Vista is conservation planning support tool operating as an extension to ArcView 9.1 with planned support for 9.2. It also requires the Spatial Analyst extension. It supports planning for a variety of impact assessment and conservation or "green infrastructure" applications by incorporating distribution and conservation knowledge about those features a community wishes to conserve. Vista is especially well-adapted to biodiversity conservation, but allows you to incorporate other features such as scenic views, historic sites, prime farmland, hazardous areas, etc. It can also be used as a more general land use or management planning tool by incorporating competing uses that must be balanced. Vista provides various functions for analysis and exploration, impact assessment, and mitigation planning. Basic functions include: producing indices of conservation value across planning regions that can be explored or used for quick views of where the important areas are; importing scenarios of land use for evaluation against your stated conservation objectives (scenarios can include any number of land use or management policies as well as existing land use, infrastructure, growth models, wildfire models, etc; and tools for creating mitigation plans or interoperating with popular conservation optimization tools such as MARXAN and SPOT. Vista is a licensed software complete with extensive online manuals, technical support, and training.
NatureServe Vista
Submitted by admin on Mon, 06/04/2007 - 3:11pm.
Developers:
Patrick Crist
Website:
www.natureserve.org/prodServices/vista.jsp
Email:
patrick_crist@natureserve.org
Outputs:
NatureServe Vista produces a rich variety of output maps, reports, and tables. A partial list includes:
Reports on conservation elements showing their distribution, conservation value, distribution statistics, source information, and a list of compatible land uses.
Maps and reports of Conservation Value Summary indices
Maps of conflict areas between conservation elements and land use policies
Scenario evaluation reports of how well any particular scenario meets conservation objectives
FGDC compliant metadata
User Input Requirements:
Vista allows you to input a variety of community/institutional values such as the importance weight of each conservation feature. It also comes with science-based default values that can be generated automatically. It also allows considerable documentation of all input decisions throughout the process.
Time Commitment:
The more time intensive aspects of using Vista are (as with any GIS project) building the project database and especially gathering the expert knowledge necessary to provide scientifically defensible results. Setting up most analyses takes only a few minutes. Using Vista is very scalable--one can get up and running fairly quickly and address more complex aspects with time.
Data Input Requirements:
Vista can support robust databases typical of sophisticated GIS projects. The two primary types of data inputs are:
1. Conservation element information (distribution maps and attributes, expert knowledge such as minimum viable areas).
2. Scenarios: maps of land use and policy attributes that you wish to evaluate against conservation goals
Equipment Needs:
Desktop computerArcGIS (ArcView) 9.1 with spatial analyst
Limitations:
The current version 1.0 provides several useful analyses but many improvements and new capabilities are planned. Version 1.5 is due end of summer 2005, and version 2.0 is due start of 2007. New features in version 1.5 include the ability to generate optimized conservation solutions and a Site Evaluator tool that allows you to, for example, pick a parcel, see information about the parcel, select less conflicting land uses, and add the change to your scenario. In this way you can build a mitigation plan on the fly with the specified allowable land use activities and the type of implementation mechanism you would like to apply.
Staff Requirements:
Anyone can be taught to run the analyses. To format data for input, basic GIS skills are required. Discipline experts are required to provide defensible knowledge to the database. These services can come from NatureServe, your state Natural Heritage Program (see http://www.natureserve.org/visitLocal/index.jsp) inhouse experts, or consultants.
Software Cost:
Per seat, multi seat licenses available by negotiation$1500 Non-profit and academic$2500 government and for-profitIncludes license and one year technical support
Preview:
Yes, a 60 demo license is available with a demo data set
Maintenance Costs:
Inquire at website