25 Jul That’s a Wrap on Park Atlas!

National Park Service and Park Atlas Icons

Now that I’m down to my last two weeks of work, and we are one week out from our conference in D.C., I think it’s a good time to reflect on some of the things I experienced and accomplished over the course of this summer.

First and most notably… The Park Atlases for the Southeast Region are finished! This was the main goal of my project for this Summer and last week, I completed that goal. Over 70 online maps were created for each park in the region, and they will be used for a plethora of things, from navigation, to gaining information tied to a location, to helping with research, the possibilities of functions are basically endless. Even after my internship is over, the Atlases will continue to be updated to fit the current needs of the park.

To go with the park atlases, about 40 vegetation data layers and about 50 geology data layers were made. These were very time-consuming to create but they will be instrumental in helping visitors and researchers understand the natural resources of the parks. It was really interesting to have a hand in creating the layers using data published on the Integrated Resource Management Applications (IRMA) Portal. I got to see first-hand how data collected by sample can go from some numbers on a spreadsheet, to a visual layer at that place on a map, to being one of many resources on a Park Atlas webmap.

This experience has been transformative for me in growing my knowledge of GIS, ArcGIS Pro, ArcGIS Online, the National Park Service, and working in a government organization. I couldn’t ask for a better time with the Latino Heritage Internship Program, Environment for the Americas, and the Park Service!