Site Makes Web a Natural Resource

Site Makes Web a Natural Resource

Researchers at the University of Rhode Island have created a new Internet Web site designed to equip Rhode Islanders even those lacking special expertise with tools designed to help them save some of the state's most ecologically critical lands.

The prime purpose of the new site is to provide the public with access to aerial photographs, maps and land-use data for their communities that until now has largely been available only to professionals or local officials. 

With all that new material available free of charge, residents can do their own research when new developments or roads are proposed and attend public meetings armed with real data about natural resources, wetlands and other land-use issues. 

The site already has been used for more recreational purposes. One person has plotted a canoe trip; another has found the best spots along the shore for fishing for stripers. 

Its creators also hope the site soon will become a routine tool for Rhode Island students working on natural resource or geography projects. 

URI Prof. Peter V. August, who heads the new program, said his goal is to make the same scientific and land-use data available to everyone as decisions are made on how to best use land in each community. 

"Now the good guys and the bad guys and the people in the middle all will have the same information," August said. 

The home site for the new data is located at http://edc.uri.edu/ gis. That site offers links to the National Park Service, learning opportunities in Geographic Information Systems, maps of Rhode Island and its watershed and towns, and a future look at GIS in Rhode Island. 

Possibly the most important site linked from the home site is the MIT/URI Digital Orthophoto Server. It makes available at no charge aerial photographs of the entire state that were taken by the U.S. Geological Survey in 1995. Users can start with large scale photos and zoom in to small locations such as their own back yards.

To help Rhode Islanders get accustomed to the site, researcher Roland Duhaime has created quick links to some Rhode Island landmarks, such as Ell Pond, the Jamestown bridges, Roger Williams Park Zoo and the State House. 

After entering the Web site, users may click onto any locale in the state, and then zoom in for closeups. 

Previously, the same photographs were available to researchers and professional planners on 13 CDs that had to be ordered in advance and downloaded. Now the same information is available to everyone with access to the Internet. 

The new site was created by August's Environmental Data Center at URI and is hosted by the URI Department of Natural Resources Science and the Rhode Island Cooperative Extension program. 

The aerial photography was made available on the Internet through a cooperative effort between the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, URI and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which contributed $25,000 for writing software. 

John Evans, an MIT researcher, says Rhode Island's small size made it easier to make the maps and photographs available for the entire state. "They do this for some counties in Iowa, for instance, but they are the same size as the entire state of Rhode Island," he said. 

Evans is working on writing a common computer language that will let people viewing photos and geographic information data in Rhode Island to some day view similar information for places around the world. 

"John and his people work on the big picture," August said. "We're trying to figure how this can help us preserve biodiversity in the town of Coventry, or on Jamestown." 

If you click on a town in Rhode Island, the server provides a general map of the town, as well as specialized maps showing forests and wetlands, land-use classifications, groundwater reservoirs, watersheds and biodiversity. 

Using those maps, any citizen concerned about a new shopping center or other development proposal can quickly determine whether there are nearby wetlands, watersheds or aquifers that would prompt concerns. 

Last week, August's Environmental Data Center put on a mini- symposium of its work at URI in Kingston, and, through teleconferencing, at URI's Providence campus. 

The symposium attracted land-use professionals from the Natural Resources Center, URI's Geology Department, the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. 

"This really gives people in Rhode Island access to the same material the planners are using, all collected while working in their den," Duhaime said. 

More data will be added as it's available. 

August says his department is working on putting local plat or subdivision maps on the Web. More refined aerial photography has been done by other agencies and may soon get on the site. 

URI will add more data for each community as it becomes available, August said. 

August, Evans and Duhaime recently attended a conference where they spoke in favor of having open standards for similar Web sites created by other universities and state and federal agencies. 

That way, someone researching part of a community could get access to information on that locale from diverse agencies: wetland data could come from the state Department of Environmental Management, or pollution information could come from the EPA. 

"The map will appear on the visitor's computer screen, but they may not know that it was produced from information on multiple Web servers," Duhaime said. "This way the user can receive the most up- to-date information from each agency. That is very exciting to me."