It was both the first environmental GIS facility on campus, and the first World Wide Web site. The availability of common-use computer facilities allows a talented group of graduate students, postdocs, and programmers to work together to integrate models and data sets from a variety of departments, disciplines, and collaborators into new synthetic analyses. The Core coordinates outreach to state, federal and international agencies and a variety of private and cooperative environmental organizations, including watershed councils, conservation groups, Cooperative Resource Management Planning initiatives, and natural resources industries. The existence of a modeling and environmental GIS center attracts new programs to the university that might otherwise go elsewhere or not be started. It is primarily funded by the California Resources Agency and EPA Region IX to provide a statewide database, GIS, and clearing house for information about natural resources associated with California Rivers.
Effective outreach requires both electronic and human elements.
Core personnel have made several innovations in providing easier public access to databases and maps through the Center s Web server. The current clientele includes University Extension and Cooperative Extension specialists and outreach experts from Resource Conservation Districts. Core faculty members serve on numerous agency and interagency advisory boards and committees, ranging from the science advisory for interagency research in the San Francisco Bay and Sacramento Delta through several endangered species recovery planning committees, to national data and metadata standards committees. The emphasis of the Core is on processes at the organization levels of populations, communities, and ecosystems, and reaches into analyses at the level of entire regional landscapes. The Core s methodological innovations are also widely applicable outside the Center s geographical regions.