Occoquan Bay National Wildlife Refuge, photo by Judy Gallagher

Federal, State and local government authorities charged with conservation of our biodiversity and natural resources have limited means, which forces them to prioritize their interventions. The same applies for NGOs, foundations and private organizations that are active in conservation. Geographical Information Systems (GIS) are an important tool for spatial targeting of conservation efforts. However, using GIS effectively is not a trivial undertaking.

The planned webinar will provide examples for GIS applications in different settings (all on locations in NOVA) and offer participants an opportunity to learn from these examples, ask questions and build relationships with other organizations that could help them better achieve their goals.

Our target audience includes professionals and volunteers working in government or non-governmental roles focusing on conservation who have an interest in how GIS analysis can help in developing conservation priorities and strategies. In-depth knowledge of GIS tools and applications is not required. Students of environmental sciences (or similar fields) with an interest in GIS are welcome.

Agenda

Matt Gerhart, Northern Virginia Conservation Trust - Title: Mapping a Conservation Vision for Northern Virginia

Jerry Touval, Northern Virginia Bird Alliance - Data driven planning for bird conservation in Northern Virginia

David Wiedenfeld, American Bird Conservancy - A WatchList for Identifying Habitats in Need of Conservation

About Our Speakers

Matt Gerhart is the team lead for Northern Virginia Conservation Trust’s land conservation program, guiding the Trust’s strategic conservation plan and developing conservation projects throughout a 15-jurisdiction region serving 3 million people. A geographer and ecologist, Matt joined NVCT five years ago after serving as San Francisco Bay Area Program Manager for the California State Coastal Conservancy, where he led a multi-million-dollar program to protect natural resources, improve public access, enhance climate resiliency, and conserve the Bay Area’s working lands. Matt also previously worked with the Mendocino Land Trust and as a conservation planner and researcher working on urban and rural conservation projects throughout northern California. Matt holds a Master’s Degree in Geography from the University of California at Berkeley and a Bachelor’s Degree from Yale University.

Jerry is a former Vice President of the Northern Virginia Bird Alliance. He continues to volunteer for NVBA and serve on its Conservation Committee. Prior to joining NVBA, Jerry retired in 2022 from a 44-year career in conservation. He started his career in the late 1970s as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Honduras, where he was a member of a national watershed survey team. After returning to the US, he worked as a wildlife biologist for the Bureau of Land Management, and then as an International Affairs Specialist for the US Fish and Wildlife Service, where he led annual workshops for Latin American biologists on migratory bird conservation. Wanting to make a career change away from the government and towards the private sector, Jerry spent the next 27 years with The Nature Conservancy’s Latin America Program in several different positions, including Colombia Country Program Director and Latin America Science Director.

Dr. David A. Wiedenfeld received a Ph.D. from Florida State University, and a M.S. from Louisiana State University. His work has focused on bird population ecology and conservation biology. He has worked with CITES authorities on developing methods for surveying psittacid populations and evaluating the effects of the trade on the populations. He served for five years as Director of Research at the Sutton Avian Research Center, working primarily on prairie-chickens. Returning to the Neotropics, he served for more than three years as Head of the Department of Vertebrate Ecology at the Charles Darwin Research Station, in the Galapagos Islands. His work there was primarily with bird populations, but took also included projects on invasive species, including predators, diseases, and parasites. Since he started at American Bird Conservancy, he has worked as Assistant Director of International Programs and more recently as Senior Conservation Scientist. His work has covered such disparate fields as seabird bycatch in fisheries, bird populations in commercial forests, and evaluation of conservation triage systems. He is involved project development, planning, evaluation, and monitoring.

Virtual Symposium on Spatial Approaches to Priority Setting in Conservation