This year, CGRER will be channeling its research support into 3 solicited grants focusing on the subject of "Iowa's Environmental Future," rather than into several smaller grants examining diverse global change topics. The research will be designed to provide our state government, non-governmental organizations, educational institutions, and researchers with the tools to better interpret the eventual outcomes of a variety of policies that will impact the state's land use. Land use was chosen as the primary focus because land use impacts, and is impacted by, the majority of factors that will determine the future quality of life in Iowa. Agricultural land use, for example, modifies the state's climate because croplands modulate temperature and wind, hold precipitation, etc.; agriculture also affects a region's zoning policies, social structures, economy, and abundance of native species. Successful use of agricultural land in turn depends on climate, zoning, a healthy workforce and supportive economy, native organisms that maintain ecological balances, and myriad other factors.

All Environmental Future grants will concentrate on interactive geographical information systems (GIS). Such systems can display complex land use data as maps that can be pulled up on computer screens and then manipulated as users feed in various parameters. For example, a school group could use the maps to chart the probable spread of native plants from its prairie restoration site along nearby natural vegetation corridors. Likewise, a state legislator could relate proposed tax revisions to the changing abundance of family farms or to hog lot density. To create and calibrate such interactive programs, researchers will need to rely on historic and present-day scenarios. Thus, the Environmental Future grants will fund efforts that unite existing GIS data bases into a single, easily accessible computer format.

GEORGE MALANSON (Department of Geography, University of Iowa) will be focusing his efforts on land cover. He intends to evaluate spatial data bases that are already in existence -- for example the Department of Natural Resources's spatial data systems for Iowa's land cover around 1850, basic geological features, water well distribution, and the like. Malanson intends to analyze such data bases and unite them into a single recognizable format so that all resulting maps can be overlaid and multiple features can be viewed in one document. He also will be designing straightforward techniques for accessing this information and preparing a simple guide for doing so. This effort to make the maps and data "user friendly" and accessible to the general public will be tested on an undergraduate landscape ecology class this coming fall. In future years, outside funds will be sought to test the programs in the state legislature, a public school, and a non-governmental organization, and to place the GIS maps on the CGRER web site.

GENE TAKLE and BILL GUTOWSKI (Atmospheric Sciences, Iowa State University) will look more specifically at the interactions between land use changes and climate. They are already using a model that relates climate to land use, but they now lack the detailed land use maps to move forward with their research. This project will allow Takle and Gutowski to access GIS systems collected by Malanson and to translate them to parameters that interface climate-related data -- such as deep soil moisture and the total surface area of transpiring leaves. These high resolution maps of various surface features (historic vegetation, groundwater, soils, and the like) can then be overlain with specific climatic scenarios, and pilot studies made of detailed correlations between the complex changes in various land characteristics and climate through time.

GERARD RUSHTON (Geography, University of Iowa) is concerned with accessibility to Iowa's environmental spatial data. While Iowa's GIS data sets are numerous and increasing, these data are of little use if they are not readily retrievable. Rushton proposes to ease this problem by creating an environmental data clearinghouse for Iowa; the clearinghouse would actually be a program at a centralized computer site that would attach users via the Internet to dispersed GIS data systems. No central depository would exist; the data would remain with agencies and researchers scattered throughout the state who are constantly manipulating and upgrading them. Rushton's technologies and methodologies will parallel those of the National Spatial Data System (NSDS), which is currently being funded by the U.S. Geological Survey. The NSDS, which is attempting to improve access to GIS systems of all types, is dependent on states to be supplying small-scale, more specialized applications. If Rushton's proposed pilot implementation program proves successful, Iowa will be at the forefront of states feeding integrated environmental spatial data into the NSDS.