On February 4 and 5, 1999, the Olympic Natural Resources Center hosted its first Winter Science Conference focusing on Geographic Information Systems: "Putting Olympic Peninsula on the Map." A winter gathering in Forks, Washington, a stormy and remote "west end" city on the Peninsula, was not easily marketable, so the maximum-capacity turnout was a very pleasant surprise.
    As well as attending the Grand Opening of the "ONRC Clearinghouse for the Olympic Peninsula," participants expressed their experiences in implementing GIS on the Peninsula during the two-day conference. Several topics were discussed under the umbrellas of major areas of interest: GIS Infrastructure and Education (Day 1) and Olympic Peninsula GIS Applications (Day 2). Speakers from diverse agencies and organizations and a chance to actively participate in relevant, local technical discussion attracted GIS practitioners and managers from all around the region. A maximum-capacity gathering of the caliber of expertise and enthusiasm seen at the Conference demonstrates that GIS is a growing, dynamic and broadly applicable technology on the Olympic Peninsula.

    Local and regional mapping professionals, engineers, teachers, students, scientists, planners and managers have been "putting Olympic Peninsula on the map" for years. Through this conference, ONRC wanted to provide a forum for these people to come together to find out how ONRC could help GIS practitioners increase their productivity, take advantage of many of the technological innovations that support GIS, and share experiences in implementing GIS. The attraction of a diverse participant roster, many of whom are already Clearinghouse contributors, illustrates the integrative nature of geographic information systems and the need for enterprise GIS utility and management from the heart of the City of Port Angeles to the back woods of the Wonder Mountain Wilderness.
    Representatives from Olympic National Park, Olympic National Forest, the Washington State Department of Natural Resources, and major private landowners Rayonier and Weyerhaeuser participated. The Coordinator for the Washington Geographic Information Council, and a

representative from the Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary, our partners in the Clearinghouse, were present as well. Student attendees and instructors represented local colleges and there was a large turnout from the University of Washington.
    Tribal GIS professionals, including Quileute, Lower Elwha Klallam, and Jamestown S’Klallam, and county and regional GIS professionals and city planners revealed the very important, rich local diversity of GIS users on the Peninsula.
    Penelope Eckert, one of our speakers on Day 2, said that "with all the dot-edu's and dot-gov's and dot-org's," she was glad to know she "wasn't the only dot-com" at the Conference.
    The speakers at the conference gave uniformly captivating talks. Most attendees stayed through the last speaker, despite the severe winter storm that descended on Forks the second day, with hail, downpours, wind-driven snow and several threats to the power supply. One of the Clearinghouse Principal Investigators declared, without prejudice, that it was the best conference he had ever attended.
    But perhaps the most important aspect of the conference was that it put ONRC "on the map." A major goal was to present to the region that ONRC GIS and the Clearinghouse, sustained through broad public and private information sharing, supports interested communities by providing geographic information and support for research, management, and education of natural resources on the Olympic Peninsula.

    Following is a summary from notes taken during the conference and abstracts from speakers, constituting the proceedings for the Conference. Thanks to Ella Elman, Juel Giglio, and Ron McFarland for taking notes and to Alan Carter Mortimer for operating the ConferenceCam.
    Special thanks to David Peterson for all of his guidance and support for ONRC GIS, and Nicholas Chrisman for conference planning support and for encouraging participation during the Theme Zones. And to everyone who showed up in Forks in the middle of one of its worst and wettest Winters-- THANK YOU!

ONRC director (John) and Forestry Program Manager, Marine and GIS Program Manager (Miranda), and GIS Coordinator- Analyst (Teresa)

John Calhoun and Miranda Wecker welcomed all attendees with an introduction of ONRC’s origin, mission, and strategic priorities. John Calhoun gave attendees an overview of the ONRC, including its creation by the WA State legislature and the ONRC mission and vision for the center in general and for ONRC GIS. "Better information makes better management decisions."
    Miranda Wecker focused on the constituent-identified Marine Program priorities and Forestry Program priorities. Miranda emphasized the importance of GIS and a baseline of information for effective management and research. Miranda conveyed the importance of GIS in ONRC’s Forestry Program to better understand the full implications of forest management decisions and practices. She made attendees aware of the importance of GIS in ONRC’s Marine Program. We have two very important local estuaries here - Grays Harbor and Willapa Bay. Current issues include impacts of aquaculture on essential fish habitat and invasive noxious weed control. GIS is the best tool available to track this kind of information. Miranda also highlighted educational partnership as a priority in achieving ONRC program goals. ONRC supports partnership with Grays Harbor College and Peninsula College to provide GIS and natural resources education for the region. Miranda noted the high quality of Grays Harbor College’s GIS Technical Program.

