Environmental education is an important function of Protected Areas among them nature reserves. It includes development of visible and available materials on tours and routes, on geographical and environmental features of a territory, and on unique species of flora and fauna. Interactive map of vegetation “Along Doppelmair’s trail” is an example of scientific information visualization. It was made for a distant and restricted core area in Barguzinsky Nature Reserve. We applied traditional geographical approaches and methods (field research, geobotanical descriptions) and modern GIS technologies (creation of unit database on landscape foundation, satellite image interpretation, infogram visualization) to create the map. As a result a GIS product is created with ArcMAP and located on the ArcGIS Online platform. This map shows characteristic vegetation types, succession stages of pyrogenic dynamics of forest geosystems formed during a century period. Infograms demonstrate information on sites with wild animal encounters, vegetation distribution, landscape features, and photographical materials. This interactive map is a way for environment protection popularization and solving some educational tasks for Protected Areas. It gives an opportunity to study changes in vegetation from Lake Baikal shoreline to mountain peaks of Bаrguzinskii Range, learn typical flora and fauna species, including endangered ones, find interesting historical facts about the reserve, and, thus, get an idea of uniqueness and fragility of nature and the importance of protection attempts.
GIS-mapping ADCP backscatter data to support environmental studies
