The Southeastern Ecological Framework GeoBook contains a slide show which provides some basic information on the methodology used to develop the SEF and identifies some of the current capabilities of the SEF GeoBook. You can watch the slide show even if you do not have PowerPoint on your computer. Simply click on the Show key and a PowerPoint Viewer will be launched allowing you to view the slide show. The slides can be advanced by clicking anywhere on the screen. Hitting the Esc button on your keyboard will close the slide show and take you back into the SEF GeoBook. Text related to each slide can be found by scrolling down below this introduction. You can also download the slides by right clicking on the Graphic and selecting a location to save the presentation for personal use.  Download PowerPoint Viewer  

Slide 1 - The Southeastern Ecological Framework (SEF) GeoBook is a decision support tool that provides a significant amount of natural resource data on critical ecosystems in the southeast. The critical ecosystems are identified by the SEF as a hub and corridor network across the 8 states of the southeast. The 8 states include Florida, Georgia, South and North Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, and Mississippi. The SEF highlights the important natural areas that support clean air, pure water and better protected land.

Slide 2 - The loss of connectivity and fragmentation of habitat has had a drastic impact on the quality of air, water and land resources in the Southeast. Many landscape types cover a small fraction of historic extent. Protection in isolation leads to a fragmented approach to natural resource protection. These living zoo's, however, do not protect species from climatic changes, facilitate genetic mixing across populations, or ensure the long term survival of the larger species.

Slide 3 - It costs the economy significant time and financial resources to restore degraded resources back to a natural condition. Economic losses due to increased energy consumption for cooling results from cutting down trees and replacing natural ground cover with parking lots. Additional costs associated with filtering sedimentation from drinking water rather than allowing riparian buffers to do the work. And the loss of some recreational opportunities like swimming, fishing, bird watching or hiking.

Slide 4 - Natural resources provide valuable economic benefits to communities across the Southeast. However, the rapid rate of urban growth in the region requires many communities to balance economic development issues from multiple perspectives. This can be a difficult task for just a single development project. But even more difficult is the cumulative impact on a community's drinking water supply or air quality from development over time.

Slide 5 - Connecting people in a community with the natural environment is critical to begin understanding the importance of daily decision making, from numerous organizations, on the quality of life in your community.

Slide 6 - Linking highly urbanized areas through trails, parks and other pedestrian friendly land uses can help begin the link to broader ecological concerns that are explicitly important to the local community in the form of lower costs for drinking water, energy, good health, and other significant quality of life issues.

Slide 7 - There are visual signs that these impacts are real. Often the connection is a visual glance through a car window when you notice that the Paddock Family Farm is about to become the newest subdivision in the county. Some see a new tax base, others see expanded infrastructure costs for roads and sewer lines, and some make the connection to air and water quality declines. However, few connect all aspects; positive and negative.

Slide 8 - Balancing the decisions that are made daily requires a significant amount of information and time. Protecting those areas that are critical to the long term health of a community or watershed is becoming more important and difficult than ever. To help identify those areas across the Southeast, the Natural Resource Leaders Group sought to identify those areas that support the large scale ecological processes that make the Southeast such a great place to live and work. The SEF identifies the most important ecological areas and the critical landscape links between them.

Slide 9 - The Southeast Natural Resource Leaders Group consisting of the Regional Directors of the 11 federal agency's charged with natural resource management issues in the Southeast, worked together in compiling natural resource spatial data across 8 states in the Southeast. The effort was designed to identify critical ecosystems in the region, to begin developing a more holistic strategy to ecosystem protection, and to develop a more coordinated approach to addressing many of the cross agency issues effecting the region.

Slide 10 - Although the hub and corridor approach was completed for an 8 state region, the foundation of the approach was first applied at a state wide scale in Florida. The Florida Forever program spends 300 million dollars a year on greenspace protection efforts. The Florida Legislature supported the initial development of the Florida Ecological Network to ensure the coordination of protection efforts across multiple agencies. Florida now uses this innovative tool to quantify their progress in protecting natural resources that connect local land acquisition to the larger ecosystem processes that support ecosystem processes. The SEF is a similar tool for the SE.

Slide 11 - The central model of the SEF relies on the concept of connecting core reserve habitat areas with corridor links that allow species to migrate between populations. The core reserves or Hubs focus on areas larger than 5 thousand acres with little or no fragmentation. The corridors consist of three types: 1) riparian corridors, 2) upland connectivity, and 3) cross ecosystem types. This network approach provides large focal or umbrella species with the resources needed for their long-term survival and ensures a healthy ecosystem for the community.

