Hi, everyone. Thank you for staying to the bitter end. Um, I do appreciate
every single one of you for being here and a special round of a hall once
again for Matthew, Matt, for inviting me and posting this. It's incredible.
Just share the love in the knowledge of the Grand Canyon. Today I want to
talk to you a little bit about the Grand Canyon Trust who we are, what we
do. And then to give you a sneak peek behind the scenes into the JS
program, we work a lot behind the scenes so a lot of people actually don't
see what we do except for the final product. So I'll give you a little
glimpse into my world.
The I'm going to have to fiddle with this computer for a second. One
second. Sorry.
There.
Can we get rid of the note, huh? Sorry. I really don't want the notes,
okay?
Perfect. Okay, Thank you. Uh, the Grand Canyon Trust was established in
nineteen eighty five, mainly around natural resource issues around the
Grand Canyon.
And soon after, the establishment of the trust became very clear that the
threats did not stop at the edge of the canyon itself, but extended much
further into the Colorado Plateau. And an impassioned plea was made that
the trust extend their work beyond the cannon and across the entire
Colorado Plateau. Today, our mission is to safeguard the wonders of the
Grand Canyon and the Colorado Plateau while supporting the rights of
native peoples. We envision a Grand Canyon and a Colorado plateau where
wildness, a diversity of native plants and animals, clean air and flowing
rivers abound. Sovereign Charbel nations thrive a livable climate indoors
, and people passionately worked to protect the region they love for
future generation shins. Our focus, um, in our team's work collaboratively
together across many different areas across the plateau are Native
American team works to support inter tribal networks, build resilient
economies and help protect ancestral homelands are energy. Team has taken
on a very bold challenge for carbon neutrality across the Colorado Plateau.
By two thousand thirty five and works to prevent uranium contamination,
an unconventional field development. We work in a variety of facets across
our public lands to protect and restore them and advocate for a better
balance of livestock grazed and livestock free public lands. We have work
to do springs restoration across the North Rim in southern Utah and work
on market based strategies to restore, mitigate and adapt in the face of
water scarcity. But today I'm not going to talk about Haldeman all the
many aspects of the Grand Canyon Trust. But I'm going to talk to you
specifically about the G. I s program. Um, what have been working to build
since two thousand twelve and what we've been recently working on for
Grand Canyon. So in the GS program, we work on advanced cartography. We
also perform spatial analysis and interactive Web mapping. We take this
further into interactive storytelling, providing data visualizations in
strategic planning for all of the Grand Canyon trust conservation programs
as well about as well as our communications and our development teams. So
let's get into Grand Canyon and what we've been doing recently.
Most of our work for Grand Canyon in the recent years has primarily been
in the education and outreach arena. We've been doing this by working with
E every story. Maps platform. Um, one example of this is our threatened
waters. Grand Canyon's Seeps and Springs interactive story map, which
takes users through a journey of the precious springs that exist
throughout the Grand Canyon region. And the work that we're doing with
volunteers to restore these springs across the North Rim Land ants.
Another example of a story map that we've produced. This is actually an
older map, then the threatened waters, um, Grand Canyon's seeps in Springs.
This is the Keep the Canyon Grand map, which actually is an every award
winning story map that won the two thousand and fifteen story, My second
place in the injury ah, story map competition at their user conference.
This one tells the story of Grand Canyon and its threats, threats with
uranium mining as well as development threats across the canyon, and tells
the story of people fighting to protect the canyon from these threats, a
recent one that we produced in honor of the Grand Canyon Centennial on one
of the things that brought us all here today, is the story map that we
created called the Grand Canyon in one hundred. Image is one of the things
I like to do A lot of times is break the rules for anyone who knows me
well. And so with this story map, we used it in a little bit of different
way than what folks normally use the story journal for. Normally, they use
it like that. Keep the canyon grand or the threatened water story where it
has a lot of text that you walk through. This one actually is a photo tour.
Um, So instead of using the photo tour or the photo Siri's that as we
provided, we decided to do this, um, within the story journal. And I found
out on my way here, um, that isra wants to highlight this in their march.
