Volunteer Assisted Audubon Society of Northern Virginia to Update Online Maps

The National Audubon Society (NAS) is an American non-profit environmental organization dedicated to conservation of birds and their habitats. Located in the United States and incorporated in 1905, Audubon is one of the oldest of such organizations in the world. The society has nearly 500 local chapters, each of which is an independent 501(c)(3) non-profit organization voluntarily affiliated with the National Audubon Society.  Individual chapters, from the small, volunteer-run chapters to large state-wide centers, work to bring nature and people together with educational programs, hands-on conservation programs, and advocacy.

The Audubon Society of Northern Virginia (ASNV) makes use of GIS and online maps to promote their Audubon at Home program that engages property owners in creating healthy wildlife habitat in urban and suburban property. The maps serve mostly to identify active program areas, land near parkland, riparian areas, and areas without engagement that they can target to stretch the parks and build contiguous habitat. 

The Audubon Society of Northern Virginia has an Esri based web map application, and its underlying data had not been updated for over a year. The volunteer, Bryan O’Reilly, was asked to update the underlying data and train the volunteer staff how to update the data on their own. He also demonstrated additional capabilities of ArcGIS Online to the ASNV and left some written and/or recorded documentation behind for future use of the ASNV team.

With the help of an Esri Employee, The Audubon Society of Northern Virginia (ASNV) had a series of web maps and dashboards that visualized key aspects of their initiatives. Included were ASNV-certified properties, total ASNV-certified acreage, PADUS-protected areas, and Important Bird Areas across Northern Virginia. These maps and dashboards serve as important marketing tools for current and future advocates of their causes. However, they wanted to be self-sufficient, and without experience with ArcGIS Online, they were unable to maintain their products effectively.

The goal of the project was to identify the workflow used by the initial creator to update the web apps as data came from an external source and to turn it into an easy-to-follow guide so that ASNV members could be self-sufficient. After reviewing the process and some trial and error to determine the best way forward, some unnecessary steps were eliminated which in turn greatly simplified the process. A simple-to-follow (yet comprehensive) guideline for updating the master data source from start to finish was complied. The reworking of the update workflow took the process from a half-hour or hour to something that could be completed in ten minutes or less. After creating the guide, a training session was conducted and recorded by the ASNV team for future reference to go along with the guide. It was hoped to go beyond the update procedure and move into more advanced spatial analysis to identify future properties of the ASNV’s “Stretching the Parks” initiative. Unfortunately, due to timeline conflicts, this part was not accomplished.

Project completed