This week Martin O’Malley, the governor of the state of Maryland, launched Green Print, an interactive map for conserving ecologically valuable lands. This online system was developed through a collaborative effort of the Maryland Departments of Agriculture, Natural Resources and Planning, Towson University’s Center for Geographic Information Sciences and ESRI, with the aim of engaging citizens and other community leaders to limit sprawl in the state.
Urban sprawl has been an ongoing problem in Maryland, and the state’s previous governor Paris Glendenning was very active in these efforts. O’Malley has taken over this initiative to better preserve the state’s unprotected land, and has built impressive tools to increase government transparency. O’Malley spoke in depth about harnessing the power of GIS to combat sprawl at the 2008 ESRI User Conference, indicating that 21% of the state’s land is developed and 21% is protected. In the last 30 years the population of the state grew 30% with land consumption growth of 100%.
The Green Map site includes details for every parcel of land in the state, and is designed to help locate existing and proposed protected areas. This level of detail assists citizens, conservation organization, developers and governments in dialog regarding land use. The process of creating the site brought together state, county and local governments to share vital planning information to better plan conservation efforts.
I spent some time navigating around the interface, and was impressed by the look and feel of the site, the level of detail, the user-friendly interface, and the speed in which it performs. I’d categorize this effort as a “prosumer” product, because there are a number of GIS functions with layers of different attributes that go into much more depth than the average citizen is accustomed to. There’s a good User’s Guide to address that issue, and a nice video tutorial that walks you through the site’s functionality.
I encourage you to take a look at this compelling interactive map.