Blawg. So we'LL see if that happens. Um so keep an eye out for that. You
never know when it comes to media if it's going to get bumped or if
they're going to pick it up or not. Um so I wanted to give kind of a
behind the scenes into my approach. When we create these stories were
always integrating interactive maps into them. But we try to make the
interactive products as versatile as we possibly can. So within the
interactive matches, always a goal to use the text on the side. So, like
in this Cascade type layout, where we're trying to draw people into what
the content of the map is that way, if they don't want to interact with
the map, they quickly already get your message. So the message here was to
highlight how many volunteer hours which we've laid out directly with the
five thousand six hundred. If you want to dive deeper, you can dive Eve
because it's an interactive map. The other thing that we can do is we can
highlight the stories of our individual volunteers, and this is quite
precious. Um, and I was going to read it, but I can't read the tiny print
on this. So if someone
if someone can read it, I thought it would be boring, but it's actually
pretty exciting. There's an A T V and I get to dig in the mud and there's
frogs, and it's actually pretty cool out here. The next generation of
conservationists
seven years old, By the way, one of the other great things with these
interactive story maps is to take them out and use them throughout. Our
website used them as engagement tools so people can better understand if
they want to get out in the field where we've been and how many volunteers
have been there. So this is an example where we've used this map on our
volunteer page. Or if we want to zoom into a specific area, you can see
what kind of restoration work that's taking place there. We have plans to
expand this into the future, so keep an eye out. Um, and of course, if
anyone is familiar with the Grand Canyon Trust or the G. I s programs work
in its first get a hand of people who are familiar with the trust. Already
, Clark
and how many are familiar with our devious program or some of the products
that we've produced in one way or the other great hands two years? Well,
so cartography is a huge part of the work that we do. Obviously, we're
place bass, and I don't have to tell this crowd how important it is to
have maps in order to understand that place. Um, it is not the only tool
that you can use, but it is a very power for one, especially in our modern
technology technological days. So, So cardigan Cartography is definitely a
very strong pull for me personally is something that I love. And I love
telling this story, and I like to tell the same story in different ways.
Um And so here in the Grand Canyon, what I did is they turned the Escalade
development that was proposed for the confluence of the Colorado in the
little Colorado River and displayed this and almost a three D type
representation. So when you look at it, you go. Wow. Someone actually
really wants to build a gondola down to the confluence. And exactly,
that's the exact reaction we want to see. Hands in the hands to the face
of shaking your head. Another type of map that I have created recently is
this active mining claims within the mineral a trawl around Grand Canyon.
Here we have graduated circles to represent the number of claims held by
each of the individual companies. And I'LL come back to this one a little
bit more in one of my challenges of mapping the Grand Canyon of the
example of data.
But one of the things I do strategically within the jazz program is to
take a product and not allow it to be static, but to make it into an
interactive in a level livable breathing document where people can dive
deeper into the issues some more Recently we have launched this exact same
data and an interactive form that you can go on our website and explore
the individual claims around the canyon. We're going to take this one step
further and mapped these into three D Colin columns bending art gs pro to
our will.
Thank you to David Vines, my genius associate who painstakingly worked.
I'm pulling these claims into a three d view.
The other thing that is not quite traditional mapping, but it is creating
graphical representations of the issues that we face within conservation.
Here you see an example of the brassica pipe in uranium, or typical of
what you would find around Canyon Mine on the south rim of the Grand
Canyon.
So not everything we dio is mapping threats, although unfortunately, that
seems to be one of the primary things that I've been working on working on
the past couple of years. We also get to map protection of the of the
Grand Canyon. On Saturday, representative Jehovah announced the Grand
Canyon Centennial Protection Act. Um, I produced a series of maps for our
communications team, and the idea here is to create a Siri's where it can
be simplistic, um, and to create a series where there's some style and
there's options for media. If anyone wants to grab some of these maps to
help us spread the word for the Grand Canyon Centennial Protection Act, So
I'll just walk through quickly. It's not. This isn't rocket science. I
just take off the background, keep it simple, and a lot of times media is
more likely to pick it up. Then they are. If it's actually styled. So, um
, with each of these examples that we can add in the minds, we can add in
the claims represented in a little bit of a different way. It's a bit much
to ask media to grab a product that takes readers three or four minutes to
try to digest. So the goal here is to give a snapshot in with our society
that seems to have a hard time focusing in. Hopefully, we can capture
capture them in a few seconds so we could take the background back off.
