Publications

The Gap Analysis Project produces data and tools that help meet critical national challenges such as biodiversity conservation, renewable energy development, climate change adaptation, and infrastructure investment. The Protected Areas Database of the United States (PAD-US) is the official inventory of public parks and other protected open space. Consisting of more than 7 billion acres...

The Gap Analysis Project (GAP)/Landscape Fire and Resource Management Planning Tools (LANDFIRE) National Terrestrial Ecosystems Data represents detailed data on the vegetation and land-use patterns of the United States, including Alaska, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico. This national dataset combines detailed land cover data generated by the GAP with LANDFIRE data (http://www.landfire.gov/)...

We aim to inform the development of decision support tools for resource managers who need to examine large complex ecosystems and make recommendations in the face of many tradeoffs and conflicting drivers. We take a semantic technology approach, leveraging background ontologies and the growing body of linked open data. In previous work, we designed and implemented a semantically enabled

What U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) programs use citizen science? How can projects be best designed while meeting policy requirements? What are the most effective volunteer recruitment methods? What data should be collected to ensure validation and how should data be stored? What standard protocols are most easily used by volunteers? Can data from multiple projects be integrated to...

If conservation of biodiversity is the goal, then the protected areas network of the continental US may be one of our best conservation tools for safeguarding ecological systems (i.e., vegetation communities). We evaluated representation of ecological systems in the current protected areas network and found insufficient representation at three vegetation community levels within lower...

Historically, international borders were located far from the major political and economic capitals of their countries and rarely received adequate planning or infrastructure development. Today, as a result of global economics and increased movement of goods between nations, border regions play a much greater role in commerce, tourism, and transportation. For example, Mexico is the...

The Software for Assisted Habitat Modeling (SAHM) has been created to both expedite habitat modeling and help maintain a record of the various input data, pre- and post-processing steps and modeling options incorporated in the construction of a species distribution model through the established workflow management and visualization VisTrails software. This paper provides an overview of...

The U.S. Geological Survey's Larry Moore provides an update on the US Topo effort, the Survey’s general purpose, digital, quadrangle map series. He outlines the successes thus far and the obstacles still ahead in 2013.

Executive Summary Core Science Systems is a new mission of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) that resulted from the 2007 Science Strategy, “Facing Tomorrow’s Challenges: U.S. Geological Survey Science in the Decade 2007–2017.” This report describes the Core Science Systems vision and outlines a strategy to facilitate integrated characterization and understanding of the complex Earth...

The most comprehensive and authoritative global index of species currently available, it consists of a single integrated species checklist and taxonomic hierarchy. It is available (1) as a DVD and booklet; and (2) on the Web. The contact for the booklet and DVD is Thomas Orrell at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington,DC. The URL for the online version is http://www.catalogueoflife.org...

Between 2007 and 2010, National Park Service (NPS) staff at the Point Reyes National Seashore, California, collected over 300,000 photographic images of Drakes Estero from remotely operated wildlife monitoring cameras. The purpose of the systems was to obtain photographic data to help understand possible relationships between anthropogenic activities and Pacific harbor seal (Phoca...

The US Integrated Ocean Observing System (IOOS) has recently adopted standards for biological core variables in collaboration with the US Geological Survey/Ocean Biogeographic Information System (USGS/OBIS-USA) and other federal and non-federal partners. In this Community White Paper (CWP) we provide a process to bring into IOOS a rich new source of biological observing data, visual line...