Geospatial Approaches to Resource Management & Large Landscape Conservation at Washington College

Washington College’s Center for Environment & Society (CES) and its Geographic Information Systems Laboratory are creating a variety of resources aimed at better managing and understanding large landscapes and their cultural and natural resources on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. Underlying the initiative is a thorough mapping of both terrestrial landscapes and adjacent benthic habitats. One of the first tools developed is a predictive model for the location of prehistoric archaeological sites.  Based on a variety of environmental variables such as soil type, access to water, and ecosystem diversity, a five-county landscape is ranked as to the likelihood of prehistoric settlement.  Field testing of the model indicates a high reliability, suggesting in turn a robust understanding both of Native American preferences in land use and landscape changes over time.  Landscape mapping has been extended underwater in the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries through the use of remote sensing instruments such as sidescan sonar, acoustic seabed classification systems, and multibeam instruments.  Submerged resource surveys allow a better understanding and management of both cultural resources (shipwrecks and inundated terrestrial sites) and natural resources (oyster reefs, grasses, bottom habitats). At CES, GIS also is applied to historic resources in the built environment, via historic district GIS and 3-D modeling.  This presentation will explore several examples of these applications and the way they are integrated into an ambitious Chester River Watershed Observatory. This collaborative, multi-institution observatory aims to make Maryland’s Chester River watershed the best mapped and best understood large landscape in the country.