Use of the Southern Appalachian Assessment and Database
March 31, 1999
After completion in 1996, the Southern Appalachian Assessment (SAA) and its extensive database were hailed as a major accomplishment and model for similar endeavors around the United States and the world. The interagency SAMAB assessment team was recognized with a vice-presidential Hammer Award. The President's Council for Sustainable Development and other interagency committees have held out the assessment and data base as examples of effective interagency collaboration and encouraged their use for improving public and private decision making at all levels. Recently the question has been raised, "That was nice, but how has the SAA actually been used?" This document briefly describes some of its uses in a quick, non-comprehensive review. It concludes with some thoughts on where SAMAB is headed with the SAA into the future.
Some Statistics
Five thousand five-volume hard-copy Southern Appalachian Assessment reports and an additional four thousand summary volumes were distributed since 1996. One thousand five-CD ROM sets of the data base were distributed for free and all but about 50 of 500 reprints of the CD set have been distributed for $20 apiece. Requests for the reports, CDs, or specific data arrive by phone or (e)mail at the SAMAB Coordinating Office at the rate of several per week. Users are offered a CD set and referred to the SAMAB Web site where the report text (in PDF files) and all of the data are available to download for free. Requesters cover a wide spectrum of users ranging from students and university researchers through agency researchers and resource managers to developers or their agents looking for tools or information for finding development sites. Table 1 lists those who have received the CD set in the past ten weeks.
Table 1. SAA CD-ROM distribution, January-March 1999
Appalachian Council of Governments - Greenville, SC
Avery County Mapping Department - NC
Georgia Mountains Regional Development Center - Gainesville
Individual - Athens, GA
Individual - Raleigh, NC
North Georgia Regional Development Center - Dalton
Southern Environmental Law Center - Charlottesville, VA
The Nature Conservancy, NC Chapter - Durham, NC
The Nature Conservancy - Saluda, NC
University of the South - Sewanee, TN
US Fish and Wildlife Service - Brunswick, GA
The SAMAB Web site receives about 1000 hits per week on the home page by 100-150 distinct users per week. Since October 1, 1998 the SAA data pages have been accessed 615 times. The UTK Sunsite currently does not track volumes of data downloaded or users by domain or other categorization.
Example SAA and data base usage
There is a wide variety of private-sector, agency, and research-community use of the SAA and data base:
- ESRI, the leading commercial vendor of GIS software (ArcInfo) is using the SAA data base in development and demonstration of new capabilities for their software.
- ESRI has donated two copies of ArcInfo and 20 copies of ArcView software to SAMAB for distribution to counties or other community-planning/resource-management agencies. ESRI has recognized the value of the SAA data set and is actively promoting its use. SAMAB has worked with the Appalachian Regional Commission to develop selection criteria, identify potential users, and distribute the software/training packages with the SAA data for use in the SAMAB region.
- The non-profit Southern Appalachian Forest Coalition has developed an impressive GIS capability around the SAA data base. They, with the Wilderness Society, have published a pamphlet summarizing the SAA and providing perspectives on alternative views and additional evaluations needed. They have provided valuable input to the Forest Service national forest planning process, and have been working with The Nature Conservancy, EPA, the State of North Carolina, and other organizations including land trusts to identify and prioritize resources for protection or innovative special management approaches.
- TVA has used the SAA data base in production of Boone, Melton Hill, and Tellico Reservoir Land Management Plans.
- The USDA Forest Service relies heavily on the SAA and data base in planning for its seven national forests in the southern Appalachian region. These integrated reassessments use SAA data to evaluate questions ranging from land-cover status and trends to effects of management practices on aquatic communities.
- The EPA and the Interagency Sustainable Development Indicators Group has used the SAA data in developing a prototype GIS Starter Kit (based on EPA/USGS LandView software) for community sustainable development planning. They state that "SAMAB is in the unique and enviable position of having an excellent regional data base to bridge the gap between the national data bases provided by the Federal Government and local data bases that communities have or need help in developing."
