Spatially Integrated Reporting of Environmental Criteria for Resource Management: An Example from Lake Tahoe

The Terrestrial Ecological Unit Inventory (TEUI) is the standard process for ecosystem mapping used by the U.S. Forest Service (USFS). From 2004 to 2005, the USFS Pacific Southwest Region Ecology Program carried out a Landtype Association-scale TEUI for the Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit. After completion of mapping, the Information Center for the Environment (ICE) at the University of California, Davis, carried out an assessment of climate, vegetation, soils, bedrock geology, and infrastructure as grouped by mapping units.

ICE developed a prototype method for summary reporting on numerous datasets by individual mapping unit. ICE used ModelBuilder for ArcGIS Desktop 9.1 to create the required data in a personal geodatabase. Microsoft Access queries were used to carry out additional summary calculations, and the Access reporting engine was used for document creation. Changes to input data are propagated throughout the reporting mechanism without requiring additional user effort, and reports are automatically updated.

Overall, results indicate that the method developed can be easily repeated for other national forests. The methodology also can be applied to other datasets or for other purposes. Improved versions already are under development to support other ecosystem mapping projects in northern California.

Courtesy of Nathaniel Roth, the Information Center for the Environment, Department of Environmental Science and Policy, University of California, Davis.