Data
The prioritization method I employed required me to divide the island into 1,478 land use units, and to interpret the vegetation and land use characteristics of each using aerial photographs. The assessment was done using aerial photographs from 1939, 1972, 1992, and 1999.
To my knowledge, this is the finest-scale land use assessment ever completed for the island. It is my hope that others may find this data useful, and I am therefore making it available for download here:
Block Island Vegetation / Land Use Assessment
for 1939, 1972, 1992, and 1999
- Data Images (.gif)
- Metadata file (.txt)
- GIS data for all four years as a zipped ESRI shapefile (.zip)
- GIS data for all four years as an ESRI arc/info exchange flie (.e00)
- Customized Arcview legend file for the display of these data (.avl)
More maps are available in the ESRI Map Book, Volume 19
The data should be cited as follows:
Vadeboncoeur, M. 2003. Using GIS to Prioritize Land for Management in the Conservation of a Rare Species. Brown University, Providence, RI. http://envstudies.brown.edu/thesis/2003/matthew_vadeboncoeur/
Any questions about the data to should be directed to Matthew Vadeboncoeur at envstudies@brown.edu
All geographic data used to create this data set were obtained from RIGIS, with the exception of the 1999 aerial photograph series, which was obtained from the RI DEM, Wetlands Division. Other geographic data used in the project were obtained from the Town of New Shoreham.