GIS students at UMM upgrade county tax maps

Students in the University of Maine at Machias' Geographic Information System (GIS) classes are bringing Washington County's municipal tax maps into the 21st Century, and they're learning skills that will greatly expand their employment opportunities upon graduation.
UMM GIS Service Center and Lab Director Tora Johnson has been leading her GIS classes through the process of creating computer‑based models that are created by scanning municipal tax maps and creating digitized versions. In their new format the maps can then be given multiple types of information overlays available from different state and federal sources. The end result will be maps that municipal tax assessors and code enforcement officers can speedily access, manipulate for different types of scenarios and update if need be. For the students with GIS skills in their toolbox of accomplishments lies a career field that is one of the top areas of job growth in the country.
The students' map work doesn't end with tax maps. Johnson explains that GIS is being used by her students for a number of mapping models that will benefit the county. One soon to graduate student, Christopher Federico, has created a development sustainability analysis model that can be used by towns working on comprehensive plans. When it's used in conjunction with already existing conservation model maps, town residents will be able to identify factors that influence long‑term land development decisions such as the degree of slope on a parcel, soil characteristics for septic tanks and distances from municipal services that might add or subtract from town costs. Johnson explains that the way the map will be used will be different for each community. "Some want to encourage agricultural development. Some blueberries." If the town has conservation goals, then those can be factored in as well.
Sophomore Kimberly Bastille has been working with staff at the Moosehorn National Wildlife Refuge through both of her GIS classes. Currently she is creating a map model that tracks the refuge's management habitat for woodcock. She has worked with large amounts of data from the Moosehorn and other sources. Her major in bio-fisheries doesn't hurt, but neither does her overall learning experience with GIS.
"These skills will be extremely beneficial in my career path," she says of her ability to research, problem‑solve and create the models with GIS. She notes that for students just learning about GIS, "It's a lot of information. You have to come in and explore the program and what you can do with it. Get comfortable with it."
Emergency management and climate change are other areas students are studying. Johnson notes that climate change will affect the coast in two ways that emergency management groups, among many entities, want to understand. The first is storm surges of 30 feet above the normal tide. "This is our primary concern. They are already more frequent and stronger." She adds that while category 4 storms along the Downeast coast have been rare, "if the Atlantic is warming then category 4 will be more frequent." What that means, she adds, is hard to know at this point. But with her map model of low‑lying roads and housing, it's easy to see what areas of just Machias and East Machias would be vulnerable to road cut‑offs and flooding with storm surges and the less powerful category 2 storms.
The second area of climate change is sea level rise -- "six to 10 feet over a very long period of time," she says. Wetlands, which are vulnerable to erosion, are the main concern. "Can that be mitigated?" she queries.
The UMM GIS mapping project is supported through the Maine State Planning Office, the Department of Housing and Urban Development and Washington County Council of Governments and is just beginning its second of three years. The ultimate goal is to have every municipal tax map online with the county Registry of Deeds and possibly on the WCCOG website.
As the students progress feedback will be important. "We need to pilot the technology. What's most helpful to the users?" Johnson asks. Map users might be homeowners and tax assessors, but they might also be realtors, developers, surveyors and bankers. She adds that there is also the question of what information should be left off maps that are readily accessible to the public.
Johnson and her classes work in the context of a much broader coalition that utilizes GIS. She notes that some of the many partners she works with that utilize GIS are Acadia National Park, Maine's universities and community colleges, the Downeast Research and Education Network and oceanographers. Nationwide, Johnson works with geospatial workforce curriculum and career development.
In Maine she hears about businesses with "tremendous" need for people with GIS skills. So far, she explains, middle and high school teachers still don't know about the field as much as she'd like to see. "Kids come to college not knowing that it's an option."
She sees two types of students enter her lab: the person in the workforce who is expanding his skills sets; and the student who is fulfilling a requirement with his GIS class and unexpectedly finds he's landed in heaven. Whichever it is, for the next two years those students will be working to provide the county's towns with state‑of‑the‑art mapping tools for everyday use and for planning for the future.