    A brief overview of ONRC's GIS Program goals was also presented by Miranda. These include

• regional coordination, a program goal realized in development of our primary foundational GIS product - ONRC Clearinghouse

• education - under development

• analysis and technical support – more expertise acquired as the program develops

• state-of-the-art laboratory for GIS on-site

ONRC director (John) and Forestry Program Manager, Marine and GIS Program Manager (Miranda), and GIS Coordinator- Analyst (Teresa)

"The ONRC GIS Program evolved because of the need to organize and manage research data," Miranda told the attendees. It began with the Olympic Peninsula Research Coordinating Group (OPRCG), a loosely organized group of scientists who brought to attention the need for a clearinghouse of data. Acquisition of a full-time GIS Coordinator/Analyst and funding of the Clearinghouse established reliable GIS presence and activity.

    After the introduction by John and Miranda, Teresa Alcock, acting as Conference Facilitator, acknowledged conference planners and supporters and reviewed the agenda for the "two days of Olympic Peninsula GIS!" Teresa thanked Dr. Nicholas Chrisman of the University of Washington (UW) Geography Department, Kelley Duffield, Outreach Director for the UW College of Forest Resources, Jeff Holm of the Washington Department of Information Services and the WA Geographic Information Council, and the Clearinghouse Team’s Dr. David Peterson and Robert A. Norheim, of the USGS Forest and Rangeland Ecosystem Science Center UW Field Station, for their encouragement and support with Clearinghouse development, and Conference planning.
    She introduced the major themes of the conference and asked attendees to think about problems and frustrations encountered in doing GIS so that, as a group during discussion Theme Zones, "we can brainstorm on potential solutions toward which ONRC can target its GIS Program." Teresa made the official announcement that the "ONRC Clearinghouse for the Olympic Peninsula" was online and thanked major contributors and the staff members that made it possible including Clearinghouse team members Ella Elman, Alan Carter Mortimer, Mark Bourgeois, and David Jeschke.

All Attendees

Since participants represented a reasonably intimate group we had time for introductions. This was one of several memorable moments of the conference. To witness a such an open, friendly gathering of professionals from the many diverse organizations representing an often volatile natural resource battleground shows that this regional level gathering is an appropriate spatial scale within which we can be comfortable sharing information to solve common problems together.

All Attendees

To all attendees, your input to this conference and to ONRC is well received and understood, and will be used to develop the ONRC GIS program to better serve you.

Director of Forecasting and Growth Strategy in the Puget Sound Regional Council

Nancy Tosta set a friendly, comfortable tone which encouraged cooperation and communication at the conference. She emphasized the need for local activity in building the National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI), and for acting on the original vision of the Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC), concepts and organizing bodies from which the ONRC Clearinghouse originated. She placed geographic information personnel into three categories: data creators, data users, and data managers. She asked "What do you consider yourself?" And "Where does the Clearinghouse fit in?" Then she explained that the FGDC is a group of executive and senior level managers based in Washington D.C., charged by the President’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) with developing an infrastructure to promote data sharing activities and coordinate spatial data - the NSDI. The NSDI was established with four general activity areas:

Standards: facilitate data creation and sharing

Clearinghouse: facilitate finding existing data

Framework: develop a common set of base data

Partnerships: recognize the need to work together.

NSDI visibility rose dramatically in 1993-94 with Vice President Gore’s Reinventing Government initiative and an executive order signed by President Clinton. The primary impact of the executive order was international. Other countries felt the need to keep up with the developing spatial data infrastructure. In 1994, the budget for the FGDC increased and the Competitive Cooperative Agreements Program (CCAP) was launched to distribute seed funding for data sharing partnerships to participating groups.

Nancy Tosta, Director of Forecasting and Growth Strategy in the Puget Sound Regional Council

Have we made progress in sharing data? Standards has been one of the most frustrating areas. Technology and data keep changing, and although the FGDC metadata standard is used, most don’t use the whole content standard.

Partnership development has been more successful. Federal and State relationships are better, but work is still needed between state and local government levels. The difficulty of coordinating and sustaining partnerships was probably underestimated. A goal of reducing redundancy may be incorrect. Too many people want different information and data diversity may assist in solving complex problems.

In the future, hopefully, NSDI will evolve to make increasing amounts of data more accessible in addressing complex issues such as building sustainable communities. GIS is relevant to very real-world problems. The majority of problems we are trying to solve are local. Data infrastructures should be built at the local level.

Recommendations to ONRC GIS:

• check into the reports of other clearinghouse sites
• think and act locally
• foster relationships that focus on common areas of interest
• continually question assumptions
• Ask: How can your data be made more relevant? and How can it best be shared?

Question from audience:

Are we gaining or losing the battle to make sense of and organize the data?

Answer:

The volume of data available is growing exponentially, particularly if you consider the full realm of GPS and satellite data. It’s probably not feasible to consider we’ll ever organize all of it. Build relationships with people who have common problems and interests in your geography and devise strategies for sharing data among yourselves.

