Conservation GIS Center Mapping Science. Protecting Nature.

Conservation GIS Center

Mapping Science. Protecting Nature.

Latest Articles

Wired for Disruption: The Quiet Fragmentation of America's Forests by Transmission Line Corridors
Investigative Science

Wired for Disruption: The Quiet Fragmentation of America's Forests by Transmission Line Corridors

While highways and roads dominate public conversation about habitat fragmentation, spatial analysis reveals that electrical transmission corridors may be carving up America's interior forests at an even greater cumulative scale. GIS mapping of power infrastructure against wildlife movement zones exposes a linear disturbance network that conservation science has largely left unexamined. The data suggests that energy infrastructure deserves far more rigorous scrutiny than it currently receives in

Investigative Science

Death by a Thousand Subdivisions: Spatial Science Exposes the Cumulative Habitat Toll of Low-Density Sprawl

Suburban sprawl rarely announces itself with the blunt force of a highway interchange or an industrial complex. Yet geographic information systems research increasingly shows that dispersed, low-density development fractures ecosystems with a quiet efficiency that concentrated development seldom matches. Across the American South and Midwest, GIS analysis is assembling the cumulative picture—and the findings are reshaping how conservation scientists think about land-use policy.
Draining in the Dark: How Geospatial Science Is Finally Measuring the Groundwater Crisis Threatening America's Agricultural Heartland
Investigative Science

Draining in the Dark: How Geospatial Science Is Finally Measuring the Groundwater Crisis Threatening America's Agricultural Heartland

Beneath the fields and cities of the American West and Midwest, a slow-moving catastrophe is unfolding largely out of sight. GIS mapping technologies are now exposing the true scale of aquifer depletion with unprecedented spatial precision—and the picture they reveal demands urgent attention from policymakers, farmers, and conservation scientists alike.
Disconnected by Design: Why America's Conservation Data Crisis Is Undermining Ecosystem Science—and How GIS Integration Can Rebuild the Picture
Investigative Science

Disconnected by Design: Why America's Conservation Data Crisis Is Undermining Ecosystem Science—and How GIS Integration Can Rebuild the Picture

Across dozens of federal agencies, state governments, and nonprofit organizations, conservation data sits locked in incompatible systems, preventing scientists from forming a coherent picture of ecosystem health nationwide. The fragmentation is not accidental—it reflects decades of institutional silos, competing mandates, and underfunded data infrastructure. Geographic information systems offer a proven framework for bridging these divides, but the path forward demands both technical ambition an
Investigative Science

Soil Without Borders: What Spatial Science Tells Us About the Hidden Cost of Farm Consolidation

As American farmland consolidates into ever-larger monoculture operations, GIS analysis is uncovering a quiet crisis beneath the surface. Spatial datasets linking farm size patterns to soil biodiversity metrics reveal that the industrial agriculture model is quietly dismantling the biological infrastructure that sustains both climate stability and long-term food production. The evidence, mapped at regional scale, makes a compelling case that landscape diversity is not an aesthetic luxury — it is
Divided Range: How America's Highway System Functions as a Continental-Scale Wildlife Barrier
Conservation Practice

Divided Range: How America's Highway System Functions as a Continental-Scale Wildlife Barrier

Geospatial analysis of road networks, traffic density data, and wildlife genetics is reframing how conservation scientists understand the American highway system — not as a neutral feature of the built environment, but as an active ecological force that silently partitions mammal populations across the continent. The evidence emerging from GIS-guided research reveals that roads function as semi-permeable barriers whose effects accumulate across generations, reducing genetic diversity and populat
Conservation Practice

Routed Around: What GIS Mapping of Federal Infrastructure Decisions Reveals About Tribal Lands and Structural Invisibility

A growing body of geospatial analysis is documenting a counterintuitive pattern in federal infrastructure development: major transportation and energy corridors frequently appear to route around the boundaries of tribal territories rather than through them. Whether this reflects meaningful federal protection, historical dispossession, or a more complex form of institutional invisibility is a question that GIS data alone cannot fully answer—but that it is uniquely positioned to sharpen. Tribal pl
Investigative Science

Flight Paths in Peril: Spatial Science Reveals the Hidden Pollinator Corridors Holding America's Food System Together