Slide 12 - To identify ecologically significant areas, data was collected from available sources that identified important natural resources. Some of the data came form states, non-profit organizations, other federal agencies as well as modeled analysis of stream headwater density or roadless areas. The layers were then compiled into one inclusive layer. Areas greater than 5000 acres are the Priority Ecological Areas (PEAs) and the remaining areas were used to make the links between PEAs. The SEF model connected PEAs based on suitable land types. The data not included in the final SEF are called Significant Ecological Areas, and help connect local communities with the SEF.

Slide 13 - A significant amount of effort went into identifying available data that would provide some consistency across state boundaries. Some states had more data than others. However, an analysis of the overlap of data layers indicate that many of the important ecological areas in each state were identified by several layers and not just one. As new data sets become available, they can be integrated with the current PEA and SEA to highlight additional priorities or to simply add additional characterization of those important areas that have already been identified.

Slide 14 - Connecting the ecological hubs relied on sound ecological principles. Avoiding urbanized areas was extremely important for a healthy ecosystem. Agricultural areas provide for some important transitional habitats that are critical to the existence of many species. The modeling process considered existing land cover as a cost surface, the PEAs were connected based on the fewest pixels to get from one point to another and the cost of the total number of pixels to make the connection. For instance, 1 major road pixel would equal 200,000 forested pixels. In essence the model go through 199,999 forested pixels before 1 major road pixel.

Slide 15 - The result of the hub and corridor linking process are identified as the Southeastern Ecological Framework. A critical ecosystem network that supports the clean air we breath, the pure water we drink and the better protected land that provides us with recreation and species habitat for the long-term quality of life across the Southeast. Through the coordinated efforts of federal, state and local agencies, non-profit organizations and the business community we can begin to develop long and short-term strategies that ensure resources are leveraged appropriately and that we are all working toward a bigger goal with mutual benefits.

Slide 16 - It is a decision making tool used to identify and protect key lands and natural resources along with the ecological services these areas provide. Shows the big picture and lets users view local decisions from a larger regional context. Saves time and money by already integrating dozens of complex environmental parameters into one useful tool.

Slide 17 - Provides the user with a science-based method to evaluate alternative land use & management decisions and impacts on natural resources. Allows decision makers to prioritize and protect ecologically significant resources that provide low-cost, hard-to-replace services. Putting environmental factors at the beginning steps of a planned project helps the development process go smoother so unexpected mitigation activities can be avoided.

Slide 18 - The hardest part of using the SEF GeoBook is knowing what questions to ask. There is no single right question, but there are many possible questions. We have listed a few to help you get started. We will go through the process of using the SEF GeoBook to find an answer to your question that will support the decision that you may need to make. And finally we will discuss some of the additional features in this innovative tool so that you may begin to think of other questions that you may need to support sound decisions regarding the natural resources in your community.

Slide 19 - The strongest component of the SEF GeoBook is the amount of data that is provided in a visual or spatial format. You don't need to know any Geographical Information System (GIS) software, but we give you some of the more relevant tools that GIS professionals use in developing their maps. These include zooming in to a location or identifying additional information about some of the features that you are viewing. The data layers are set up so that you can select a specific topic area, such as critical ecosystems, agricultural, or water related issues.

Slide 20 - Once you have identified questions for your area of interest you can look at your specific geographic location to see if there is any data that supports the activities that you are concerned with. The SEF GeoBook is portable so that you can take it out on your laptop at community meetings to get a number of perspectives on other issues that may impact your question.

Slide 21 - The power of GIS approaches to natural resource protection lies in the ability to focus, prioritize or target specific locations that support the goals and objectives of your organization. For instance, if you are a Farmland trust you may want to focus specifically on the agricultural areas noted in yellow. See the map legend in the lower right corner If you are part of a land trust that is more interested in forested landscape protection then you would want to focus your attention on the areas identified by green in this image.

Slide 22 - Another significant aspect of using GIS in your decision-making is that you can overlay multiple pieces of information to highlight various aspects of your areas of interest. This provides a variety of opportunities for targeting different resources to achieve the same overall goal. In this example the red lines indicate polluted streams (from the state 303D list). The yellow areas are agricultural lands. The impaired water quality may be improved by establishing vegetated riparian buffers here.

Slide 23 - The ability to characterize many aspects of the landscape in various ways provides a foundation for identifying potential partnerships with other organizations, funding sources that may be targeted to address single issues, and support dialogue with community groups or county commissioners about environmental issues or concerns.

Slide 24 - Each data layer included in the SEF GeoBook also contains at least two other links to web sites. The first link, found at the end of the data layer description, will link you to a web site that provides additional information about that specific data set. This may include a link to the most current data available, such as the latest information from the U.S. Census Bureau, or a link to more detailed information about a specific subject area, such as more information on the importance of riparian buffers. The second link will direct you to potential funding sources that support the protection or enhancement of the specific area of interest.

