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.

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.