GIS researchers are mapping the continent-scale movement networks that monarch butterflies, native bees, and other critical pollinators depend on to survive across increasingly fragmented agricultural landscapes. By layering flowering phenology, nectar availability, and land-use data, scientists are identifying structural bottlenecks that conventional conservation surveys have long overlooked. The findings are reshaping how land managers and restoration practitioners think about the geography of
Investigative Science

Carbon Beneath the Surface: GIS Science Is Unlocking America's Hidden Wetland Climate Assets

Wetlands store more carbon per acre than nearly any other ecosystem on Earth, yet a significant portion of America's most carbon-dense marshes, bogs, and peatlands have never been systematically mapped or quantified. Conservation scientists are now deploying satellite imagery, airborne LiDAR, and advanced GIS analysis to locate and measure these overlooked reserves—findings that carry profound implications for federal climate strategy and land-use regulation.
Conservation Practice

Choke Points: How Spatial Analysis Is Exposing the Breaks in America's Wildlife Movement Networks

Habitat fragmentation has reduced many of North America's most important wildlife movement routes to narrow, perilous threads—and the populations that depend on them are showing the strain. Conservation teams are now using GIS-based spatial analysis to identify precisely where these corridors are failing, enabling targeted interventions such as wildlife crossings, strategic land acquisition, and vegetation restoration that can restore functional connectivity before species reach demographic coll
Conservation Practice

Islands No More: Why GIS Science Is Proving That Connected Landscapes Save Wildlife Where Protected Parks Alone Cannot

Decades of conservation strategy built around the creation of protected reserves is being fundamentally challenged by a growing body of geospatial evidence. GIS analysis of landscape connectivity reveals that isolated nature reserves—however large and well-managed—are failing to sustain viable wildlife populations across a broad range of species. The science increasingly points toward a different model: strategically mapped, connected networks of habitat that allow animals to move, adapt, and su
Investigative Science

Mapping the Great Displacement: How GIS Models Are Forecasting America's Climate-Driven Migration Crisis

As sea levels encroach on coastal communities and prolonged drought empties aquifers across the interior West, geospatial analysts are constructing detailed vulnerability maps that reveal where millions of Americans may be forced to relocate in the coming decades. These models are already reshaping how cities and states plan infrastructure—but they also raise urgent questions about what mass human movement will mean for the ecosystems that lie in the path of migration.
Investigative Science

Redrawing the Map: How Traditional Ecological Knowledge Is Transforming Conservation Science Across Tribal Lands

For generations, Indigenous communities across North America have maintained detailed, place-based knowledge of their landscapes—knowledge that Western science is only beginning to quantify. New GIS-integrated research reveals that when traditional ecological knowledge is formally mapped and analyzed, it consistently produces more accurate biodiversity and climate resilience models than conventional approaches alone. The scientific community is taking notice, and the implications for conservatio
Conservation Practice

Parks for Whom? GIS Analysis Exposes Deep Inequities in Urban Green Space Access Across American Cities

Across the United States, access to parks, urban forests, and green infrastructure is not distributed by geography alone—it follows the contours of race and income with troubling consistency. New GIS-based analyses are making that pattern visible at the neighborhood level, giving city planners, advocates, and residents the spatial evidence they need to demand change. Some cities are already leading the way, and their strategies offer a replicable model for communities still fighting for equitabl
Geospatial Intelligence Is Dismantling Wildlife Trafficking Routes Before Poachers Cross the Border
Investigative Science

Geospatial Intelligence Is Dismantling Wildlife Trafficking Routes Before Poachers Cross the Border

Conservation agencies and law enforcement are deploying geographic information systems to expose the invisible corridors through which illegally traded wildlife moves across US borders and around the globe. By layering trade data, satellite imagery, and predictive modeling onto interactive maps, researchers are transforming raw coordinates into enforcement action. This investigation examines the technology, the teams, and the real-world operations that are reshaping the fight against one of the

Bringing Back the Land: Eight Rewilding Projects That GIS Data Shows Are Actually Working
Conservation Practice

Bringing Back the Land: Eight Rewilding Projects That GIS Data Shows Are Actually Working

Across the United States, a quiet revolution in land stewardship is unfolding one watershed, prairie, and forest stand at a time. Geographic information systems are providing scientists and land managers with the tools to measure, verify, and replicate habitat restoration successes with unprecedented precision. This feature profiles eight standout rewilding initiatives — from Florida's coastal marshes to Montana's grasslands — and examines the spatial data that confirms their ecological impact.