Introduction to the Project: Wolong Online WebGIS (WOW)
In populated protected areas, where human-wildlife conflicts are often daunting,
it is very challenging for conservation managers to even understand these confilicts let alone find
solutions to them. In the case of Wolong Nature Reserve for Giant Pandas in China, pandas, people, and policies interplay as illustrated below,
making it very complicated to search for best management practices.
pandas need land, primarlily forested, for shelter, and
their staple food source, bamboo, is understorey growth that is dependent on the overstorey forests.
A large number of people inhabit the giant panda reserve, competing with the pandas
for various natural resources, mainly land and forests.
People need land for agriculture, roads, and houses
and cut trees for fuelwood to heat their houses in freezing winters, cook their food, and cook pig fodder.
Increasing human population and households exacerbate this conflict.
Human-introduced panda habitat loss and fragmentation,
together with other factors (e.g., poaching),
jeopardize panda population, which triggers local
and national governments to adopt policy instruments to save the species from extinction.
This WebGIS-based Decision Support System (DSS), Wolong Online WebGIS (WOW),
was developed to assist in understanding
this complex interaction and help policy makers and managers to make informative conservation decisions.
It incorporates Web, GIS, and DSS and applies system thinking, modeling and simulation.
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