Let's make it a little simpler. So I wanted to share a little bit of my
personal story and my challenge when I was faced with mapping Grand Canyon
for the first time. And it's a challenge I still continue to face as a
cartographer. Um, I am from North Carolina, so I was used to a, uh,
topography that kind of made sense. Um, we go from the mountains in the
West to the foothills rolling hills, and the Piedmont gets a little
flatter in the coastal plain. And when it comes to shaded relief, that was
really simple to map. It didn't have to put a lot of thought into it. Well
, when Roger Clark are Grand Canyon program director, want to meet a map?
Grand Canyon? It was a very different story. I found that those typical in
traditional shaded reliefs really oversimplified the desert environment,
often times making some of the places that are hotter. Give this sense of
coolness by being blue. So I worked for quite some time. It took me
several years before I found the Grady in't that I really loved. But I
worked to create a personalized, shaded relief that mimic the vegetation
and rock layers that you see across the Grand Canyon in the Colorado
Plateau. So here you see an example on the right is, um you will see the
aerial imagery and on the left is my shaded relief. The idea is that
they're very close together.
The other thing that I encountered when I stepped into mapping the Grand
Canyon was this challenge of contours. Um, I am an avid hiker and
backpacker, and so I wanted to map contours at a interval that you would
actually go on the ground and used like a topographic map. One of the
number one request I get from staff is also to map contours. So when I
tried the first time to ever go in and do this, I threw in some intervals
. I actually didn't pull the one that I did because I deleted thumb
because I never used them. But at even at the one hundred foot interval
trying to map this, the Grand Canyon became this gray blob that was
completely useless. Um, so then I discovered, Well, I'm gonna have to do
much larger interval, So this isn't going to be useful for really anyone
on the ground. And so if you actually pick up a copy of the map that is
over there, it is not meant for you to go out and try to hike with that
map. Please don't unless you are very familiar with those trails. So
ultimately with a lot of cartographic magic. Um, when If you're curious on
how I do it, I don't have time to go into those details with you here
today. But I'm more than happy to share some of my tips and tricks there.
But with some cartographic magic, we end up with a really nice rendering
of the Grand Canyon in concert lines. Again, don't take it out on the
trail. If you're interested in actually going out on the trail, you should
check out Grand Canyon trust dot org's Forest Last Hikes. We have the
Colorado Plateau Explorer, which talks about some of the hikes around the
Colorado Plateau and the conservation issues that we face within those
landscapes. So the other thing that I faced when I looked at these
contours was an oversimplification of the area on the Coconino Plateau. Um
, so here I finally achieved within the Grand Canyon a more simplified
view with the contour lines that I thought was aesthetically pleasing. But
I had lost a lot of detail on the plateau areas, and so for this specific
product, we covered it up with the textbooks. I didn't have to solve that
problem that is still something that I face, um, consistently, especially
when our staff members want a topographic map and want a topographic map
of the entire Grand Canyon. Yeah, right.
So one of my little things just my little nuggets that I like to do when I
am working with the Grand Canyon, and it's at a skill where I could do
this a lot of times, you see, um, the center line portrayed for the
Colorado River. Well, we know the Colorado River to be far more dynamic
than just the center line. There's areas that are whiter. There's areas
that are narrow, and I like to show those within my cartographic products.
So I take the contours on either side of the canyon and shade that area
in instead of using a line to represent the river. And then I add a couple
of little things like, um lighting to try to give it just a little bit of
a shimmer. I want to work harder to try to make that representative to the
rapid location, so maybe in a couple of years you might see some products
that are more realistic to the ground,
Um, so real quickly, they just want to walk through the data challenge,
which I don't think if any of you have worked with data and G i s, you
know that this is probably one of our number one hurdles. Um, So I just
wanted to use the example of the mining claims a map that I showed you
earlier. So that data is pulled from the Beale them, And it comes from a
database called the L. R. Two thousand, and this is special data. It is
referenced by the Meridian Township range and section. So when I saw that
, I was like, Oh, I can use this Well, I thought I could It was not as
easy as I thought it was going to be. So what I found out was that the BL
EMS data set for the P. L S s does not match the unique identifier for
Mirian taint Township rains and section within the two databases. So what
happens? They don't link. So in order to fix this, I had to either decide
to add the P l s s um township range in section ID into the er l r two
thousand system or to integrate the Meridian township rations section from
the L. R. Two thousand into the pls, I decided to integrate it into the P
. L s s system. This way that any time we want to look at the mining
claims at any time, stamp of time, that is already done. And then all we
have to do is connect the data itself. Because as soon as I downloaded
this data, it was out of date.
