Honing Geospatial Technology Skills along the Coast of Maine

In southern Maine, the Wells Reserve GIS Center gives organizations and agancies the needed know-how in geospatial technology, so that they can make the case for conservation.

One of four geographic information system (GIS) service centers on the coast of Maine, the Wells Reserve GIS Center is part of the Wells Reserve National Estuarine Research Reserve in Wells, Maine. Known to many simply as The GIS Center, it is funed in part by a grant from the Maine Coast Protection Initiative (MCPI), a coalition of more than 70 coastal organizations founded by the Maine Coast Heritage Trust, Maine State Planning Office, Land Trust Alliance, and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Coastal Services Center.

Tin Smith kayaking Wells Harbor. Maine Conservation organizations work hard to conserve public access to waterways.

“The goal of MCPI—to increase the pace and quality of coastal conservation land—is also our goal at the reserve,” says Tin Smith, the Wells Reserve's stewardship coordinator. To that end, the reserve has produced hundreds of maps for scientists, community residents, resource managers, students, and other coastal decision makers. The reserve also collects and shares digital parcel maps, aerial photographs, satellite images, maps of conserved lands, and rare wildlife and plant occurrence data.

The GIS Center has also lent its expertise to many special projects, including the Eastern Trail Alliance, a scenic walking and biking trail that will traverse coastal sections of Maine and New Hampshire. The Eastern Trail Alliance is part of the proposed East Coast Greenway, which is slated to span Maine to Florida. The GIS Center provided GIS maps for this initiative, and advocates are now visiting towns in Maine to generate enthusiasm for the trail among stakeholders and officials.

The hands-on computer portion of the Pictures, Points, and Places training for land trusts.

According to Susan Bickford, the Wells Reserve's GIS and natural resource specialist, GIS training is offered on many levels, from beginner to highly skilled. “Nonprofit organizations needing our services are often very budget-conscious and use mostly volunteers. Many come to us not understanding anything about GIS,” says Bickford. “We offer training that enables them to visualize the kinds of assistance we can offer their organizations. We customize our services and training to each individual land trust.”

With another grant from MCPI, the four regional GIS centers in Maine have been working together to produce a database of conservation lands within each of their areas of interest. They all use a common database format and uniform standards so that the information can be passed to all the centers, creating a coast-wide database of conservation lands. To complete this task, the centers collected data from towns, land trust organizations, private nonprofit organizations, water districts, and state and federal agencies.

The GIS Service Centers provide mapping services that allow local land trusts to think regionally.

The mapping initiative has improved local and statewide communication among conservation-minded stakeholders. “This mapping project helped towns understand not only the lands they were protecting but also the lands conserved by nearby towns, which led to many fruitful collaborations on the local level,” says Smith. “Before, people thought only about their town’s conservation planning. They had never had the time or resources to visualize all of the conserved lands. Now they see themselves as key players in the region, and they discuss regional planning efforts together,” he adds.

The GIS Center has also helped state agencies link their conservation and resource data with resource protection efforts by private organizations. “One of our roles is to serve as a ‘facilitator’ for local, state, and national-level data. We helped the state see and understand which areas have a great deal of protected land and which areas have no protected lands,” notes Smith. 

	Participants in the Pictures, Points, and Places training collect GPS points with their instructor.

 

 

 

 

 

The Wells Reserve GIS Center has experienced some challenges in its eight years of existence. “One of the challenges, for us, is funding,” says Smith. “Funders tend to go for the next big thing and not fund ongoing programs. Sometimes we have to come up with creative new appeals to attract donors, and when we do that, we risk going off on a tangent,” notes Smith.

Challenges notwithstanding, Smith has learned the importance of building the organization in a patient and persistent manner, and it’s an approach he advocates for any entity undertaking a similar GIS mission.

The Little River Estuary, Wells National Estuarine Research Reserve, Maine. The Wells Reserve works with conservation organizations to promote upland land conservation that benefits the health of downstream estuaries.

“So often, I see programs that work hard for one or two years, and then these organizations are gone,” emphasizes Smith. “A GIS audience is very diverse, and they’re going to be interested in your services at different times. Getting people introduced to GIS services, and educating them on a range of levels, is a step-by-step process. Take time to build your organization, because this type of ongoing commitment has to come from your organizational leadership.”

For more information, visit http://wellsreserve.org/.

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