The scope and scale of global change are driving a paradigm shift in the spatial scale of conservation efforts. Large landscape conservation is increasingly recognized as fundamental to the persistence of the wildlife, plants, ecosystems and ecological processes that comprise our nation’s natural heritage and underpin its economy. To design and implement effective conservation and management actions at the scale of large landscapes requires biodiversity data that are spatially, temporally and taxonomically consistent, with common data and metadata standards, and that are accessible and applicable to broad user communities. However, the current state of biodiversity information is far more fragmented, inconsistently collected, and challenging to access, analyze and apply to meeting the needs of biodiversity conservation across large landscapes.

The Society for Conservation GIS 2015 East Coast Symposium will bring together a diverse audience of federal and state resource managers, academics, NGOs, and conservation practitioners to advance the coordination of biodiversity information in support of the science and practice of large landscape conservation. Join us for a day of lively invited presentations, focused discussion and community building. Registration required, space is limited.

Speakers include:

Keynote speaker: Dr. Matt Hansen, Dept. of Geography, University of Maryland

Dr. Gerald (Stinger) Guala, USGS, Director of Biodiversity Information Serving Our Nation (BISON)

Director of the Integrated Taxonomic Information System (ITIS)

Dr. Jonathan Mawdsley, Science Coordinator, Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies

Chris Burkett, Wildlife Action Plan Coordinator, Virginia Dept. of Game and Inland Fisheries 

BJ Richardson, GIS Coordinator, US Fish and Wildlife Service and North Atlantic LCC

Todd Sutherland, the National Wildlife Refuge System Inventory and Monitoring Program Data Manager, USFWS

Case study: The Chesapeake Bay. Speaker TBD

Schedule

Wednesday, February 11th, 2015

9:00 – 5:00 pm, followed by no-host reception, location TBD

Introductions by SCGIS president Dr. Karen Beardsley, UC Davis as well as Janet Nackoney and Demian Rybock, SCGIS - DC Chapter Leads:

Learn if there is an SCGIS chapter in your area, and hear about the annual SCGIS Conference, this year's theme:  A View From Above:  Remote Sensing in Ecology and Conservation   -  coming up on July 26 - 29 at Asilomar conference center in Monterey, California.

Lunch, a morning coffee break, and an afternoon coffee break will be provided.

Who Should Attend

This event will bring together conservation and natural resource management professionals who produce or consume species distribution data, with an emphasis on those involved in efforts at large landscape scales. We invite colleagues from federal, state, and local resource management agencies, conservation NGOs, academia, and the private sector to join in a provocative day of presentation and discussion about improving a critical information resource for effective conservation.

Sponsors

We thank our generous sponsors who helped make this event possible. Would you or your organization like to be a sponsor?  Email: symposium (at) scgis.org