Geographical Information Systems, Remote Sensing Techniques, and GPS-based Field Verification Methodologies for Mapping Vegetation Change at Chiricahua National Monument, Arizona. Professional management requires accurate and comprehensive information of park resources. Perhaps the most basic information for managing natural-resource areas is a thorough knowledge of vegetation, an undisputed resource of scenic beauty, wildlife habitat, and overall ecosystem function. To assess vegetation change at Chiricahua National Monument, an ArcInfo-based GIS has been developed as well as a revised Brown, Lowe, and Pase vegetation classification system. The new vegetation map coupled with GIS analysis provides a means for making informed management decisions about the relative extent and nature of vegetation changes between 1939 and the present.
Ecosystems function across many scales.
However, resource managers must often use data at whatever scale is available. To provide the resource manager with data that can be used to evaluate these systems at various scales and to place local information in a regional context, a database has been generated at Utah State University, Department of Geography and Earth Resources. The database can be used to address environmental management problems at multiple scales. It brings together information gathered by the U.S. Geologic Survey, the National Biological Service, and the Utah National Guard to place ground based information in a local, regional, state, and national context. Maps of wildlife species distributions are a fundamental display of data in biogeography, and increasingly GIS methods are used to develop models of distributions.