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.. Should you happen to be in Helena, Montana next Friday, January 16, 2009; and should you care to hear about how resource assessment in Montana is being carried out; and should you care how decisions about fish and their waters are made: THEN you should attend the Montana State Digital Library Seminar. Here's the press release.

Montana's "Crucial Areas and Connectivity Assessment"
Topic of January Montana State Digital Library Seminar

(HELENA) --- Janet Hess-Herbert, Information Management Bureau Chief with Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks (FWP), is scheduled to present "Montana FWP Crucial Areas and Connectivity Assessment" at a Montana State Digital Library seminar set for Friday, January 16, 2008. Her presentation will begin at 3 p.m. in the Grizzly Conference Room of the State Library at 1515 East 6th Avenue in Helena.

Montana FWP is undertaking a significant project to more proactively address the changing landscape of Montana. The "Crucial Areas and Connectivity Assessment" will use a variety of spatial analysis to best identify and assess Montana's landscape for recreational value and habitat quality, condition, and animal use.

There will be five areas of the assessment, including three "place-based" components where data will be displayed, analyzed, and summarized using GIS. These components also include an assessment of fish, wildlife, and recreation values, as well as fish and wildlife corridor and connectivity areas and major risks to these resources. The recommendations from the Assessment will be used to develop broader scale, higher-level policies with external partners. Completion of the project is expected in July 2009.

Hess-Herbert's presentation will last for one hour and will be followed by a 30 minute dialogue, question, and answer session with attendees.

Natural resource professionals, interested agencies, businesses, and organizations, and the public are invited to attend. This seminar is free; no registration is necessary. For more information, call (406) 444-5357. Interested individuals are also encouraged to visit the Montana State Library Web site at http://msl.mt.gov.

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.. Last September, [[ news release. ]] our state library launched the Montana Geographic Information System portal. The initial data catalog includes 400 databases and over 200 sample maps from the collections of the Montana Base Map Service Center, the Montana State Library, Montana Fish Wildlife and Parks, and Flathead County. During the next year, library staff will vigorously pursue other GIS data providers and help them add their data and maps to the Portal.
.. The initial release of the GIS Portal is focused on the needs of GIS professionals. For the general public, however, the Portal contains an on-line map viewer that anyone may use to view basic maps and air photos of any location in Montana.
.. Currently there are 13 framework layers: Cadastral, Critical Infrastructure, Elevation, Geodetic Control, Geology, Government Units, Hydrography, Hydrologic Units, Land Use/Land Cover, Orthoimagery, Soils, Transportation, Wetlands. Users can create accounts and publish data conforming to the metadata standards of the site.
.. Here's the link to get you started in exploring a giant data base of geographic information: LINK TO GIS PORTAL.
.. Montana is also included in NED, (Northwest Environmental Data-network.) This monstrous metadata site includes regional data on a wide variety of topics and the data base is growing rapidly. Here's the LINK TO NED PORTAL, [[ your BPA in action.]]

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