*February Highlight*
ACORN Mapserver: a bird’s eye view of southern Vermont.
Put any group of woodland owners, outdoors people, or neighbors from the same town together in a room with a map on the wall, and you’ll get instant conversation. People want to point out their land, ask about someone else’s, or show you where they hunt, ski, or saw a moose cross the road. Maps are a universal catalyst for getting people to talk about land- and when people talk about land, we believe they are more likely to be good stewards, help one another out with land questions and issues, and generally be aware of how important land is. This is why we included MapServer in ACORN, which provides the ability for people to see their land, their town, and its surroundings. Mapserver gives you a real bird’s eye view of land in the 23 towns in the West and Deerfield River watersheds of southern Vermont.
MapServer is a computer program developed at the University of Minnesota. It is designed to organize maps and associated information, and serve them out over the internet. You don’t need any complicated software or electronic map data on your computer. MapServer does all the work on the ACORN computer server, and produces maps or pictures for you over the Internet. MapServer is not a true Geographic Information System (GIS), since you can’t do sophisticated analyses, but it can make maps of various scales, as well as overlay different kinds of information. Interestingly, MapServer is free “share ware” software, developed by people who want to make a useful good product accessible to all. This “open source” kind of software is free to all. We are grateful to the MapServer people in Minnesota, as well as the greater MapServer community who have contributed to its development. Visit their site [http://mapserver.gis.umn.edu/ ] to see how hundreds of other people use MapServer all around the world.
On ACORN, we make a number of maps or layers of spatial information available for your viewing. You’ll find black-and-white air photos of the entire West and Deerfield River watershed area, and you can zoom in to pick out rocks in the West River in Townshend, or a barn in Newfane. Zoomed in to the greatest level, one inch on the picture equals about 100 feet on the ground. If you’ve never looked at air photos before, they could be a little confusing, but we have an ACORN air photo tutorial to help you interpret what you’re seeing. You can do more than look at air photos, though. ACORN’s MapServer also displays: estimates of winter deer yards; topographical elevation lines; rivers, lakes, and wetlands; all roads (for example, Nate Flynn Road in Whitingham, or Bailey Hill Road in Readsboro); and the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation estimates of forest health (e.g., see where insect, disease, or physical damage has effected forests). You can also see a layer of conserved lands, either owned by the government or otherwise protected from development through easement or ownership by a conservation organization. We have the Vermont Center for Geographic Information ( VCGI) and the Vermont Mapping Program to thank for providing the original data that is shared online via ACORN’s MapServer.
You can do more in ACORN’s MapServer than look at pictures, though. You can overlay different layers on top of each other to see: deeryards and conservation land ownership, or forest health and roads. You can also measure distances by clicking in two different places on the mapserver map. How far from the bridge over the stream was that good trout hole? How far from the sugar house does that pipeline run? You can also click on the map to get its coordinates, or you could plug in coordinates of a known point, and have MapServer take you there. If you have a satellite global positioning system (GPS) unit that will tell you coordinates, you can enter them into MapServer to give you the bird’s eye view. Or, you can find the coordinates of a place in MapServer (an interesting looking hilltop, potential place for a deer stand or snowmobile trail), and plug them into your GPS unit and have it take you there on the ground.
Thanks to MapServer, the Internet, and the Vermont Center for Geographic Information ( VCGI) and the Vermont Mapping Program, you can do a lot more than just tape a map up to the wall to look at or talk about. ACORN’s MapServer allows people to share maps and information online, and hopefully start those important conversations about land. While there is no substitute for being out on the land or looking at a map with neighbors or other people, you don’t have to be all in the same room- Vermont woodland owners who live in Ohio , Washington DC , Chicago , or Germany can “see” the land and maps through ACORN. Hopefully by making maps and other spatial information accessible to many over the Internet, those important conversations about the future of woodlands can happen more often and easily. Take ACORN’s MapServer for a test drive and let us know what you think. For MapServer help, see: http://forest.fnr.umass.edu/acorn/MapHelp.htm.
