Post by Marissa Parker ’16

Last week in the SAL, we took on our first full project as SAL interns, working for the Chesapeake Conservancy and the Capital Region Land Conservancy (CRLC). The Capitol Region Land Conservancy is a local non-profit land trust that aims to “conserve and protect the natural and historic land and water resources of Virginia’s Capital Region for the benefit of current and future generations” by facilitating the creation of land easements. These land easements permanently limit development to maintain the health of watersheds.

These 7 counties and City of Richmond comprise the “Capital Region” the CRLC focuses on

To assist in their efforts to protect our community’s ecological health, we provided GIS services to the CRLC working in collaboration with the Chesapeake Conservancy. Our project for these clients was to create a database to evaluate various attributes of land parcels within eight counties (see map above) surrounding Richmond to help the CRLC make informed conservation decisions. Some attributes that we evaluated include location of each parcel within a floodplain, amount of natural land cover and wetland habitat, and the inclusion of historic places. Using ArcGIS software, we completed these analyses to create a single geodatabase containing extensive information on each land parcel in the eight counties.

We also completed a Viewshed analysis on local scenic byways—roads that run along the James River—which displayed areas that are and are not visible from the scenic byway, up to 5 miles away. This provided information on visibility of land parcels from scenic byways, which also will inform CRLC decisions. The picture below shows how some areas are visible from the byways while others are not, due to elevation and canopy cover.

The blue lines are scenic byways with views of the James River. The green areas are pixels identified as “visible” from the scenic byways. We included if a land parcel contained visible pixels in the data we sent the CRLC.

This project will help the CRLC in their creation of new conservation easements and provided us interns with first experience working as a team to complete a large project using GIS.

Hi All!

We are very excited to say it is going to be a very busy time in the SAL this summer! We always have a variety of interesting and innovative student research projects underway in our little corner of the International Center, but this year we’re packed to the brim! In addition to research projects being conduced by Natalie Somerville,Heather Courtenay and Kerry McGowan, we have four students taking part in our S4 Summer Intern program. These geographers will be building their skills through a variety of long term and short term projects designed to help our “clients” and partners over the summer. Stay tuned to the SAL blog as we bring you exciting updates on their work and progress!

Some of the things to look forward to:
-Database to help inform the creation of conservation easements for the Capitol Region Land Conservancy
-Uploading data to The GARDEN Project, a statewide collaboration between universities and VGIN
-Continued research on environmental impacts of the proposed Atlantic Coast Pipeline
-Mapping of local trails with Terrain 360
-Updating and expanding the UR Campus Tree Map
-Proposal for a new National Natural Landmark at Bear Rocks Preserve (Natalie Somerville)
-Natural Resource Conditions Assessment of Booker T Washington National Monument (Heather Courtenay)
-Analysis of Solar Energy Development in the US and Mexico (Kerry McGowan)

For now enjoy one of the first tasks completed by our excellent interns, a map of the construction zones and associated road closures on the UR campus over the summer.

Hope to see you back on the SAL Blog soon!
Taylor Holden