the trustees of reservations
On The Land
The Trustees of Reservations

Thursday, April 21, 2011

New tool added to annual training for CR monitors

We provide annual training for every person monitoring CRs, and this year we've added a new tool to help locate the boundaries of a conservation restriction or its "special use" area (where specific, intensive activities like building a new house may be allowed). Staff Sam Phin, Andrew Bentley, and Chris Detwiller are shown below testing two new DeLorme PN-60 GPS units during the first training of the season held in Westport last week.

Thanks to the help of The Trustees' GIS staff, we can display on the GPS a color aerial photograph with the CR boundaries (green line), special use areas (red dashed line), and current location (blue triangle). While this still isn't as accurate as a survey, compass  and tape measure (which are also part of the trainings and our monitoring "toolkit") it gives us another way to navigate complicated properties and know what is -- or is not -- within the bounds of the conservation restriction.

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