| Abstract: |
GeoSTAC (Geospatial Tools and Access) is a system for improving the efficiency of environmental assessments using national-level natural resources databases. It was developed by Crop Life America's member companies and two contract organizations that collated the data and developed the analysis tools to aide in spatially-based pesticide exposure risk assessments. GeoSTAC data includes a large repository of agricultural, natural resources, and environmental data, collecting together in a consistent manner many environmentally important datasets such as Census of Agriculture, watershed boundaries, STATGO soils data, the NLCD, the National Resources Inventory, and the NHD. The GeoSTAC tools were developed using ArcObjects in VB.NET and are packages as an ArcGIS extension. They enable quick integration of new data with the supplied datasets, rapid problem formulation and analysis, and produce metadata to describe the resulting maps and data. These tools provide an efficient and reliable interface to process many common environmental queries, drastically reducing the amount of time needed to perform if processed in a native GIS environment. The GeoSTAC database and tools are available for free download from www.geostac.org. |