Partnering with the World Resources Institute, Blue Raster has developed an innovative tool to map the health of the southern forests of the United States.  More than 200 million acres of forests, stretching from Texas to Virginia, are under threat from suburban sprawl, coal mining and resource extraction.  Integrating YouTube, Flickr, WMS services, and KML, this Adobe Flex-based ArcGIS Server mapping application supports WRI’s initiatives of 1) increasing public awareness about these threats and providing useful information about the value of intact forest ecosystems, 2) identifying and developing options that direct economic incentive toward maintaining the health of these forests, and 3) tracking the execution of these initiatives and analyzing their progress.  For more information regarding the World Resources Institute Southern Forests for the Future Project please visit http://www.wri.org/project/southern-forests.

Visit seesouthernforests.org to learn more about this innovative Drupal and ArcGIS Server Flex API application.

Blue Raster has created a new application for the Forest Carbon Index (FCI) which compiles and displays trends relating to biological, economic, governance, investment, and market readiness conditions for every forest and country in the world, and helps provide a reference for the best places and countries to make investments in forest conservation.  Designed by Blue Raster for Resources for the Future, and created using ArcGIS Desktop and the Flex API, this new application incorporates four different maps into a single tool that assesses the most  effective places to invest in forest conservation.  Resources for the Future hopes that this powerful tool will help policy makers and investors better identify where to invest their limited resources. For more information regarding the Forest Carbon Index please visit http://www.forestcarbonindex.org.

World Wildlife Fund officially released the new and dramatically improved WildFinder II.  This new version showcases ArcGIS Server 9.3.1, Adobe Flex, and Google Maps Flash API, which when combined, deliver a superior user experience. Blue Raster is proud to work with WWF to bring Web 2.0 technologies to the forefront of wildlife conservation.

 The Wildfinder application was designed by Blue Raster LLC lets users explore what species live where and select and print quick-maps of global diversity patterns.  The application incorporates WWF’s searchable species distribution database and information on these species into a user-friendly tool that will help conservationists target their efforts worldwide, scientists study global patterns of species diversity, teachers build curricula, students learn more about ecosystems and species, and nature enthusiasts plan excursions.  You can access the WildFinder at http://gis.wwfus.org/wildfinder/. Since science is constantly revealing new information about the world around us, new data will constantly be loaded into Wildfinder to provide the most comprehensive database of species diversity on the internet.

Blue Raster is pleased to announce a partnership with the Futures Institute, which is dedicated to assisting developing countries design and implement public health and social programs.  For a project funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Futures Institute required an interactive application that would provide users with information regarding the Costs of anti-retroviral therapy (ART) globally, and would predict changes over the long term based on user-defined variables.  Blue Raster applied models for long-range planning, and created an interactive Adobe Flex application which was developed using Xcelsius. The new application allows users to set goals, strategies, and objectives while providing feedback on different outcomes.  Centered on five questions related to the future commitment to anti-retroviral treatment in the developing world, the application is a powerful tool for those looking to understand the positive consequences of rapid scale-up of treatment. For more information regarding the Future ART Costs application, visit www.futureartcosts.org .

LandScope America is an online resource for the land-protection community and the public. Developed in collaboration by NatureServe, the National Geographic Society, and numerous partner organizations, LandScope America is designed to increase the pace and effectiveness of conservation action and investment throughout the United States. Blue Raster has contributed a unique mapping system to Landscope designed using ArcGIS server 9.3.1, Flex API, and Bing maps to enable decision makers, policy directors, and landowners to set and redefine their own conservation priorities. The aerial and satellite images allow conservationists at all levels to interact and relate with the American landscape. The ultimate goal of Landscope is not to create a new set of conservation priorities but to highlight and reveal important aspects of existing plans and priorities. For more information regarding LandScope please visit http://www.landscope.org/.