CNT and Openlands Project would like to announce the completion of Natural Connections, a state-of-the-art geospatial database of green infrastructure resources in a 14-county region of Wisconsin, Illinois and Indiana. The project employed Geographic Information Systems GIS along with the best available data from more than 60 local, state and federal agencies, as well as private land trusts and conservation groups. Collectively, this represents more than 175 layers of data representing the region’s green infrastructure.

All of the data has been normalized to uniform projection and scale — a task never been done before — enabling the partners to do the following:

• Create a two-sided poster map, the front of the map being an inspirational view of the green infrastructure in 14 counties in Wisconsin, Illinois and Indiana. While the map shows the abundance of the region’s outstanding natural resources, it also makes clear that only a limited amount has been protected.
• The second side of the map identifies the most promising opportunities for bi-state cooperation, highlighting important resources that lie along the Wisconsin- Illinois border and along the Indiana-Illinois border. It makes specific recommendations for protecting and managing these resources through cross-border coordination.
• Create a website, greenmapping.org, where users throughout the region will have easy access to the information developed during this project. Users can download the data collected unless our data-sharing agreements with individual agencies or organizations preclude this and obtain information on how to use green infrastructure to benefit their communities.
• Create a “State of the Data” Report that identifies each data set collected, as well as data gaps and opportunities for better regional collaboration to address those gaps.
• Create a network of experts throughout 14 counties who can share information and use the data collected to improve decision-making. Our five teams of experts assisted us in identifying data sources and helped shape the project so that it would be as useful as possible to the end user.

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