National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis

Numerous efforts are underway by public and private groups to assess the status of biodiversity in the state. Most are being conducted at local to subregional scales, and many are focused on species or communities of special concern. Currently lacking is an overview of the protection status of species and communities both statewide and in the western U.S. as a whole. This report describes a geographic information system (GIS) based Gap Analysis of biodiversity in the Southwestern California Ecoregion. The project is part of an ongoing effort by many groups, including the USFWS, the California Department of Fish and Game (CDF&G), Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CDF&FP), The Nature Conservancy (TNC) and others to provide this regional overview by mapping the distributions of plant community types and vertebrate species habitats and relating these distributions to existing patterns of land ownership and land management. The work at UCSB is supported by the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, the Southern California Edison Company (SCE), and the IBM Environmental Research Program and is part of a national program of state and regional gap analyses being coordinated by the USFWS.