National park management using self-developed and Web-based geographic information systems

Shei-Pa National Park is one of the six national parks in Taiwan. High mountains management and land-locked salmon conservation are pursued both daily and on a long-term basis at Shei-Pa National Park. GIS was developed using brand-name commercial software and a set of self-developed, Web-based software. This paper discusses what has been done at Shei-Pa National Park using a self-developed and Web-based GIS. Databases have been created in the last seven years consisting of contour maps at 5-m intervals, roads, rivers, forest compartments, geology, digital orthophoto maps, national park planning maps, and maps and drawings for every construction project. National park management has to look into conservation, research, recreation, and environmental education simultaneously. Thus, GIS has been implemented to look all aspects of problems associated with coordinates. Everything has to be located on relevant maps. The self-developed GIS can extract a single sheet of a 1:5000 map from the databases on a color monitor for further examination whenever one set of x, y coordinates is input. Different layers of maps, digital images, and attributes can be reviewed right away. Everything shown on a color monitor can be printed on a color printer. A palm-size GPS device can show the required x, y coordinates in the mountains. GIS and GPS integration is the key component of the whole process. The whole process can also be performed using Internet Web browsers