CALIFORNIA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES | RESEARCH

GIS stands for "Geographic Information Systems" and refers to the assemblage of computer hardware, software, methods, and personnel for creating, storing, analyzing, and displaying spatially referenced information. More broadly, GIS is the analytic platform to interact with natural history data and digital spatial and environmental layers for fieldwork planning to visualizing collection strengths, for modeling species distributions to cartography. Increasingly, GIS is used for analyzing biogeography, evolutionary relationships, and animal and plant biodiversity.

GIS - based imagery and maps can be seen on CAS public floor, such as periodically in "Science Now" or in the exhibit "California Hotspots". Map figures are often included in the Proceedings of the California Academy of Sciences among other publications.

In 1995, the Academy received a Conservation Technology Support Program grant from ESRI, which has allowed us to run ArcView 3.3 workstations as well as ArcGIS 9.0. We have gone from one user to many with a central repository of spatial and environmental data for CAS survey and research projects. Many thanks to Charles Convis and CTSP!

Selected CAS-GIS products are highlighted below. All maps and images are copyrighted by CAS and may be used only for educational or personal use.

Visit the Center for Biodiversity Research and Information website for more GIS work.

     
Link to AntWeb Bay Area Ant Survey-- Map of Survey Sites, January 2005.

PDF (301 KB)

     
Expand Mapping Natural History Museum Data with GIS -- poster ESRI International User Conference, San Diego, July 2004

PDF (1.8 MB)

     
San Francisco Bay Biodiversity: Viewing California Academy of Sciences Collections with GIS

PDF (1.2 MB)

 

     
Link to Informatics CAS Informatics and Retrospective Georeferencing-- Interactive Tool for ArcView  
     
Click to Expand

Amphibian and Reptile Surveys of the Lassen National Forest, 2003-- Species Maps of Specimen Localities* (PDFS - 201 to 459 KB):

 
 

*From Koo, M. S., J. V. Vindum, and M. McFarland. 2004. Amphibians and reptiles of the Lassen National Forest: Results of 02-CS-11050650-029 The 2003 California Academy of Sciences Survey. Unpublished Report.

 
     
Link to Academy Library Bibliography of GIS References at the CAS Library  
     
     

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