By Jaime Martindale For nearly 15 years, the University of Wisconsin-Madison has been collecting and archiving state and local geospatial data. While students and researchers may be the primary audience, we hope that as these collections grow, broad use by public audiences looking for historical geographic footprints of places in Wisconsin also grows. Wisconsin maintains a series of “Foundational Layers” which are critical to the flow of annual business applications, information sharing, and other use cases in government agencies across the state. For agencies to provide essential public services to constituents, having reliable geospatial data is important to support functions like 911 emergency response, maintenance and construction of roadways, sidewalks or trails, building new facilities, and smart community planning. As important is it may be to offer users the latest and greatest versions of foundational layers for current issues and applications, having access to
By Meg Mering and Wenjie Wang What BTAA Library submitted the item? University of Nebraska-Lincoln Interesting tidbits Nebraska National Forests and Grasslands include the Nebraska National Forest, Samuel R. McKelvie National Forest, Buffalo Gap National Grassland, Fort Pierre National Grassland and Oglala National Grassland Within the United States, North Dakota (1.72%) is the only state that has less forest cover than Nebraska (3.20%). The Nebraska National Forest (Bessey Ranger District) began in 1902 as an experiment led by Charles Bessey, an UNL botany professor, to produce trees and plant them in what is now the largest human-made forest in the United States. https://gisgeography.com/nebraska-state-map/ Map of Nebraska. The green highlighted areas indicate the forests in Nebraska. The largest human-planted forest in the Western Hemisphere is the Nebraska National Forest, specifically its Bessey Ranger District