Final Proposal

Introduction: The Schodack Island State Park is a 1,052 acre park that spans across three counties, Columbia, Greene and Rensselaer. The extensive trail system at the park and offer amazing views of the Hudson River, since the park is located right on the coast of it. Amenities there include hunting, birdwatching, camping, hiking and much more (https://parks.ny.gov/parks/schodackisland/maps.aspx). Being such a fairly local state park for those living in the Capital Region, this park for a day trip or even a weekend getaway. However, invasive species are a devastating feature that have invaded the park's boundaries. An invasive species is a living component such as a plant or animal that is non-native to a specific area and causes harmful effects to the environment that it is introduced to.

Objectives: With this project, I hope to map the trail system along with invasive species present on the trails. Using a color scheme to differentiate high and low presence of invasive species on the trails. This will give the public and park managers a data set to look at before either visiting the park or to reference and prioritize parts of the park that may need to be further management, perhaps by an outside source.  

Methods: I plan on adding a basemap of the park, then I will learn to draw the trails on the map. Next, I plan on mapping the invasive species myself at the park and getting the appropriate coordinates. Then, I will transfer these data to the park basemap in GIS. I am also considering georeferencing in case I am not able to locate a firm data set/map.

Data Sources: Both my data sets are essentially the same, they are basemaps that I will georeference within GIS.

Environmental Resource Mapper (2006) [BaseMap]. DEC, 518-402-8044. https://gisservices.dec.ny.gov/gis/erm/: Accessed October 5th, 2022. 

Work Plan:  I will need to periodically check in with Dr. M to have her review my work and make sure I am on schedule. Next, I will have to map the invasive species of the trails at Schodack Island State Park. After marking down the coordinates for each location, I will georeference my base satellite map of New York State and lay it over the entire U.S map. Next, I will use a query table to make sure I am working with only the park in GIS. After this I plan to import my data and then associate high amounts of invasive species along the trails with a red color, and low amounts of invasive species with a lighter color such as blue. As for an exact time table for collecting the trail data, I plan on performing a test run of collecting the data on Siena's campus to get a feel for how the GPS unit and accompanying BaseCamp software works. I plan on performing the trial run the week of 10/24/22. As for collecting the actual trail data at Schodack Island State Park, I am going to collect it the week of 10/31/22. My hope is to accomplish data collection in 1-2 days. As for drafting maps, I am thinking of doing this the same week as collecting the trail data, the week of 10/31/22.  

Deliverables: I plan on delivering one colored map of the trail system at Schodack Island State Park labeled with different colors differentiating between the relative amounts of invasive species. Since it is expensive to mass produce color maps, I plan on creating black and white maps as well and to differentiate between high and low amounts of invasive species, I will use different patterns instead of color.