--- Begin Forwarded Message --- >Date: Fri, 25 Sep 98 17:49:12 -0800 >From: Larry Cruse <[log in to unmask]> >Subject: Data from Indian Affairs GIS helps 200 tribes manage their l ____ > GOVERNMENT NEWS > > GCN July 27, 1998 > > > > Data from Indian Affairs GIS helps 200 tribes manage their land > > By John L. Guerra > GCN Staff > > American Indian tribes now have access to a geographic informa on system for land planning, thanks to a free service from the Bureau of Indian fairs. > A tribe The bureau?s Geographic Data Service Center in Denver maintain a database of aerial photographs, maps and other data sets that tribes nationwid can access with minimum technology, bureau officials said. > can get > information More than 200 tribes use the database when managing various na ral resources such as timber, minerals and animal and plant species. > only > about The database holds information on prairie dog counts, public l d surveys, landscape grids, wildfire patterns, forestry inventories and water ta es?in short, just about every piece of data on a reservation?s natural possessio . > the > land it ?We are a technology transfer office for the BIA and tribes di ctly,? said Gen Seagle, acting chief of the data center. ?If we have the data setshere, and they have a remote access and a password, they can use us.? > owns. > Because many reservations run businesses such as mines, timber perations and casinos, they tend to hold information on those operations close t the vest. The password prevents other tribes and large private firms, for instan , from finding out a tribe?s business, Seagle said. > > Each tribe?s access privileges limit its ability to get information. Each trib can access data only about the land it owns, and, in some cases, land within a c ple of miles of the reservation. Beyond that, the tribes have to go to other sou es that may charge them for the service, Seagle said. > > ?The most important thing we do is make it available to the BIA agencies and t bes for no cost,? he said. And the center even pays for the call for tribes in r ote areas that access the database through regular phone lines. > > The Denver service center has two Sun Microsystems 690 Series Sparcservers, saidBill Verwys, manager of computer services at the center. One is used internally for development, the other for storing the land data. > > The servers each have four 167-MHz CPUs and 500M of RAM, Verwys said. One serverhas 20G disk space; the other has 40G. They both run SunSoft Solaris 2.1. The servers host two GIS applications: ArcInfo 7.21 and ArcView 3.0B from Environmental stems Research Institute Inc. of Redlands, Calif. > > Tricky connecting > > Access from remote sites can be dicey. Areas in the Southwest, for instance, areserviced by ?ma and pa? telephone connections, Seagle said. The center recommends tribes use Pentium PCs and high-speed modems, but that is not often the case. > > ?Often they are running on a 386 world, and it can be real slow and frustratin ? he said. That means that some tribes can get numerical data sets but may have fficulty viewing graphical data. > > The only requirement on the user?s end is one of two communications setups: an software with EM4105 emulation or the ReachOut PC-to-PC communications package f m Stac Communications Inc. of San Diego. The EM4105 standard is being phased out Verwys said, because ArcInfo will no longer support it. > > Reservation PCs then connect to a PC in the data center office, which links to he database. > > The data center will soon make the GIS data accessible via the Internet, Verwy said. Many reservations have T1 lines and Internet service. The center just inst led a firewall, PIX from Cisco Systems Inc. of San Jose, Calif., to protect tribalproprietary information, Verwys said. > > The data center also provides training, consultation services and equipment to elp tribes access the data, BIA officials said. > > ª??·"?R?A???ÇI·Y??0¢ ÑÑ-±Hc ?,µ+EÖÖY·å??A?Ä?PßEòBñ-C`öI/mOÆO,AAw` > Af*dY?o?1-)4EX,uQ&o@?AB¼yp i(s?êO? O???"?v > ?o(?¥3??+Y?E?wS6Z?@¥I?H](?éå$???ªá,JSIfª?URßT?ÆEªYEçD)D&R?kkO·2Rfqjê"? z?C#k?£ñOéö`&í?6ùR?B?äd!GA6.?AB?Wæ|jÄX1`?g4,4?A<1Eç½K#ôCJoI?Sgê#yU?Apè http://www.gcn.com/gcn/1998/july27/20.htm --- End Forwarded Message ---