- EPA Region 8 has used the SAA in ArcView classes. Karl Hermann cites it often as "an example of how people really can work together."
- SAA data coverages have been used for:
- the North Carolina Gap Analysis Project at NCSU,
- Numerous EA's and EIS's by agencies in the region including:
- ORNL/NPS assessing the effects of a segment of the Foothills Parkway on forest bird species,
- Highway proposed to cross northern Georgia,
- Chip-mill assessments by Federal agencies and private interests,
- Interagency survey of southern Appalachian forests for surviving butternut trees,
- NPS study of rare vascular plants in the southern Appalachian range,
- Neo-tropical bird studies at Mars Hill College, University of Tennessee, North Carolina State University, Partners in Flight,
- Study of return of beaver to southern Appalachians at University of Tennessee,
- Bear habitat modeling at University of Tennessee,
- Predicting release success of red wolves in the southeastern United States at USFWS, BRD, and University of Tennessee,
- Predicting rare communities in the southern Appalachians at BRD and University of Tennessee,
- Assessing effects of sedimentation on biodiversity of streams at University of Georgia,
- Extension of individual-fish trout model across the SAA region at ORNL,
- Evaluating current conditions and potential changes by local watershed associations in the region,
- Old growth modeling at Clemson University,
- ORNL/UT/Institute for Ecosystem Studies model comparison of atmospheric deposition to the Great Smokies and Acadia National Parks,
- Air pollution modeling and assessment by SAMI,
- National Climate Change Assessment,
- Evaluation of indicators for multi-scaled integrated assessments at TVA,
- Mapping the human dimensions of ecosystems at Southern Appalachian Field Laboratory,
- Evaluation of indicators for sustainable community planning in Chattanooga, SAMAB with the Chattanooga Institute,
- High school students on the Internet,
- SAMAB has conducted two workshops that have explored and demonstrated potential applications of the SAA data base:
- Integration of Human Health and Natural Resource Management in the Southern Appalachians, Knoxville, February 3-4, 1997,
- Sustainability Indicators Workshop (with President's Council on Sustainable Development and six southern Appalachian communities), Asheville, July 14-16, 1997.
- Approximately a quarter of the presentations made at the past three annual Fall SAMAB Conferences have relied on the SAA and/or data base,
- A number of proposed studies will use the SAA data base to:
- Provide descriptive, systems, and policy models linking natural capital with man-made capital and jobs for sustainable community planning at Western Carolina University,
- Develop a hypertext-based "intelligent encyclopedia" of oak cover-type ecosystems in Southern Appalachia, accessible to users over the Internet, by Forest Service Southern Research Station and University of Georgia.
The SAA is described or referenced in numerous peer-reviewed journal articles and a number of books. Notable are a chapter on the SAA by Charles Van Sickle entitled "The Southern Appalachian Assessment Case Study" to be published in a guidebook on integrated regional assessment by Springer Verlag, and a book edited by John Peine, "Ecosystem Management for Sustainability: Principles and Practices Illustrated by a Regional Biosphere Reserve Cooperative" (Lewis Publishers) that contains numerous chapters based on the SAA and that is gaining national and international attention.
The future
Though it has received widespread and varied use, the SAA data base is certainly not used as much as it could be. There are issues of data gaps, data quality, out-of-date data, and the need for hardware, software, and training that are not yet widely available in order to fully manipulate the data. SAMAB currently has an effort underway to take advantage of rapidly advancing data and information technology to make the SAA data more available and usable. Rather than simply updating the static CD ROM data sets, spatial data engine technology will be used, along with Internet links with updated agency data bases, to allow users to access whatever data or combinations of data they need using a Web browser over the Internet at the time they need it.
SAMAB will continue to work with public and private analysts, resource managers, and decision makers to "bring the SAA alive." SAMAB views the SAA not as a once and done assessment, but as an ongoing, iterative process of evaluating current conditions as well as the implications of alternative futures. It is a process of facilitating the analysis of data and synthesis of information into knowledge by local and regional decision makers.
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