Invasive Species Campaign and The Nature Conservancy host successful workshop on Mobile Technologies for Tracking Natural Resource Management Data

On June 9th, at the Rend Lake Visitors Center in Benton, The Illinois Wildlife Action Plan's Invasive Species Campaign and The Nature Conservancy's Southern Illinois Invasive Species Strike Team partnered to conduct a workshop that demonstrated the Strike Team's use of the ESRI Collector App and GPS-enabled tablets and smartphones to collect natural resource management data.

While the Strike Team uses this set up to track invasive species data, it has the potential to be used to collect any geographic-based data, including prescribed fire, easements, rare species monitoring, forest stand improvements, etc.

Thirty-four people attended the workshop from a  variety of state and federal agencies, universities, and organizations.  Both classroom presentations and hands-on field demonstrations were used during the workshop and attendees got the opportunity to collect data, download information, sync the devices and use the online mapping interface to view the data.

TNC Strike Team member Nick Seaton discusses the use of ESRI's
collector app to track invasive species management data.

TNC Strike Team member Caleb Grantham demonstrates how the
collector app works on a smartphone.