SWIN-WAFER: One-stop Source for Fire and Water Data in the Southwest

The arid Southwest is home to an incredibly diverse natural environment, a mosaic of land ownership, and a rapidly growing population. Balancing the conflicting demands on natural resources requires access to the best available scientific information. A key objective of the National Biological Information Infrastructure (NBII) Southwest Information Node (SWIN) is to make this information available to natural resource managers, scientists, policymakers, citizens, and other stakeholders in the southwestern states of Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah. The NBII is a broad, collaborative program coordinated by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) that provides increased access to data and information on the nation’s biological resources. SWIN is one of several NBII regional information nodes that compiles biological resource datasets for a specific area of the U.S. and develops Web-based tools to support them.

A crucial first step in developing such a resource tool is determining the specific information needed to make science-based decisions. In 2002, the SWIN development team began working with the Southwest Strategy (SWS) to identify and prioritize key issues and associated information needs in the region. The SWS is a consortium of federal, state, tribal, and local agencies that work to facilitate collaborative, scientifically based approaches to enhance community vitality and resolve resource conservation and management issues in the Southwest. With these primary needs in mind, the USGS Fort Collins Science Center (FORT) and partner institutions have developed the following applications:

• The Scientific Information Database (SID) enables users to search by project title, abstracts, keywords, agency, or contact name for information on scientific research and collection activities on public lands in the Southwest. This was the first application to address the Southwest Strategy’s need for a centralized database of natural resources information collected in the region.
• The Southwest Threatened and Endangered Species application allows users to view critical habitat for federally listed species in conjunction with current and past fire perimeter data, which is collected and served by the Geospatial Multi-Agency Coordination (GeoMAC) Group. A newly added map layer allows users to view critical habitat and wildfire data in proximity to National Wildlife Refuges and National Park Service units.
• The newest of the three, the Water and Fire Environmental Resources (WAFER) application, was served in March 2005. SWIN-WAFER was developed by the USGS Fort Collins Science Center in partnership with the New Mexico State University Laboratory for Environmental Spatial Analysis. The application serves metadata about water and wildfire datasets from federal, state, local, and tribal agencies. Current datasets include data related to fire events, fire history, prescribed burn plans, fuel treatments, fire risk, current and historical drought conditions, climate history, weather conditions, daily streamflows, storm events and lightning strikes, surface and groundwater locations and depths, and aquifer and watershed boundaries and conditions.

Screen capture of region surrounding 2000 Cerro Grande Fire. Yellow square outlines area for which WAFER fire data are available. Active layers are the National Land Cover Dataset and cities and urban areas.

FORT and SWS continue to collaborate in identifying information management needs pertaining to natural resource issues in the Southwest and planning for additional Web-based applications. SWIN compiles information on available threatened and endangered species, fire, water, and other natural resources data from a variety of sources into one reference site. In so doing, SWIN applications enable decision makers to quickly identify datasets that meet their specific needs and inform their planning and management decisions.

Contacts

Leanne Hanson
USGS Fort Collins Science Center
2150 Centre Avenue, Bldg. C
Fort Collins, CO 80526-8118
Tel. 970-226-9262
Fax 970-226-9230
hansonl@usgs.gov

Julie Prior-Magee
USGS National Biological Information Infrastructure
P.O. Box 30003, MSC 4901
Las Cruces, NM 88003
Tel. 505-646-1084
Fax 505-646-1281
jpmagee@usgs.gov

Other Resources

NBII

SWIN