Washington State Department of Information Services and Coordinator of the Washington Geographic Information Council

Jeff Holm introduced the state-level effort to organize geospatial information through the WA State Geospatial Clearinghouse. Jeff briefly revealed some of the complexity in compiling FGDC-compliant metadata, the basic content of the WA State Clearinghouse and the ONRC regional Clearinghouse.
    The Washington State Geospatial Clearinghouse is a logically centralized, internet based spatial information resource for discovering and accessing spatial information about the state of Washington. Components for the vision of the state Clearinghouse include:

• compelling information content
• easy access for contributors and users
• sustainable infrastructure
• support and information contributions

Where are we today? The NSDI Clearinghouse network currently has 104 servers online – many of which originated internationally. It is a global network of registered servers accessible through internet gateways. The Gateway provides a query-able interface to the spatial information.

Why create a Clearinghouse?

• Development of a tool for discovering spatial information
• Facilitate professional and public access to information
• Coordinate data collection and research activities
• Ease workloads - "What do you have and where did it come from?"

The ONRC is a nationally recognized regional Clearinghouse model.

How does metadata fit in? Spatial data discovery is easier through standarized data descriptions. Hence, the "FGDC Content Standards for Digital Geospatial Metadata." Many content providers do not produce fully-compliant metadata; they use some form of a subset of the standards. Washington State has extracted a two-tier subset of the standards to report a basic set and a working set of metadata elements.

Jeff Holm, of the Washington State Department of Information Services and Coordinator of the Washington Geographic Information Council

Jeff continued his discussion in more detail about comparing metadata creation tools. He reviewed online web-based forms, word processing templates, and stand-alone and integrative database packages. He advised attendees to participate in a free WAGIC metadata workshop held several times a year in different locations throughout the state.

Issues and challenges in the Clearinghouse were discussed. Some highlights include:

• Metadata is not exciting and hard to understand
• The Clearinghouse is still complex to use, there are
  too many layers to get to the actual information
• People want to be able to graphically see the data

How will you support the infrastructure of others? How do we move closer to the vision?

• Information content will reach critical mass. We are off to a good start.
  Sixteen months ago there were 14 data descriptions from two organizations.
  Now 247 metadata records from 41 organizations are online.
• Education and training must continue
• Promote participation with GIS community
• Data Stewardship
• Continue to discuss improvements in utility of the Clearinghouse

Proposed Improvements to the Clearinghouse include

• Upgrade the online Metadata Entry System
  Include online help, option to save in-work drafts
  User decides whether to post to Clearinghouse or delete the record
• More thumbnail graphics added to metadata descriptions
• New view data capability using are explorer, map enabled browser from ESRI project file.

GIS Coordinator-Analyst at ONRC

Teresa Alcock gave an ONRC Clearinghouse grand opening statement then briefly toured attendees through the website. She acknowledged the ONRC Clearinghouse Team and the Operations Committee of the WA State Geospatial Clearinghouse, as well as some of the people who helped build the foundation of content for the Clearinghouse, our earliest and most

GIS Coordinator-Analyst at ONRC

supportive partners such as Olympic National Forest, Grays Harbor Regional Planning Commission, Merrill and Ring Pysht Tree Farm, and the Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary.

GIS Instructor at Grays Harbor College

Chris Bradberry talked about the meritous GIS program at the in Aberdeen and his challenges in implementing and growing the technical program at the college. He solicited input from attendees to better plan class curriculums and to recruit students that can build the kinds of skills that serve employers' needs.
    Chris provided some background information on their GIS program. Ivan Suen started the program at the college to have a natural resources focus and hands-on training and education culminating into a 500 hour cooperative education program. Grays Harbor College GIS has recently made a switch to NT platform for GIS classrooms. Grays Harbor College is working on "Skills Standards" to face GIS job titles which change seemingly daily.
    Chris introduced his GIS curriculum and briefly mentioned the issues and challenges facing a fledgling technical program in a 2 year Community College.

GIS Instructor at Grays Harbor College

 

 

The issues
and
challenges:

• program continuity and scheduling changes
• recruiting students for GIS when nobody knows what GIS means
• acquiring "State of the Art" software and dealing with budgetary problems
• balancing training and education
• looking to industry for cooperative education experience
• setting skill standards for the basis of the curriculum
• Becoming the SW node for the Washington State Geospatial Clearinghouse

Several key concepts can be extrapolated from the participants’ issues in this theme. Standards are inherently despised, yet there was consensus of the need for them.
    Inconsistent formats and a multitude of geospatial data projection and reference systems make data a difficult resource to share when special expertise and software is needed to convert data into useable forms.
    Cost recovery was an issue on both sides - data producers and data users. Data producers need to recover costs, users need data, but may find those very costs prohibitive!
    The definition of "public information" and the legal and political issues of public agency information distribution are not clearly understood, even by this technologically advanced and intellectually saavy group of attendees.

