Interactive Mapping
NMWRRI develops ‘sister’ Web sites for New Mexico and Texas
By Sara Ash
New Mexico Water Resources Research Institute (NMWRRI) and Texas A&M University Spatial Sciences Laboratory (SSL) are working on a joint Rio Grande Basin Initiative (RGBI) project to develop sister Web sites which will provide interactive mapping and analytical services for both states.
The SSL currently has several products serving the needs of Texas counties included in the RGBI. Similar mapping and analysis services are being developed for New Mexico RGBI counties under the auspices of NMWRRI.
To expedite the progress of the New Mexico project, the SSL provided NMWRRI with the programs and configuration files developed for Texas. NMWRRI will modify the SSL system for use in New Mexico in two phases. The first phase of development will incorporate environmental and natural resources data, the second socioeconomic and health-related data. Dr. Bobby Creel, NMWRRI associate director, manages the project, and Susanna Glaze, NMWRRI GIS technician, collects data and implements the programs.
“The project is now in the first phase,” Glaze said. “Right now we’re gathering data, the bulk of which is digital imagery.” Glaze will collect data for all the counties in New Mexico which have some area in the Rio Grande drainage.
“This means we will include 27 of New Mexico’s 33 counties into the system,” Creel said. “We had data for the nine main-stream counties, but they were from 1992 and 1996. When we decided to include more counties, we wanted to gather new data for 2005.”
This has delayed the project somewhat, but Glaze has been working diligently to complete data acquisition. She conducts web searches for data, mostly on government Web sites. Once she finds what she needs, she downloads and organizes it.
“I am focusing on the Lower Rio Grande Valley right now, because there is a large amount of data to download,” Glaze said. “Downloading is time-consuming, because the file sizes are large.”
Most of the information can be found online, but on occasion she cannot find what she needs. “The EPA listed three toxic release inventories without coordinates,” Glaze said. “I couldn’t find the coordinates anywhere online. I took the GPS down to the Santa Teresa area, found the sites myself and plotted the points,” she laughed about her fieldwork.
Once all data have been collected, Glaze will use ESRI’s ArcIMS software to provide the interactive mapping services online.
“I will set up a geodatabase and map, then load them into the ArcIMS software,” she said.
“The ArcIMS systems that we develop are quite easy for the public to use,” Creel added. The counties are clickable, and the maps are self-explanatory. The accessibility and simplicity of the systems mean that people with average computer skills can use the maps without any extra training or software.
Once the mapping service is online, researchers, stakeholders and the public will have access to environmental data, such as superfund sites; natural resources data, such as digital orthophoto quads; socioeconomic data, consisting of Census of Agriculture and Census Bureau information; and health-related data, including medical facilities and Department of Health indicator information.
“Right now we are focusing on environmental and natural resources data,” Creel said. “In the second phase of the project, we will start gathering health data and incorporating it into the system.”
The project covers such a “wide scope of information. It will be useful to a lot of people,” Glaze said.
The mapping service will be hosted from one of the WRRI servers at http://water.nmsu.edu.
