From Fresco to GIS Pro

In this stop-motion .gif GoodLander Molly Burhans evolves friar and geographer Ignazio Danti's fresco map, created in the 1580s in the Vatican's Galleria della Carte Geografiche, into a 3D digital version created in ArcGIS Pro, and then floods it with increased sea level. Cartography practices spanning centuries are merged into one short .gif.

The Catholic Community Spatial Data Infrastructure would benefit many Catholic organizations working in areas beyond environmental protection and community development. For example, it could create the infrastructure needed to digitize and correlate various maps from the Vatican’s museums and archives with maps we make of the modern Church.

For more information visit: goodlandproject.org

Corridors, Highways, and Habitat (Oh My!)

(Right) Wildlife movement around a corridor - in this illustration birds fly along the interior of the corridor, deer munch on plants found on the corridor edge, and a bear meanders across the corridor. (Left) The illustration on the left shows more than one type of corridor. This image illustrates a portion of a network of forest corridors. It also shows a network of a human transportation corridors, or roads. Often times natural corridors are more curvy, while human-built corridors are composed of rigid geometries. These corridors cross each other on the right side of the illustration - below, I touch on how that crossing can work well and how it cannot work well.

“Highways, new plantations, the fencing-off of certain areas, the damming of water sources, and similar developments, crowd out natural habitats and, at times, break them up in such a way that animal populations can no longer migrate or roam freely. As a result, some species face extinction. Alternatives exist which at least lessen the impact of these projects, like the creation of biological corridors, but few countries demonstrate such concern and foresight."

-Pope Francis I, Laudato Si', par. 35

The biological corridor Pope Francis is discussing is simply a linear strip of habitat that differs from the land on either side of it. An animal's habitat is an area with the necessary conditions to support its survival. My habitat is where I live, and it can be described by what and who enters and leaves that space regularly and provides something necessary for me to function in that space. I have a daily range of motion that is included in that habitat, and, on occasion, I go beyond that daily range. However, there are places on this earth I simply cannot, nature willing, go to and thrive—like the bottom of the Mariana Trench or the inside of Mt. St. Helens. I tend to avoid those places. Animals in the wild are much the same - they live in areas defined by the habitat requirements of their species, and each species has a certain set of requirements for an area to be considered suitable habitat. Some species are more sensitive than others and they can rarely exist outside their habitat without pressing mortal danger, like some arboreal bird species. Some species are "multihabitat," and they are fine meandering through the landscape, whether in a field or a forest.

 

Wildlife corridor movement

Land bridge in NJ, USA. wikipedia.org, user: Doug Kerr

Corridors serve three primary functions. They provide a conduit for organisms and other non-living things (such as soil particles), they provide habitat for creatures and other life forms that live within them and along their edges, and they create a barrier or filter for anything in an area that is moving towards the corridor at an oblique or perpendicular angle, like the bear to the right. A corridor of high-quality habitat that is contiguous is ideal for the connection, dispersal, and migration of species populations, and it is vital for those species that are not "multihabitat." The continuity of corridors is often broken up by “Highways, new plantations, the fencing-off of certain areas, the damming of water sources…” to quote the Pope. In the United States, every day, 1,000,000 vertebrates traversing across the landscape are hit by cars (Forman). This incredibly large number is indicative of a serious problem of habitat fragmentation. Vulnerable animal populations attempting to obtain resources missing from their current habitat, to migrate, or to reach other populations of the same species in a fragmented landscape are more likely to meet a fatal end. It is not realistic to propose getting rid of all roads and vehicular transportation, but design solutions, such as wildlife underpasses and bridges, can make a significant difference in the survival of these creatures.

Church lands could be assessed for their spatial relationship to various corridors using mapping analysis. Where there is a lack of continuity, perhaps the land could serve as an auxiliary patch. This is why a major focus of the Good Land Project is to create a map of church properties, which will reveal ways that the land could do much more for the environment - and it may also reveal where land is already playing a critical role in the landscape and may be, at the least, helps increase the connectivity of a vital corridor by providing a habitat patch. Existing Church lands could be serving as crucial pieces of corridors and should be carefully approached with regard to land-use planning if they are. However, without a comprehensive map of the Church’s properties, we cannot know if this is the case.

Molly Burhans
goodlandproject.org

Sources:

[1] Pope Francis I. “Laudato Si’ - Encyclical Letter, On Care for Our Common Home, Pope Franci I.” Vatican: the Holy See. Vatican Website. Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2015. Web. July. 2015.

This whole post is heavily influenced by:

[2] Forman, Richard T. T. Land Mosaics. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Print.

Soil and Plants Need Each Other

streamline and turbulent wind around different windbreaks

It is common knowledge that plants need soil. However, not often enough is it asked; does soil actually need plants? The relationship between plants and soil is more mutually beneficial than most would think. Soil is the uppermost layer of the earth in which plants grow. It is a composite of rock particles, organic materials and microorganisms. Within the soil there is an entire complex ecosystem of microorganisms, insects, and burrowing critters—their activity is as vital to soil composition as are the nonliving (abiotic) components of soil. 


Floods spread water over a floodplain once soil becomes too saturated to hold additional water. Flood water moves across the earth and erodes soil as it washes over a landscape. Wind, which is also a fluid force of nature, can contribute to soil erosion as well. This is especially the case in certain narrowed areas of the landscape where wind funnels through a “corridor” – this increases wind velocity by reducing air pressure, a phenomenon explained by the Venturi effect. Some erosion is simply a natural process, but as with many things in nature, there must be a balance. Too much

Turbulent eddys form around obstacles

erosion leads to arid soils deprived of organic materials and incapable of supporting life. A cover-crop grown over an underutilized agriculture field can significantly preserve the soil's quality in the area and protect it from abrasive forces. Windbreaks which perpendicularly intercept prevailing winds in an open space also help protect soil, by decreasing wind velocity. These windbreaks can be trees, or even shrubby herbaceous plantings. Windbreaks created by trees in a field can be a critical way for increasing soil health by protecting surface soil from powerful windflows across a wide-open space. Adding vegetation can also protect soil from erosion caused by floods by giving the soil something to “grab” onto as floodwaters sweep an area. Some types of trees can also help decrease a local water table by taking-up water; consider that just one large tree can lift up an average of 100 gallons of water out of the ground.

We are seeing the effects of desertification driven by drought and decreased vegetation coverage in many areas of the world. Adding trees to a space is just one way to increase soil health and combat this ecological threat (a few arboreal-lacking biomes are exceptions). Without vegetation, soil “dies” and without soil, the vegetation dies--once their relationship is disrupted it creates a dangerous negative feedback loop. The maintenance of healthy soil is essential to supporting a functional ecosystem and is also extraordinarily important for food security, as well as preventing species extinction of plants and the animals that rely on those plants. These and other considerations should lead to the realization that soil health is vital for our own survival and we should approach landscape design and land-use planning with that in mind.


By Molly Burhans
goodlandproject.org

Sources:
[photo quote] Pope Francis I. “Laudato Si’ - Encyclical Letter, On Care for Our Common Home, Pope Franci I.” Vatican: the Holy See. Vatican Website. Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2015. Web. July. 2015.

This whole post is influenced by the work of Richard T. T. Forman.

A nutrient rich upper-layer of of soil, or organic layer, mingles with mineral rich parent material from the lowest layer of soil. In this image it combines and coalesces overtime to form this fascinating stagnogley soil. Stagnogley soils are loamy or clayey soil with a relatively impervious subsurface horizon. The colors can indicate the aerobic conditions of soil with some iron content--this soil was likely very moist/waterlogged for extended amounts of time.