Integrative Conservation Conference:
​Open GIS Workshop

Mapping provides a powerful way to explore and communicate conservation research, policy, and practice. During this workshop, participants are introduced to community mapping and GIS and engage with some helpful tools and techniques. The first section of this workshop provides successful examples of integrating mapping and GIS into conservation, as well as providing an introduction to working with spatial data. The second section is a hands on demonstration of loading and styling spatial data in the QGIS desktop software. Lastly, participants brainstorm ways to integrate mapping to their own projects.
Workshop materials
  • Download the QGIS software package. Choose the long term release for the Standalone Installer.
  • Materials for the workshop (see walkthrough on the right)
  • Our presentation slides are available at this link.
Tools for doing GIScience (in addition to QGIS)
  • OpenDataKit: Open source tool for mobile data collection for surveys or field observations
  • Fulcrum: Proprietary survey software that includes mapping functionality
  • Tableau Public: Data visualization suite available in free and paid versions
  • ESRI StoryMaps: Online templates for sharing maps, images, videos, and more in a slide format
  • R and RStudio, as well as Shiny for web apps: The open source R language is most often used for data science applications. Recent packages such as sf and leaflet make analysis and visualization of spatial data relatively easy.
  • Google Earth Engine: Google's processor for its extensive library of visual images.
Data resources
Socio-economic
  • American Fact Finder allows one to do a quick or detailed search on US census data. For a quick search, one can get community facts based on county, city, town, or zip-code. For a guided or advanced search, data can be filtered by such criteria as socio-economic characteristics, data table number and geography and downloaded into various formats such as csv, Excel file format, or PDF. This data can be joined to US Census boundary data. Website: https://factfinder.census.gov/faces/nav/jsf/pages/index.xhtml
  • The National Historical Geographic Information System (NHGIS) provides socio-economic data along with US boundary files which can be imported in GIS. NHGIS data is derived from IPUMS(Integrated Public Use Microdata Series) which is a database comprised of US census and survey data. You will need to register for an account to access this dataset. Website: https://www.nhgis.org/

Ecological
  • The eBird dataset is maintained by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. It is an expansive (over 100 million data points), global, citizen science dataset of point bird occurrences. It includes dated and georefered data on the sighting of bird species. This data is submitted by members of the public and researchers, and validated by regional experts. The dataset is accessible as point shapefiles. You need to register to have access to this dataset (which can take up to several days). There is also an offline app to use in the field. Website: https://ebird.org/home
  • The IUCN Red List of Threatened species has global shapefiles of species ranges for over 50,000 species that are listed as threatened or endangered. These ranges are created based on species records and expert opinion. They are accessible as polygon shapefiles. You will need to create a free account  to download the data.Website: http://www.iucnredlist.org/technical-documents/spatial-data
  • Worldclim is an interpolated climate dataset that covers the terrestrial globe at a 1 km resolution. It consists of weather station data from 1970 - 2000, normalized over the whole time period, resulting in monthly temperature and precipitation averages. It has an accompanying dataset of future climate models based on CMIP5 (version 1.4 only). The BioClim dataset includes 19 ‘bioclimatic’ variables derived  from the monthly temperature and precipitation data such as precipitation during wettest quarter. This data is in raster format. All data is available from the website without an account. Website: http://worldclim.org/
  • The Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) contains over 1 billion (!) occurrence records across the globe for a range of taxa (including plants, fungi, bacteria, and wildlife). These are based on scientific publications or datasets contributed by scientific institutions. Data is available as point based occurrence data. A free account is needed to access the data. Website: https://www.gbif.org/

Health
  • The Center for Disease Control’s Social Vulnerability Index (SVI) is a dataset to evaluate the resiliency of communities when confronted by external stresses on human health, such as natural or human-caused disasters, or disease outbreaks. It uses U.S. census variables at tract level to help decision makers identify communities that are less prepared for hazards, or recovering from disaster. Currently data is available and is free to download for 2016, 2014, 2010 and 2000. Website: https://svi.cdc.gov/
  • UNdata: Created and managed by the United Nations’ Statistics Division, this data portal is composed of  databases, tables and glossaries containing over 60 million data points that cover a wide range of themes including Agriculture, Crime, Education, Employment, Energy, Environment, Health, HIV/AIDS, Human Development, Industry, Information and Communication Technology, National Accounts, Population, Refugees, Tourism, Trade, as well as the Millennium Development Goals indicators. Website: http://data.un.org/

Publications/ Suggested Readings:
Allen, K. E. & S. Padgett Vásquez (2017) Forest cover, development, and sustainability in Costa Rica: Can one policy fit all? Land Use Policy, 67, 212-221. PDF: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S026483771630415X
Cox, C., W. Morse, C. Anderson & L. Marzen (2014) Applying Public Participation Geographic Information Systems to Wildlife Management. Human Dimensions of Wildlife, 19, 200-214. PDF:https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/10871209.2014.871663?needAccess=true
Dickinson, Janis L., Jennifer Shirk, David Bonter, Rick Bonney, Rhiannon L. Crain, Jason Martin, Tina Phillips, and Karen Purcell. "The current state of citizen science as a tool for ecological research and public engagement." Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 10, no. 6 (2012): 291-297.PDF: https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1890/110236
Welch, R., M. Madden & R. F. Doren (1999) Mapping the everglades. Photogrammetric Engineering and Remote Sensing, 65, 163-170. PDF: http://obpa-nc.org/DOI-AdminRecord/0050297-0050304.pdf

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