GIS Service Centers for Coastal Land Trusts  

Sheepscot Valley Conservation Association (Upper Mid-Coast)

Wells National Estuarine Research Reserve (South Coast)

University of Maine Machias (Downeast)

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (Casco Bay/Lower Mid Coast)

In spring 2005, the Maine Coast Protection Initiative (MCPI), through the coordination of the Maine Coast Heritage Trust, launched a grant program to address the Geographic Information Systems (GIS) mapping needs of Maine’s coastal land trust community. The grants were awarded to create or enhance regional centers that will provide GIS mapping services to area land trusts and help to increase GIS usage. Three organizations were selected for these grants: Sheepscot Valley Conservation Association, Wells National Estuarine Research Reserve, and University of Maine Machias. These three Service Centers offer to the Maine coastal conservation community several standard services:

1. Provide GIS services, including, but not limited to, map production, spatial analysis, and data collection and development to Trusts in their service area on an on-call, fee basis.
2. Provide training to Trusts in their area on a CDROM-based data bundle developed by MCPI that includes ESRI’s ArcExplorer software and a number of commonly used spatial data sets. This data bundle is intended to provide Trusts with little or no GIS experience the tools and data necessary to perform basic mapping tasks. Service Centers will host at least one ‘in-person’ training session to introduce Trusts to the types of data included on the CD, to demonstrate how to view and add data to ArcExplorer project files, and to provide instruction on basic map production using ArcExplorer. Service Centers will customize the data bundle at no charge to Trusts in their service area who want it. Customization of the data bundle would include the addition of local spatial data sets, and the creation of one ArcExplorer project file to display local data.
3. Work with those it serves to create quality data, utilizing shared standards, developed in conjunction with the Maine Land Trust Network GIS Council to ensure uniformity and ease of data exchange between Service Centers and other conservation organizations.

In addition to this, each Service Center is tailoring their own unique set of services and trainings based on the needs of their region. For details on these and related fee lists, please contact your area Service Center directly.