So once we connect the two databases here, I'm presented with another
challenge. The challenge where we have multiple claims that stack into one
area. How easy is it to take an area and map by the claim holder the
number of claims that they hold, but it's represented by a little square
that stacks up on top of each other. Um, so we needed to convert that into
something that was easier for people to understand. My solution was
running some frequency statistic. It statistics by the climate of the
claim holder and portraying those as graduated circles, hence getting Tio
with some more cartographic magic, the final product that you see today.
I wanted to give you a little glimpse of what's up. What's next for the
program? Um, we've been working Teo, create a product for the upcoming
spring advocate where we're going to be showing the differences in the
boundary in the history of Grand Canyon National Park. Um, this
compliments very closely and article that Roger Clark, who is in the
audience today and has been speaking with people for the past couple of
days, um, it complements his text directly, and this is on purpose. We
customize all of these prat the cartographic products to directly fit with
the text of the advocate itself just real quickly. I'm not going to go
through each of these because if you've been here for the past couple of
days, you've seen these already, or they're sitting around in the room.
But each of these are some of the historic maps that we pulled together
for this effort and pulling them in and again thanks to David Vines for
digitizing doing through the pain of digitizing these and we will be using
them. So Okay, take a look at the Spring Advocate. If you're not a member
of the trust and you don't receive one of these by mail, you can become a
member of the trust and receive one by mail. Or you can also find them
online when we do launch the online versions. Another sneak peek of
something that we haven't quite released yet. But we've been playing
around with his other forms of three D mapping to map the threats and the
protection opportunities within Grand Canyon, and we'LL spread it out
across the entire Colorado Plateau once we perfected a little bit. So if
you're interested in the Grand Canyon Trust, if you're interested in the
products that we create, see what we're up to from time to time, you can
find a lot of our products on Grand Canyon trust dot org's forward slash
Resource is you can Filter by Grand Canyon If you're only interested in
Grand Canyon, you can filter by mess if you're only interested in maps.
Aura filter by interactive maps. If you're just completely done with print
material together and you just want digital copies,
more importantly,
get active with us. We love our community to grow, so sign up for our news
letters. We have a sign up sheet right over here at our table where we've
been. So we'd love for you to sign up for a stay informed on what we're
doing. We will send emails about volunteer opportunities and action alerts
and also please, um, it's amazing how important social media is in our day
in time. Follow us on Facebook. Follow us on Twitter Instagram, YouTube
video. All of these places um, it helps us. It helps get the word out. Um
, these things work by use individually sharing it, and then it pops up on
your friend's page and it goes on and on. If you're so interested. I also
have a twitter page. I admit that I'm horrible at keeping up with it,
trying to be better.
What anybody have any questions?
Oh, Kevin.
Hi, Stephanie. Thank you for your work. Hi, Kevin. Thanks for coming.
Quick question. Have you have you thought about or made any maps that
attempted, uh, depict the auditory landscape linnean soundscape
specifically in relation to areas where you can experience natural silence
unimpaired by human sounds? I love this question. Um, Ellen, um, a lady
who works with us in the Grand Canyon, her and I have been talking about
creating some sort of soundscape for quite some time. Um, it is something
I would absolutely love to do. And, um uh, basically, what it's going to
take is getting those audio or lack of audio, Um, that natural sound in
the places where we need it. Perhaps the sound of a rapid, um, or, uh, an
animal captured on tape. And then what I would also like to do is compare
that to the areas where it's not so quiet. Um, like the helicopter noise
that we here in Grand Canyon. Um and so I think that could be quite
powerful to see what it could be versus how people actually exist within
the canyon at times with all of this, all the noise. Thank you for that
question.
I'm
Well, if you have a have a location associated with them will map it.
I'm glad to see that you stripped down some of those illustrations and you
mentioned that the media are, like, more likely to pick that up and use it.
