Seeing is believing

In the entryway to the Conservation Biology Institute offices is a map we printed in 2004 of the Late Seral Forest of the Pacific Northwest, that was displayed in the American Museum of Natural History. It surprises me that many visitors are unaware of how little intact forest remains in the NW before seeing it from the 8 foot tall poster.

Growing up I had the opportunity to fly all over the west with my father who used his private plane to visit his businesses. From a young age I became accustomed to the patchwork of clear-cuts that mark the forests throughout the region. Many citizens, outside commercial flights in and out of SeaTac and PDX, never get a chance to see these impacts on the landscape. Tourists and local citizens alike enjoy the swaths of old growth along mountain passes and scenic byways like the Van Duzer Scenic Corridor on the way to the Oregon Coast. These glimpses are deceiving in that they are often small road buffers of intact lands hiding the removed or second growth timber on either side. The old saying "out of site out of mind" rings too true, if the clear cut is not visible from the road. Many motorists come to believe that only the road cuts through the forest.

Therein lies the power of GIS tools for the masses. With tools like Data Basin, these stories can be easily shared. Only a few visitors see our wall map of remaining Late Seral Forests. Data Basin allows us to share our wide range of research and stories with users throughout the world, from glaciers melting to human development in critical habitat.

No Longer is the state of our natural world something that only a few that leave the well traveled paths get to see. Intactness and impacts, can be explored online as well as mapped and shared. Facts like only 4% of the original extent of intact redwood forests remain today, are no longer just a figure but something anyone can witness. It is this type of tool that will help shape our decisions in the generations to come.

You can view, create and share maps from the poster in the Old Growth Forests in the Pacific Northwest Gallery in Data Basin.