With all of the Clearinghouse and NSDI activity going on, people are stil having a hard time finding data. The Clearinghouse user interface needs to be enhanced with graphic searching and viewing capability. Keyword searches may not produce a successful search result if an incorrect keyword is used.
    Olympic Peninsula users want access to Olympic Peninsula "clips" of larger-extent datasets.
    Updates of datasets and analysis process steps need to be better documented in metadata to address currentness and fitness for use.
    Historic data should be converted into a modern, useable format so we do not lose important legacy datasets.

Several important issues emerged from this theme. Certification for those working with GIS was questioned by some and preferred by others. When GIS is applied in natural resource management, for example, forestry, is it a means of application or an end? How can we verify that GIS professionals are capable of producing reliable products?
    Participants stressed that GIS personnel need to understand the phenomena being analyzed or mapped and should not neglect basic business, computer, and communication skills to support application of GIS technologies.
    Policy makers also need to be educated in the potential applications of GIS in order to utilize the technologies effectively and to communicate their desired deliverable GIS products more specifically . A public relations campaign was suggested to promote GIS.
    We can demonstrate that sufficient investment in GIS can return in increased

efficiency in information management, more accurate and reliable decision support, and in providing an alternative communication interface upon which to build trust.
    We must be careful however in promoting GIS - it's a facinating collection of tools, personnel, processes and information, but only a little knowledge in such a vast area of expertise may encourage unharnessed enthusiasm at the cost of scientific validity.
    Technical support, mainly via website and discussion-group information resources, was requested by attendees. Our conference revealed a very rich hidden regional community that wants to communicate and share information resources and knowledge.
    Data management is essential before effective sharing of information and knowledge can occur. We need better information and data management skills as data creators and users.

Karen Dvornich

National Director, NatureMapping Program

The NatureMapping Program focuses on education, dissemination of Gap Analysis and other biodiversity datasets to a local level, research using data submitted by the participants, and feedback in the form of data, information, maps and personal conversations. This focus has allowed it to become an integral part of the Washington Gap Analysis Project (WAGAP), Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW), and the University of Washington’s Department of Urban Planning efforts to work with county planners.
    County analysis is conducted in an ecological context using WAGAP data and further refined using county and WDFW data. Spokane was the first county to use the corridor and reserve recommendations to address their critical areas ordinances and state legislated growth management act requirements. Pierce County is set to begin adding an aquatic component, due to the salmonid listings.
    In both cases, The NatureMapping Program acts as an conduit to educate the public; includes it’s participants in groundtruthing and verification of the proposed corridors and open spaces; involves the public, including schools, in their county’s decision-making process; and receives data for it’s public database.
    If all counties become involved, the end result will be a state map of corridors and reserves developed using landscape ecology as the guiding principle, then refined and monitored by land planners and citizens within their own political boundaries.
    This process not only fulfills the Gap Analysis Program’s mission to promote conservation of biodiversity through information and to facilitate the application of this information to land management, but guarantees the implementation of a statewide strategy to conserve Washington’s natural biological diversity.

Karen Dvornich

Karen Dvornich, National Director, NatureMapping Program

"Gap is not a project -  it becomes part of your life,"  Karen happily admitted.
    The Gap Analysis Project  is an approach toassess the protection of biodiversity, in an effort to keep common animals common and maintain our quality of life. The analysis identifies areas of high biodiversity, as well as areas (vegetation zones) and wildlife species considered at-risk, including some species considered common.
    These analyses were conducted to provide land managers information to priortize their field work because the Gap datasets are "predicted." Gap is a hypothesis that must now be verified and improved by field work and other datasets to determine the quality of habitats at a finer scale that was conducted by Gap.
    GAP used classified satellite imagery to create the first overall image of our state. One fourth of all pixels were re-sampled.
    The State was delineated into regions based on geology. Ecoregions, vegetative zones (plant communities) and existing land cover algorithms were used to model where vertebrates reside. Special diversity maps were created and overlaid with generalized (4 categories) land ownership maps to identify the "gaps" in protections in biodiversity, ie. the areas of highest diversity did not necessarily line up with the areas set aside for biodiversity. It was a huge effort to collect data for the state.

GAP analysis scope:
National, State, County

NatureMapping scope:
County, City, Backyard

We now need to explain how to use the maps because of the diverse amount of data and the potential to conduct further analyses because of how we designed the vertebrate models. We collected a lot of data, but much of it was very old (1930's and 40's museum records). NatureMapping data will help bring the database "up-to-date" with more recent data for some species.
    There are at least 85 definitions of biodiversity and NatureMapping has defined number 86: Biodiversity is the variety of life and we depend on it.