conservation organizations and private interests developed to strengthen the management and conservation of aquatic resources in the southeastern United States.
The mission of SARP is to work with partners to protect, conserve and restore aquatic resources including habitats throughout the Southeast for the continuing benefit, use and enjoyment of the American people.
Regional GIS staff have taken the lead to provide mapping and spatial analysis for SARP. The map displayed above is an example of products being developed to support SARP and its many initiatives.
