RURAL NELSON MINUTES MAY 7TH, 2003 RURAL NELSON OFFICE NEXT MEETING: JUNE 4TH, 2003 Conny Roussos opened the meeting and everyone present introduced themselves. Uri Levi talked about the program for the evening, "The GIS Program - Benefits to the County and Its Citizens." Doug Coleman and Justin Hancock from the Wintergreen Nature Foundation have done exciting work in the GIS field at Wintergreen. The Nelson County E911 Coordinator, Susan Rorrer, has worked with GIS for the last ten years, starting out with the Gypsy Moth Project. The aim of the evening's program is to explain both the GIS system and its benefits for land use planning. The three major components are shapes, data base management, and a set of procedures that allow you to manipulate the shapes and data. The potential usefulness comes from overlays, which allow you to overlay a housing development over wetlands over roadways over bald eagle nesting sites, for example. This produces a smart map which allows for the asking, and answering, of various questions. The aim is to get as much information as possible about the county into a huge database that can be used to answer these questions. Doug Coleman added that Justin has done most of the work on this project. He pointed out that much of the work is based on GPS mapping. Doug had worked with Susan on the Gypsy Moth Project, when they originally had to go out with balloons in the pre-dawn hours to identify areas for spraying. Gypsy moth areas are now located simply by giving the pilot the coordinates. Justin began by describing the 11,000-acre Wintergreen Resort by showing a series of GIS maps. He described the Crawford Notch area by further defining the area of interest on the map. He showed how overlays were hot linked to photographs of rare species actually existing in the area, such as cowbane and black ash. Next he described archeology sites where they have found evidence of early American artifacts, usually along creek beds. He was asked if there were any maps describing the deer population. Doug said that in three years of monitoring it they had come up with a deer population as high as 150 deer per square mile. He was asked if the rare plants located at Wintergreen had coordinates so they could be found. The answer was yes. Doug explained that one of their projects is to do a GIS map of each lot at Wintergreen so that new builders could be informed of rare species on their property and be encouraged to avoid building where the species would be compromised. A question arose about how easy it is to load information after the system is up and running. It is reasonably easy to do if you have the coordinates. Doug talked about a landscape restoration project from the gatehouse on up to the top of the mountain on Fortune's Ridge Drive. They are adding three thousand native plants a year and are mapping each stage for the landscapers at Wintergreen actually doing the work. The idea is matching the plants with the habitat they do best in, judged by the moisture requirements and elevation levels required. Their strategy involves maps that cover nearly every aspect of landscaping right down to mowing. The maps are designed to be an aid to the men on the tractors actually doing the work. Justin is testing for accuracy by overlaying aerial photos and topo maps over the GIS maps. He demonstrated how GIS maps could be used to test theories by adding or removing certain elements from the maps. Uri thanked Justin and Doug for their presentation. Uri mentioned that the work Wintergreen is undertaking is not work the county is likely to do, and vice-versa; but it would be beneficial if both added to their own system the data of the other entity. Eventually, it is hoped, a full-blown database would be available to anyone interested via the internet. Susan Rorrer described what the county does with GIS. The Gypsy Moth Project was her first use of a simple form of GIS. The next mapping system was E911 mapping. The county is divided into a number of grids, with pertinent information about each grid, especially concerning access via roadways. Over time they had added other information to the maps to solve other problems. The most detailed map gives driveways, house locations, hydrology etc. It meets the needs of the emergency services providers, which it was created to assist. Currently they are working on locating wireless emergency calls from cell phones. In the near future, the dispatcher will have the pertinent GIS map pop up at the same time as the incoming call. The Virginia Base Mapping Project uses aerial pictures of the entire state, reconciled to the curvature of the earth so the shape and the image show no discrepancies. These are called Digital Orthophotos. The county's system for cell phone location is divided into phases, each improving on the one before it and offering more information. The first phase just locates the tower from which the cell phone is getting a signal. Gradually functionality for the dispatchers will be greater and greater. Part of the money for this comes from the state, based on cell phone use tax. The county is trying to move forward in digitizing tax maps, graphically linking tax maps to information about the real estate base. Another issue is the possibility of all of this information being available to the public via a web-based GIS product, so that properties can be looked at on line and questions about them can be answered. It would be an economical product because the work is only done once. Virginia is taking the lead in statewide mapping that will be used by many different entities such as the Census Bureau. In most cases the information is available to citizens. To a certain extent the E911 system is available to the public, despite being a proprietary system. Uri pointed out that GIS was initially developed in the public domain. Compatibility with other systems is very important and a huge problem if it doesn't exist. Susan stated that the county uses expert consultants if shopping for the correct product for county uses. It was asked if there would be an expense in downloading information from a web-based GIS product. The answer was no, with the possible exception of a short time to downloading a viewer. The timeline for funding this kind of project depends on county budgeting. Tax maps are notoriously inaccurate. A process called ground truthing is needed to make them more accurate. Uri thanked Susan for a wonderful presentation. Member Announcements: - There will be a lighting workshop in Richmond on Friday, May 9 from 10am-4pm at the Science Museum of Virginia. There will be comprehensive discussion of every aspect of lighting regulation. Interested members are encouraged to attend. For more information or registration, go to http://www.smv.org/prog/IDAvaMTG03.html - Missy Scott will be doing a wild plant medicine workshop on May 21st at Uri's farm. For more information or registration, contact Uri at ulevi@alum.mit.edu. - The Charlottesville-Albemarle Oratorio Society will be performing Verdi's Requium May 25th at 3:30. For more information go to www.oratorio-va.com. - The Wintergreen Performing Arts is sponsoring a concert by the Virginia Consort May 17th at 7 p.m. at the Rockfish Presbyterian Church. Mark Lowano, a jazz pianist, will play May 24th at 7 p.m. at the Evans Center. - On May 17th there will be a bioblitz at Douthat State Park, at which people converge on an area and identify wild plant species. Contact Michael LaChance for more information or to carpool. - NOTE: Rural Nelson will once again have a display table in the Rural Living tent at the Nelson County Summer Festival June 14 & 15. Please let us know if you can help out! Respectfully Submitted, Mary Buford Hitz Secretary Rural Nelson, Inc. P. O. Box 401 (622 Front Street) Lovingston, VA 22949 434.263.5000 Email: info@ruralnelson.org www.ruralnelson.org