IMRivers as an Outreach Tool

The Coalition is using interactive mapping as a method to grow our watershed community. Please visit our website at: www.imrivers.com/prwc

What is IMRivers?

IMRivers is an interactive mapping web portal that enables watershed and river conservation groups to customize and maintain Google Maps for the purpose of coordinating, viewing and sharing information. The Pomperaug River Watershed Coalition (PRWC) will use IMRivers as an outreach tool, with the following overall objective:

to make people aware that they live in a watershed, and to help them view their community as a watershed community, with features that are unique to their watershed.

This interactive mapping tool will add a new facet to the watershed management – that of embracing the people in the watershed through greater information sharing.

The use of a geographic information system (GIS) in the field of environmental resources has been an invaluable tool for capturing, storing, analyzing and managing data and associated attributes that are spatially referenced over very large scales. There has been a significant change in GIS technology since its inception, particularly with the introduction of MapQuest, Yahoo Map, Google Maps, and other GIS-related, web-based portals. These commercial geoexploration tools (freely available for public use) have allowed GIS to become a transparent part of everyday life, accessible and usable to any layperson. Interactive Mapping (IM) Rivers has been involved steadily in the emerging practice of public participatory mapping.

View the recent article written in "Voices" on 4/9/2008, "PRWC Develops Mapping Tool".

If you have ideas on new features to map or new pictures to post, or just general comments to share, please contact us at (203) 267-1700 or via email: info@pomperaug.org.