California Information Node
Partners
Academic
University of California
The
University of California's White Mountain Research Station
in the Owens Valley is a regional NBII and FGDC metadata clearinghouse
that focuses on using GIS technology with high-resolution data for vegetation
and land use planning. The station is also a sub-regional node to the
overall CAIN project and is a demonstration site for distributed Node
geometry and communications.
University of California, Davis
The
Center for Spatial Technology
and Remote Sensing provides technical support to CAIN in the areas
of remote sensing of vegetation type and condition, change detection,
and invasive species mapping.
The
Center for Image Processing and
Integrated Computing provides supercomputer technology and statistical
analysis, especially large environmental data sets.
University of California, Riverside
The
Center for Conservation Biology
at UC Riverside is a sub-regional node that focuses on tracking and evaluating
restoration efforts for critical habitat and other areas of concern. The
Center will be providing data and technical support to the CAIN project.
Inter-Agency
CALFED Bay-Delta Program
The
CALFED Bay-Delta Program and the NBII
program through the CAIN Node are collaborating to develop standards for
data interoperability among multiple monitoring efforts and research projects.
CAIN will also host a planned technical publication series for CALFED
and the Bay Delta Science Consortium. The CALFED Bay-Delta Program is
a cooperative effort among state and federal agencies and California's
environmental, urban and agricultural communities to address environmental
and water management issues in the region. The project is one of the biggest
large river and riparian area restoration projects in the nation and focuses
on waterways created at the junction of the San Francisco Bay and the
Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers.
National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis
The
National Center for Ecological Analysis
and Synthesis and the University of California, Davis, are seeking
resources for joint efforts in biodiversity and land use analysis exploring
opportunities in areas of mapping and modeling of biodiversity data, particularly
with respect to land use planning. Other contributions to the CAIN project
include technical support through their facilities at the University of
California, Santa Barbara.
CalFlora
The
CalFlora program provides a distribution
of California plants. They are collaborating with the CAIN node on developing
integrated methodologies for data systems and taxonomy.
Federal
USGS
USGS
and CAIN are collaborating on several projects, including the National
Hydrographic Dataset, data interoperability for invasive species data
sets, international activities including the Inter-American
and North
American Biodiversity Information Networks, and exchanges of data
and technical information with Russian colleagues.
The USGS Colorado Plateau Field Station is working with CAIN through the Southwest Exotic Mapping Program to share data collection and sharing strategies.
The USGS Florida Caribbean Science Center is working with CAIN through the Nonindigenous Aquatic Species Program to share data collection and sharing strategies for freshwater invasive species.
Bureau of Land Management
The
Bureau of Land Management
(BLM) and CAIN are collaborating on assessments for rivers and riparian
areas. A tool developed by the BLM and the US Forest Service is designed
for the purpose of allowing landowners and biologists to assess impacts
of management practices on biodiversity and hydrological function.
Smithsonian Institution
The
Smithsonian Environmental Research Center
is providing data and technical support on their multiple databases for
identifying and tracking marine invasive species for the CAIN project.
US Department of Agriculture
The
US Forest Service and CAIN are assessing
opportunities for developing biomass fuel policies with goals of fire
protection, greenhouse gas management, watershed and open space protection.
Landscape level Geographic Information Systems will support strategies
for changing land use patterns to address global warming, fire protection,
and predicting fire effects on California plant communities. These products
will be available in future years of the CAIN project.
State
California Department of Transportation
The
California Department of Transportation
(CalTrans) is collaborating with CAIN to improve methods for modeling
distribution of rare species and unusual habitats using remotely sensed
data. The CAIN project will be using the invasives species model developed
in year 1 to expand to rare species, unusual habitats, and threats. Also,
CalTrans and CAIN are developing data structures for other classes of
biodiversity data.
California Department of Food and Agriculture
The
California Department of Food and Agriculture
(CDFA) provides support to CAIN through invasive species mapping, hosting
multiple GPS and GIS workshops and training exercises for use with weed
information. The CalWeeds database, sponsored by CDFA, the California
Exotic Pest Council, and Noxious Weed Working Committee, is hosted by
UC Davis and provides a list of invasives control and eradications projects
in the state. These data will be expanded and used to help develop the
invasives component of the CAIN project.
California Environmental Resources Evaluation System
The
California Environmental Resources Evaluation
System is assisting the CAIN project through their contributions in
the areas of controlled vocabularies and catalog technologies.
California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection
The
California Department of Forestry and
Fire Protection is providing technical information to the NBII program
and CAIN Node through their databases developed as part of the National
Vegetation Mapping initiative.
International
United Nations
The
United Nations Educational, Scientific,
and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) collaborates with the CAIN project
through their support of the MABFlora
and MABFauna software system
designed to identify the presence of species in protected areas worldwide.
These data are available through the CAIN website.
Global Invasive Species Programme
The
Global Invasive Species Programme
(GISP) plays a significant role in developing information and management
strategies for invasive species from the worldwide perspective. CAIN works
with GISP to incorporate issues at the state level and implement recommendation
strategies.
Non-Profit
The Nature Conservancy
The
Nature Conservancy is contributing to the CAIN project through their
assessments of various monitoring strategies that emphasize invasive species
control methods.
Sonoma Ecology Center
The
Sonoma Ecology Center is collaborating
with CAIN through their Arundo donax (Giant reed) project. The
information gathered from mapping and predicting species distribution
of Arundo donax will be available through the CAIN website.
Point Reyes Bird Observatory
The
Point Reyes Bird Observatory is cooperating
with the CAIN project to provide data on bird populations particularly
in riparian and flood plain areas. These data will be used in conjunction
with information gathered in the CALFED project and be available through
the CAIN website.
Missouri Botanical Garden
The
Missouri Botanical Garden is working
with CAIN in a variety of ways. One is to study how large taxonomic databases,
such as the Garden's TROPICOS, can be readily made available to user groups.
We are also examining ways for working taxonomists to more quickly provide
their data in useful forms to ecologists and land managers. Communication
between ecological data sets (e.g. study plots) and taxonomic ones (e.g.
specimen records) is also being explored. Such merging of community and
floristic data will improve species distribution modeling and potentially
allow inferences about how biodiversity changes over various spatial scales.