Slide 25 - Overlaying information from multiple data sets can be very helpful in developing strategies to protect natural resources. For example, although your group may be interested in agricultural lands identified in the previous example, there may also be issues related to drinking water sources. In developing a strategy to protect agricultural lands, you may also wish to explore the funding or partnership possibilities with groups that are focused on drinking water protection.

Slide 26 - This ability to identify opportunities to leveraging resources across media, such as air and water, and across organizations, such as the Farmland Trust and an adopt a stream group, can be powerful tools in getting things done.

Slide 27 - Although there is just one link to funding identified for each data layer, there are additional connections identified at some of the web sites. These links identify other opportunities for funding that may support the same or similar issues as the primary source. You can also leverage your application by identifying the connection between your work and the Southeastern Ecological Framework. There is no guarantee of funding, but an application that supports the overall mission, goals and objectives of the funding organization and provide multiple co-benefits for other organizations are sure to rate higher.

Slide 28 - The vast amount of information in the SEF GeoBook provides opportunities to view multiple combinations of environmental issues that may not have been apparent when viewed only one at a time. For example air emission locations could provide some insight to water quality readings that don't seem to make sense. Connecting schools to greenspace corridors can provide community support for protection efforts as well as a long-term science project for the school through stream monitoring or trail development. The possibilities are endless and we hope that this tool will help you identify some of those opportunities for your organization.

Slide 29 - Although you can overlay various data layers to help characterize the natural resource issues in your area, the ability to analyze data across themes or data sets is not possible within this geospatial tool. We have included some characterizations under the SEF theme. These include potential regional threats, recreational opportunities, biodiversity, and ecosystem services. We have also done some analysis on potential urban growth areas. The documentation on these data sets are on the SEF Executive Summary CD that can be obtained from any of the contacts noted at the end of the SEF GeoBook.

Slide 30 - The SEF GeoBook has a number of additional tools provide links to outside GIS related data sources. One of the most powerful links is to on line air photos on the Terra Server website. From the full map viewer, clicking on the photo icon provides the user with the ability to view 1-meter (in most locations) resolution data of the area that you are viewing. Some of the data is at the 10-meter resolution, but the level of detail is quite good. As with any free data, it is not always the most current available. Space Imaging's web site has current data available for purchase, as well as a number of other venders in the remote sensing arena. The more current the data, the more expensive it tends to be.

Slide 31 - Once you have reached the Terra Server website you can also view the topographical maps for the area. This information can be used to identify steep sloops, roads, or other right of way features. These images can also be saved, printed and used out in the field during site visits.

Slide 32 - Another feature available in the full map view is the ability to create your own data layer. This tool is useful in highlighting additional lands that your group has identified as protected. The SEF was developed at a regional scale. A consistent data set of protected lands does not currently exist. We hope that this tool will help to develop a fairly accurate database of land that is protected or managed in perpetuity. Land that is under some form of easement (15, 30 or 100 years) would also be appropriate to include. You can send the information to EPA or simply keep in your own data base to track your progress in meeting your goals and objectives.

Slide 33 - There are many GIS mapping services that are coming on line. EPA's EnviroMapper has a wealth of information about permitted industrial and waste treatment facilities. This information can be accessed for the area that you are viewing by clicking on the EPA button at the top of the full map viewer. Once in the EnviroMapper program, you can select various environmental information to view that may support your organizations mission. Remember, you can always use the "HELP" button at any time to call up a document containing instructions on how to use the features of the SEF GeoBook.

Slide 34 - There is a critical need to look at and address how human actions impact our ecosystems' abilites to function and provide needed environmental and economic resources. New road construction, agriculture changes, and sprawling communities represent the most prevalent changes in our natural landscapes. These types of activities often cut through existing ecologically significant areas dividing them into isolated parts. As ecological systems decline, communities must be reactive, spending more and more money to find and provide alternate resources.

Slide 35 - The SEF GeoBook facilitates the identification and prioritization of key resource areas that significantly contribute to clean air, clean, safe and adequate water supplies, biodiversity, habitat stabilization, open space and agricultural production. Its ability to help focus and coordinate environmental protection of large scale ecological systems is valuable to the many state, federal and non-profit agencies that are involved in natural resource protection.

Slide 36 - The SEF model uses the best available GIS data to identify ecologically important hub and corridor networks throughout the entire Southeast Region. The inclusion of the SEF into the GeoBook application facilitates the protection of natural resources with a host of additional information. This innovative approach to address environmental problems can help you address many of the issues that are important to your community. With we hope that the tool will be valuable for local governments and non-profit organization's.