RGIS - Pacific Northwest Site

Central Washington University, Center for Spatial Information

About RGIS - Pacific Northwest

The Center for Spatial Information at Central Washington University is the site of the RGIS-Pacific Northwest Regional Office for the National Consortium for Rural Geospatial Innovations in America (RGIS). The National Consortium for Rural Geospatial Innovations (RGIS) assists state, tribal, regional and local governments, and non- and for-profit organizations in implementing advanced geospatial information technologies.

Rural-based agencies and communities in the Pacific Northwest are increasingly faced with environmental and economic problems related to river channels and their associated watersheds. These include water quality, water quantity and availability, salmon habitat conservation and associated conflicts, flood and associated geologic hazards, and the impact on all of these resulting from land-use change. Potential solutions for some of these problems may lie in the emergence of geospatial tools for monitoring and modeling watershed processes. The goal of RGIS-Pacific Northwest is to evaluate these emerging technologies, and to develop methods to use them to solve real problems on the ground.

Current RGIS-PNW Projects

1. Development of a Marine Shoreline Assessment Decision Support System

2. Develop and Test Geospatial Technologies and Methods for Cumulative Impact Assessment for Shoreline Management

3. Use of Geospatial Data and Methods to Delineate Floodways

4. Application of NOAA's Non-Point Source Pollution Tool

5. Stakeholder Assessment

6. Enhancing Rural Security Demonstration Project: Wildfire Mapping Analysis

Fiscal Year 2005 RGIS-PNW Projects

1. Geospatial Approach for Assessing Groundwater Connectivity for Land Planning Issues

2. Web Mapping Capability to Support Public Participatory GIS

3. Development of Geospatial Data for Rural Watershed and Aquatic Lands Management

4. Alternative representations of reach-scale channel dynamics

Other Related Information

• GIS Related Publications & Downloads:
• GIS Transforms Irrigation Management in Kittitas Reclamation District, A Rural GIS Success Story. Land Information Bulletin, September 2000.
• Tracking Cougars with Project CAT: Geospatial Technologies Have Become Valuable Teaching Tools. Land Information Bulletin, May 2001.
• Boom or Bust: Geospatial Technologies Help Communities to Envision Their Future. Land Information Bulletin, November 2003.

Contact Information:

Dr. Anthony Gabriel, Director
Professor: Geography
Central Washington University
400 E. University Way
Ellensburg, WA, 98926-7420
ph: 509.963.1166
gabriela@cwu.edu

David Cordner
Research Assistant
cordnerd@cwu.edu

Website: http://www.cwu.edu/~csi