Information Center for the Environment

The Information Center for the Environment does research and development on environmental information systems, especially for biodiversity, land use, and water quality. To do so, it has formed partnerships with over 30 state, federal, and international agencies and a variety of environmental and land management organizations. The Center hosts a number of public environmental and natural resource databases, most available over the Internet, and provides technical support to decision makers in a number of areas of public policy. Currently funded research topics include, biodiversity in parks and reserves, invasive species, water quality in rivers, sources and management practices for non-point-source water pollution, protection of drinking water, watershed assessment and monitoring, floodplain restoration, land use planning and law, and stakeholder processes for watershed protection, as well as research into the next generation of remote sensing, geographic analysis, and semantic web technologies. The Center also provides Geographic Information System data and spatial technology tool development for a variety of other research projects in ecology and natural resource management at the University of California and among state and federal agencies in California. Center staff include individuals with many years of experience teaching technology and science-based courses, including Land Use Planning, Geographic Information Systems, Remote Sensing, Spatial Analysis, and Watershed Analysis.