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GIS Support for MappingBureau of Land
ManagementLands with Wilderness
Characteristics
Alison GallenskyRocky Mountain Wild
Society for Conservation GIS July 2015 2
Presentation Outline• What are Lands with
Wilderness Characteristics (LWCs)?• How did we map LWCs?• How did GIS mapping and
analysis help mapping LWCs?• How do you protect LWCs?• Lessons Learned
Photo: Munger Creek, Colorado, by Soren Jespersen
Society for Conservation GIS July 2015 3
What are Lands with WildernessCharacteristics?• 1964 Wilderness Act• Public Land Agencies: USFS, NPS, USFWS, BLM• Characteristics of Wilderness
• Size (absence of roads)• Naturalness• Solitude• Supplemental Values
• Wilderness areas can only be designated by an act of Congress• BLM’s current guidance is inventory Lands with Wilderness
Characteristics and to consider protecting them.
Society for Conservation GIS July 2015 4
How did we map LWCs?• Who are we? Conservation organizations working in
Colorado: • Conservation Colorado• Pew Charitable Trusts• Rocky Mountain Wild• Wild Connections• The Wilderness Society• Wilderness Workshop
• Field work done by paid staff, interns, and volunteers• Mappers took georeferenced photos
• To record presence or absence of wilderness characteristics• To determine if routes were roads or primitive routes
Society for Conservation GIS July 2015 5
Tools Used to Map LWCs• Google Earth• iPad Mini’s or other small
tablets with GPS with Apps:• MotionX GPS (view GPX data
and collect waypoints and tracks)
• Gaia GPS (good background maps/imagrery that can be viewed while in the field)
• GeoJot+ (custom forms for data collection and report generation)
Society for Conservation GIS July 2015 6
How did GIS mapping and analysis help mapping LWCs?• GIS is used to find unroaded areas of sufficient size to
help determine where to map• Share data between field mappers and GIS person to
determine LWC boundary• GIS is used to determine supplemental values such as
wildlife and riparian areas within the LWCs found• GIS is used to create maps for reports to agency and
for public outreach
Society for Conservation GIS July 2015 7
Roadless Analysis• 5,000 acre minimum
(with exceptions)• Includes adjacent lands
with wilderness characteristics (don’t forget cross-agency and cross border)• What is a road?• Naming areas• Prioritization
Society for Conservation GIS July 2015 8
Data Sharing• Before mapping• Google Earth data• GPX Data (ArcGIS and
GPSBabel for conversion)
• After Mapping• Photopoints• Features that
determine the boundary• Boundaries• Acreages
Society for Conservation GIS July 2015 11
Supplemental Values• LWCs may “contain ecological,
geological, or other features of scientific, educational, scenic, or historical value.”
• Rocky Mountain Wild’s Assessment of Biological Impact (ABI) Screen Tool identifies supplemental values.
• Hundreds of datasets with ranges, habitat areas, occurrences, and important landscapes for over a thousand species.
• Output is a spreadsheet report• Maps help folks writing reports and
comments
Society for Conservation GIS July 2015 12
How do you protectLWCs?• Present the report to the BLM• Tour areas with BLM, press, and
the public• Advocate for recognition of areas
not included in BLM’s inventory• Advocate for protective
management of LWC areas• Determine other appropriate
designations• Areas of Critical Environmental
Concern• Recreation Management Areas
(including areas for quiet recreation)
Society for Conservation GIS July 2015 14
Successes• Little Snake Field Office• Far northwestern corner of Colorado• Initially argued that they did not need to do an LWC inventory• The results of our roadless analysis and advocacy convinced
them to do an inventory that identified over 500,000 acres of lands with wilderness characteristics
• White River Field Office• South of Little Snake Field Office• Initially found less than 80,000 acres of LWCs• Conservation groups identified about 320,000 acres• BLM revised their inventory to over 300,000 acres
Society for Conservation GIS July 2015 15
Lessons Learned• Protecting wild lands cannot be
done by government agencies (or conservation groups) alone• GIS technology can be part of a
powerful campaign to influence land protection• Current technology allows
distributed teams to work well together• Low cost solutions allow small
non-profits to have a large impact
Soren Jespersen of The Wilderness Society, left, works with Will Roush of Wilderness Workshop to inventory lands for wilderness characteristics.
Society for Conservation GIS July 2015 16
GIS Support for MappingBureau of Land ManagementLands with Wilderness Characteristics
• Alison Gallensky• Email: [email protected]
• Rocky Mountain Wild• Phone: 303-546-0214• Webpage: http://rockymountainwild.org
• For More Information and to Download this Presentation: • http://rockymountainwild.org/gis/gis-projects/lwc