{"id":52842,"date":"2019-02-01T14:22:49","date_gmt":"2019-02-01T22:22:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/about\/newsroom\/?post_type=arcnews&p=52842"},"modified":"2023-08-04T16:50:06","modified_gmt":"2023-08-04T23:50:06","slug":"where-geodesign-and-conservation-converge","status":"publish","type":"arcnews","link":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/about\/newsroom\/arcnews\/where-geodesign-and-conservation-converge","title":{"rendered":"Where Geodesign and Conservation Converge"},"author":1312,"featured_media":0,"menu_order":0,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"sync_status":"","episode_type":"","audio_file":"","castos_file_data":"","podmotor_file_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","itunes_episode_number":"","itunes_title":"","itunes_season_number":"","itunes_episode_type":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[121252],"tags":[1291,161082],"arcnews_issues":[25212],"class_list":["post-52842","arcnews","type-arcnews","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geodesign","tag-conservation","tag-habitats","arcnews_issues-spring-2018","arcnews_sections-gis-people"],"acf":{"short_description":"I like to think of geodesign as a perfect marriage of art and science. In geodesign, a GIS platform is used to support both the creative act...","pdf":{"host_remotely":false,"file":"","file_url":""},"flexible_content":[{"acf_fc_layout":"image","image":52852,"image_position":"center","orientation":"horizontal","hyperlink":""},{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"I like to think of geodesign as a perfect marriage of art and science. In geodesign, a GIS platform is used to support both the creative act of design and the scientific process of predicting impacts and evaluating outcomes.\r\n\r\nWe often think of geodesign as a form of landscape architecture, a way of improving the planning process by designing neighborhood-scale developments that balance environmental impacts, economic costs, and quality of life. But geodesign can also be applied to the planning and conservation of land and marine environments.\r\n\r\nRecently, the cause of geodesign for landscape conservation received an enormous boost when Esri founders Jack and Laura Dangermond donated $165 million to The Nature Conservancy (TNC) to form the Jack and Laura Dangermond Preserve at Point Conception, roughly 25,000 acres of pristine coastal California.\r\n\r\nBypassed by the main coastal highway, Point Conception may be best known to those who have had the pleasure of riding Amtrak\u2019s Coast Starlight train north of Santa Barbara, or to the generations of hikers who have risked high tides and trespass laws to visit the lighthouse. It was much in the news in the 1970s and 1980s when a terminal for liquefied natural gas was proposed and eventually defeated by popular protests fueled by phrases such as \u201cKeep Conception Immaculate.\u201d The area is also famous for a naval disaster that occurred in 1923, when seven US destroyers ran aground on rocks a few miles north of Point Conception."},{"acf_fc_layout":"image","image":52862,"image_position":"center","orientation":"horizontal","hyperlink":""},{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"The preserve\u2014whose physical beauty is brilliantly captured in\u00a0a TNC video\u2014occupies a unique location on the Pacific Coast of North America. It is where the predominantly north-south coast suddenly turns and runs east-west, and where the cold California Current finally relents, allowing warmer water to dominate around the Channel Islands and to the south.\r\n\r\nIn\u00a0an article that appeared recently in\u00a0The Atlantic<\/em><\/a>, Dr. Henry Yang, chancellor of the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), notes, \u201cThis is a conservation project of historic significance. The area is recognized globally for its rich biological diversity and ecological significance. As a transition zone from warmer southern species to cooler northern species both on land and in the coastal ocean, it provides a unique place to study and learn how climate affects the ecosystem.\u201d The preserve is also a very significant place in Native American culture and rich in archaeological interest.\r\n\r\nManaging a preserve of this size and importance will demand the best that creativity, science, and geodesign have to offer. Yet this opportunity could not have come at a better time. We can now image the earth at finer spatial resolution and more often than ever before, using a vast range of satellite, airborne, and groundbased sensors. We have access to aerial photographs of the area dating back decades. And the geodesign tools that are now available in the Esri platform are powerful and readily understood.\r\n\r\nAgainst this richness, however, are the reality of global climate change and the stresses that we have recently seen in an extended California drought, such as massive late-season wildfires and the catastrophic flooding in neighboring Montecito. The offshore area is rich in oil deposits, and although there has been little new activity in recent years, announcements from Washington, DC, suggest that drilling, production, and their associated environmental hazards may well revisit the area in the future.\r\n\r\nThe prodigious responsibility of managing the preserve will fall to TNC. In addition to the gift, the Dangermonds will fund an endowed chair in conservation studies at UCSB. The chair will lead a research team that will conduct studies in the preserve in collaboration with TNC and Esri. Among the research questions that will likely dominate their studies are the following:"},{"acf_fc_layout":"image","image":52872,"image_position":"center","orientation":"horizontal","hyperlink":""},{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"