Abstract
Establishing biological reserves or "hot spots" for endangered and threatened species is critical to support real-world species regulatory and management problems. Geographic data on the distribution of endangered and threatened species can be used to improve ongoing efforts for species conservation in the United States. At present no spatial database exists which maps out the location of endangered species for the US. However, spatial descriptions do exist for the habitat associated with all endangered species, but in a form not readily suitable to use in a geographic information system (GIS). In our study, the principal challenge was extracting spatial data describing these critical habitats for 472 species from over 1000 pages of the Federal Register. In addition, an appropriate database schema was designed to accommodate the different tiers of information associated with the species along with the confidence of designation; the interpreted location data was geo-referenced to the county enumeration unit producing a spatial database of endangered species for the whole of US. The significance of these critical habitat designations, database scheme and methodologies will be discussed.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 348-355 |
| Number of pages | 8 |
| Journal | Journal of Map and Geography Libraries |
| Volume | 4 |
| Issue number | 2 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - 2007 |
Funding
This manuscript has been authored by employees of UT-Battelle, LLC, under contract DE-AC05-00OR22725 with the U.S. Department of Energy. Accordingly, the United States Government retains and the publisher, by accepting the article for publication, acknowledges that the United States Government retains a non-exclusive, paid-up, irrevocable, world-wide license to publish or reproduce the published form of this manuscript, or allow others to do so, for United States Government purposes. Aarthy Sabesan, Geographic Information Science and Technology Group, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN 37763 (E-mail: [email protected]). Nagendra Singh, Geographic Information Science and Technology Group, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN 37763 (E-mail: [email protected]). Mark Tuttle, Geographic Information Science and Technology Group, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN 37763 (E-mail: [email protected]). Prepared by Oak Ridge National Laboratory, P.O. Box 2008, Oak Ridge, Tennessee 37831-6285, managed by UT-Battelle, LLC for the U. S. Department of Energy under contract no. DEAC05-00OR22725. This article is not subject to U.S. copyright law.
| Funders | Funder number |
|---|---|
| U. S. Department of Energy | |
| U.S. Department of Energy |
Keywords
- Critical habitat
- Endangered species
- Geographic Information System
- Spatial database
- Threatened species
