About Us
Our goal is to transfer everything we've learned about designing wildlife corridors to the general public to facilitate better conservation, science, and dialogue.
The impetus for this project came from the interest shown to Dan Majka's response to a March 2006 CONSGIS listserv question about available software for designing wildlife corridors. We realized that although several groups have used GIS to design wildlife linkages, the necessary conceptual steps and specific GIS methods have not been documented adequately.
Paul Beier
Paul Beier has been researching and promoting corridors for nearly 20 years. Paul has used these methods in collaborative, science-based efforts in southern California and Arizona, and has supervised a Master's thesis evaluating the sensitivity of these GIS methods to uncertainty in the biological inputs.
Dan Majka
Dan Majka wrote the CorridorDesigner Toolbox for creating habitat and corridor analyses, designed the webpage, and is responsible for web content, tools documentation, and tutorials. Previously, he produced 8 linkage designs throughout Arizona in 2005-2006 for the Arizona Missing Linkages project, and modeled the habitat distribution of 41 bird species in Costa Rica for his MS Research at Purdue University. He is currently a GIS Manager for the Nature Conservancy's Science Program in Arizona.
Jeff Jenness
Jeff Jenness wrote the CorridorDesigner corridor evaluation tools extension for ArcMap. Jeff is a GIS programmer and wildlife biologist with over a decade of experience with universities, businesses and governmental agencies around the world. His ArcView tools have been downloaded over 150,000 times from his website and the ESRI ArcScripts site. He also collaborates on developing teaching tools to convey GIS concepts to high school and college students.
Brian Brost
Brian Brost developed the land facets approach to corridor design for his MS research at Northern Arizona University. Previously, he spent several years studying the trends of carnivore populations in the Sierra Nevada range of California. His interests lie at the intersection of ecology and statistics, an he gets particularly excited around spatial data.
Emily Garding
Emily Garding was the lead GIS Analyst for the Arizona Missing Linkages project in 2006-2007. Previously, she spent several years as a biologist at Grand Canyon National Park combining field research, GPS, and GIS methods to investigate carnivore movement patterns, habitat use, prey selection, and population dynamics. Her interests include preserving habitat connectivity and getting wildlife safely across roads.
Contact us
For problems with the CorridorDesigner ArcToolbox or questions about the website, contact Dan. For problems with the corridor evaluation extension or land facets extension for ArcMap,contact Jeff. For problems with the land facets R function, contact Brian
Updates
To be added to our mailing list, please contact Dan. Or you can subscribe to our blog's RSS feed, or follow us on Twitter.
About the webpage
CorridorDesign.org was designed using Web-Standards based XHTML and CSS. We have made every effort to follow Web Accessibility best practices. If you have problems with the website, please contact Dan Majka.
Acknowledgements
The CorridorDesigner tools and initial website development were initially funded by a generous grant from the Environmental Research, Development and Education for the New Economy (ERDENE) initiative from Northern Arizona University. The website and tools are now maintained by Dan and Jeff in their ample spare time.
Our approach was initially developed during 2001-2006 for South Coast Missing Linkages, a set of 16 linkage designs in southern California (draft & final designs at scwildlands.org). Kristeen Penrod, Clint Cabañero, Wayne Spencer, and Claudia Luke made enormous contributions to SCML and the procedures in CorridorDesigner. The designs produced by South Coast Wildlands were supported by The Wildlands Conservancy, Resources Legacy Fund Foundation, The California Resources Agency, US Forest Service, The Nature Conservancy, California State Parks, US National Park Service, Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, Conservation Biology Institute, San Diego State University Field Stations, Southern California Wetlands Recovery Project, Mountain Lion Foundation, California State Parks Foundation, Environment Now, Anza Borrego Foundation, Summerlee Foundation, Zoological Society of San Diego, and South Coast Wildlands.
The Arizona Missing Linkages Project was supported by Arizona Game and Fish Department, Arizona Department of Transportation, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, U.S. Forest Service, Federal Highway Administration, Bureau of Land Management, Sky Island Alliance, Wildlands Project, and Northern Arizona University.
Over the past 5 years, we discussed these ideas with Andrea Atkinson, Todd Bayless, Clint Cabañero, Liz Chattin, Matt Clark, Kevin Crooks, Kathy Daly, Brett Dickson, Robert Fisher, Emily Garding, Madelyn Glickfeld, Nick Haddad, Steve Loe, Travis Longcore, Claudia Luke, Lisa Lyren, Brad McRae, Scott Morrison, Shawn Newell, Reed Noss, Kristeen Penrod, E.J. Remson, Seth Riley, Esther Rubin, Ray Sauvajot, Dan Silver, Jerre Stallcup, and Mike White. We especially thank the many government agents, conservationists, and funders who conserve linkages and deserve the best possible science.