By Marianna Bradley   Fall & Winter 2005

An Overview:

GIS 1 Project
The Friends of Taunton Bay is an environmental non-profit who's mission is to preserve the ecological and social integrity of the Taunton Bay. The organization was given a grant by the state of Maine in which they were charged with developing ecosystem-based managment approaches for the preservation of natural resources in the bay. In order to effectively communicate with stakeholders in meetings, maps depicting natural resources and other relevant data were created for this project. Several maps were made in collaboration with the Friends of Taunton Bay and the Maine Department of Marine Resources.

GIS 2: Advanced Projects
As in GIS 1, many maps were made for this project depicting natural resources and other relevant data for the Friends of Taunton Bay to use during meetings with stakeholders. In order to use more advanced GIS tools and methods, a value map depicting biodiversity hotspots in the bay was made.
GIS Map  

Map Summary 1:
This map depicts the locations of 13 tracked horseshoe crabs in the bay as well as locations of known breeding grounds along the coast of Maine. The data on this map was collected by the Maine Department of Marine Resources. Meetings were held with DMR employees and the president of Friends of Taunton Bay to discuss the content and layout of this particular map.

Double-Click Image to Open PDF map. (pdf - 1.4 megabytes)

Map Summary 2:
This map was created from an older map made using ArcMap 3.3. The data for the map and the map itself was created by the president from the Friends of Taunton Bay. In order to update the map in ArcMap 9, the coordinate system had to be changed and new shapefiles had to be made. The map shows haulout locations for harbor seals in the Taunton Bay.

Double-Click Image to Open PDF map. (pdf - 1.2 megabytes)

Map Summary 3:
This is a value map showing biodiversity hotspots in the Taunton Bay. The map on the left is a compilation of all the marine and terrestrial animal data layers. This map is a useful reference for identifiying where animals are in the bay. The map on the right is color coordinated from green to red where green means there is a moderate amount of biodiversity in a location and red meaning very high biodiversity. The map on the right was created using ArcMap modeling and reclassification tools.

Double-Click Image to Open PDF map.  (pdf - 1 megabyte)

GIS Lab Contact:
Gordon Longsworth, glongsworth@coa.edu, 207-288-2944, extension 277