We were visited last week by Andrea Hazelton, Botanist for the Navajo Natural Heritage Program, who came up to Colorado to receive training in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) spatial analysis techniques by CNHP Landscape Ecologist Michelle Fink.
The Navajo Natural Heritage Program (NNHP) is working in collaboration with The Nature Conservancy and CNHP to develop a Conservation Action Plan for the San Juan Basin, an area that covers the four-corners where Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah meet. The Navajo Nation is the largest landowner of the San Juan Basin area.
Andrea spent an intensive four days with Michelle learning various techniques to model ecological integrity at the landscape scale, while gaining a healthy appreciation of all the things that can go wrong with GIS software (Michelle’s Law: the tighter the timeline, the more things will go wrong).
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| The Navajo Nation (light pink) in relation to the San Juan Basin (blue outline). |