And also for the reader, I still get it newspaper in the morning. And
when they print these images, you can't even read the text on him. You
can't read the type and they're blurred out, so less is better. As far as
I'm concerned for that, if you want real details that you'LL get, you know
, go online, get a digital version. A lot of people may have that by
reading than these paper online, but I still have the print copy, so
that's a good improvement for me. So one of just a comment to kind of
follow up on that, um funny, like, funny story where I find it funny at
this point when I first started stripping and simplifying the maps it it
calls waves, people really did not like information being taken off of the
map that I still spend quite a bit of time having to justify everything
that's being stripped away. Um, and so it's difficult. You have to find
that balance of how much information do you put in? And how much
information do you keep out? We probably spend just a much amount of time
Brainstorming what not to put in as we dio what you put into the mouth.
One hundred years later. I'm wondering why do we still have active mining
claims in the canyon, huh? You and me both. Uh um So I encourage you If,
um, if there's something that means something to you, um, the mining
claims to stop this permanently. Please let your representatives know that
you support the Grand Canyon Protection Act, and let's make this which are
all permanent.
Stephanie. Thanks for your work and for the work of your organization,
Grand Canyon Trust in helping to preserve this area that, um, everybody
loves so much. I was occurring to me as I was listening Everybody's
presentation that people do this work because they love it and you don't
always get that in academic organizations. And it's clear that you love
what you're doing and love the place that you're working on. You mentioned
something about a mapping springs in an effort to try to protect
freshwater systems. And it reminded me of the growth of citizen science,
the work that the spring Stewardship counsel is doing. And EPA has a
citizen science website. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about the
role of getting citizens involved in developing data that can then be used
in mapping projects and for conservation. So our volunteer crews are quite
powerful. I think you actually have a couple or had a couple of volunteers
better sitting around. Has anyone volunteered with us on any trips that
air in here or helped lead a trip? Wendy, I'm going to point you out. Um,
the data that's collected, there's no way that we could do all of this on
our own. Um, and the data is very important. And without that data, um, I
can't create what I'm creating, and it doesn't inform the issues that
we're fighting, um, are fighting against or fighting for. And so the
citizen force that we take out is again quite powerful, and it ranges. Um
, sometimes they're doing something where it takes years before it's ever
actually digitized or put into something in a cartographic sense. Um, are
sometimes we're doing something that's a little more instantaneous. Um, an
example of that is our where cows don't graze project that we're actually
doing in southern Utah, Um, where it is directly fed into, um, and every
survey the survey one, two three application. Once they fill out their
survey online, we're directly mapping the work that they're doing, um,
with the springs restoration work. It's something that we've been doing
for quite some time and do with it and have done with a lot of other
partners and especially along the North Rim lands, working with the Spring
Stewardship Institute in northern Arizona and um, feeding information back
into their system
Hi. I apologize that this is not a question that it's, uh, um,
specifically pertinent to your talk. Although I want to thank everyone for
setting this up and all the presenters, It's been wonderful. I did miss
yesterday, So perhaps this was answered yesterday. Um, for forty years,
there has been a geologic colored geologic map of the eastern half of the
Grand Canyon. Easily available up the books, shops and bookstores at the
canyon. But there hasn't been a western, half a colored version of the
Grand Canyon. Geologic maps, like teach geology, So color geologic maps.
They're helpful. Do you know? Did I miss? Is there one available now was
Oh, you're working on?
Oh, okay. Thank you. I'm sorry I missed that. Thank you.
And I'm sure Dr Carl calls from ask. Use my voice. I'm sure Dr Carl calls
from will be happy to follow up with more details about that. But yes.
During his presentation, hey spoke about ongoing mapping efforts and he
did speak specifically about the nineteen eighty dragon map. That colorful
blue map I think that you're referring to that is now unfortunately out of
Prince partially, he explained to two one of the perennial dilemmas of
paper maps. They're inherently unwieldy, their large the store. So that's
part of the reason that I guess they're not so commercially viable. Any
other questions will take one more.
There's someone waving. Oh, Carl Churchill, you want You can catch this
and do me a favor. Why don't you walk over here and, uh, you go?
Hi. Um, I was way off in the corner, so maybe I didn't see. First of all,
I love the less is more approach to cartography. Get that off my chest. Um
, what sort of soft or you planning on using for those three D maps that
you're hoping to put out? Um, I'm gonna actually put David on the spot for
a second. David, do you remember what the company is that created that
plug in? It's a plug in that goes into photo shop, by the way.
Well, there you go. Three D map generator.
You would think I would remember that.
Thank you. Thank you very much.