Final Report - Workshop 'GIS for managing vulnerable environments@Galapagos'

The final report of the Workshop 'GIS for managing vulnerable environments@Galapagos' is the first major result of the GeoCommunity Galapagos-initiative. It was carried out in cooperation with local partner institutions at Galapagos, the GeoCenter of the University San Francisco de Quito (USFQ), and the Department of Geoinformatics - Z_GIS of the University of Salzburg.

In cooperation with local authorities and community representatives, a selected group of GIS-experts from academia, GIS-practitioners, and community initiatives aimed at designing a conceptual framework for the proposed integrated GIS-based information-management system – a community-based SDI for Galápagos. 

Preliminary results are presented in this report:

English version

Versión en Español

Students develop applications for Galapagos Islands

At University of Salzburg, in the winter semester 2014/2015 during the course “SDI Service Implementation” and under the supervision of Mariana Belgiu, Barbara Hofer and Manfred Mittelböck, two groups of students worked on the development of mobile applications for the Galápagos Islands, testing tools available by ESRI and other open sources. The resulted applications, developed using Collector for ArcGIS App, enable the users to collect and edit (both on- and offline) data for endangered plant and animal species at Galapagos Islands.

User interface for plants at Galapagos Service in ArcGIS Collector (from Project document “Collecting plants species data in the field” by Pascal Krafft, Sebastian Scheckel, Florian Usländer).

The opening of the application to map endangered animals by using an android device (from Project documentation “Solutions for mobile applications to map endangered species at the Galapagos Islands SDI Services Implementation” by Huber, David; Papapessios, Nikolas; Pogácsás, Réka).

But also students of the distance learning and residential UNIGIS programmes are given the opportunity to learn step by step how to develop web and mobile applications. The Optional UNIGIS Module: ArcGIS for Server aims at giving UNIGIS students practice in publishing GIS services using ArcGIS for Server technologies. Focusing on Galapagos Islands, first the students publish feature access service using ArcGIS Online and get familiar with the data visualization options available in ArcGIS Online Web Map Application. As next step they develop in ArcGIS Online an online editing application for mapping online endangered animal species. Finally, the Collector for ArcGIS app is used for the development of a mobile application that enables users to collect endangered plant species on the Galapagos Islands.

Student Project - Guava Distribution Model, Isabela Island

In a class of the MSc Applied Geoinformatics at Salzburg University a group of students, supervised by Dr. Gudrun Wallentin, developed a model based on the topic of the invasive species guava on Isabela Island. Running for three decades, the model covers the timespan from 1980 to 2010. Having the initial guava spread from 1980 the model refers to a real start state and can be compared to the real spread of guava during the last decades. Guava as such was introduced to the Galápagos for cultivation in 1858 into protected areas and human-use zones and today covers more than 40000 ha of land on Isabela Island, mostly within the agricultural zone and the adjacent protected area (Miller et. al. 2010). In 2004 Kerr et al. describe guava plants as one of the greatest threats to the terrestrial ecosystem of the islands.

The goal of the model is to show how birds could be part of the influence of the guava spread on Galápagos Islands. The concept and therefore the model are based on more generic assumptions which make the results highly discussable in the way of usability and reasonability. Nevertheless the model shows the basic behavior of birds and an increase of dispersal of guava seeds due to birds which was the intension.

GeoComunidad Galapagos@GIS Day Salzburg

This year's GISday, organized by the Interfaculty Department of Geoinformatics - ZGIS, was the perfect opportunity for our initiative to elate a crowd of pupils from different secondary schools of the Provinces of Salzburg and Upper Austria for our work. Dr. Gudrun Wallentin prepared and led an interactive workshop dealing with GIS-based modeling of invasive species at Isabella Island that presented one of the most pressing issues at Galapagos to an interested audience in a motivating and inspiring manner. We are sure to have left our traces in the pupils' minds!

Pushing forward - next steps towards a geoCommunity Galapagos

After gathering at GI-Forum Salzburg and discussing the preliminary findings of the first phase of the initiative, the project team agreed upon following areas of actions that will be tackled in the second half of 2014 in order to meet the project goals:

• establishing stable and continuos communication channels between project members in Galapagos and the participating (inter-)national institutions
• Prototyping of easy-to-use ArcGIS Server/OpenSource Applications as pilot projects of the proposed GSDI Galapagos
• Dissemination of preliminary results amongst all project members and the GIS-community at Galapagos
• Preparation of follow-up capacity building at Galapagos with long-term project partners such as WWF and the Galapagos National Park
• Connecting Schools and Citizen Initiatives at Galapagos with similar partners in Ecuador and Austria

With this framework we hope to establish tight relations between project partners and other (GI-)stakeholders fostering exchange of know-how and building up capacity and providing ready-to-use GI-applications for and with Galapagos.

GI-Forum Workshop 'GIS for Vulnerable Environments'

As a next step in order to establishing the GeoCommunity Galapagos as a persistent and sustainable initiative connecting the scientific community with GI-practitioneers and the inhabitants of the Galapagos Islands, preliminary findings of the workshop held on Galapagos were presented at GI Forum Salzburg 2014 (www.gi-forum.org), and further steps in order to promote the use of GIS at Galapagos in general, and to design and implement ready-to-use GI-solutions (mobile apps, collaborative GSDI) were discussed amongst the workshop participants. A preliminary analysis of the questionnaires that were handed out to our project partners, mainly GIS-practitioners at Galapagos, can be accessed here.

Following posters were presented by the project team at the GI-Forum poster session:

• "Organizational Approach to a Common Data Catalogue for Galapagos" by Victoria Achatz and Manfred Mittlböck (rewarded with the 3rd prize)
• "Simulate to learn - a Galapagos Case Study of Guava Invasion" by Gudrun Wallentin and Fritz Baier
• "How to decide - Spatial Decisions for the Environment: a framework for the Galapagos Islands" by Stefan Kienberger and Barbara Riedler
• „A concept for a collaborative SDI for theGalapagos Islands” by Adrijana Car and Francis Harvey

On behalf of the project steering commite we would like thank all project members for contributing to this successful event!

What does it take to create a GIS for the Galapagos Islands?

Dr. Adrijana Car, Associate Professor in GIS at the German Tecnology Univerisity of Muscat, Oman, will present some major findings of our workshop at San Cristobal in a lecture with a specific focus on challenges and opportunities of (sustainable) tourism which will be one of the most important issues at the Galapagos Island in the near future.