Santa Fe County Food Resiliency Mapping Project

This post is meant to offer only a brief sketch of an idea which I think needs to be shared and discussed. (You may contribute to the discussion in the "comments" below.)

First, Santa Fe County--the governing office--may or may not be involved in the project, should the mapping process begin down the road. Using the County boundaries as the boundaries of our possible future mapping process provides us with a convenience, as those boundaries are clear and already mapped (populated with map features and details), thus we will simply be populating an existing map with details and particulars which (it seems to me) are not on any existing maps.

The function and purpose of a Santa Fe County Food Resiliency Map would be to allow residents and governing agencies of Santa Fe city/county to evaluate, plan for, characterize and quantify (etc.) features of our local-regional foodshed.

Farms of any size are obvious features which would be included on the foodshed map, as would water sources in available detail, as well as soil conditions. A website would be made available which would allow for a map database for various particular uses, whether private or governmental. This would consist of various choices concerning map features to be viewed. It would be possible to look at a county map showing only landscape contours, water sources, and soil types. It would also be possible for chicken coops and fruit orchards to populate the map. The limits are few.

Another map could show all of that but also farms, community gardens, orchards.... Yet another map would show all of the little backyard gardens in (e.g.) Santa Fe -- of those participants who so choose to populate the map in this way. A map of the city of Santa Fe would be "zoomable," and "dots" on the map could represent particular backyard gardens, with backyard gardeners locating their garden/dot with a click of the mouse. A map user/reader could then click on any of these dots to see a special page showing the tomatos growing in pots on a porch, or a little backyard garden, or whatever features were present at the time. A description of the site and date would be provided.

This Santa Fe Urban Garden Map would help encourage a spirit of community and learning opportunities among those who love to grow edible gardens in Santa Fe, and would also allow users of the larger Santa Fe County Food Resiliency Map to track progess of an evolving food security ethos in the City.

Clearly it is crucial to our transition away from an irresilient food system that many, many more people learn at least the fundamentals of gardening, and this alone explains the potential value of the urban gardeners' map just mentioned.

This is just an idea to be shared. There is yet no such mapping project, but there could be. And discussion here could at least help us to know how such maps could be useful. I'm sure my idea can be much improved upon. Welcome to the process!

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You're two steps ahead if you thought, "Hey, the Santa Fe County map could be inserted into a New Mexico State map."

You are three steps ahead if you thought the New Mexico map could be inserted into a national map, ... etc.

Imagine a Global Food Resiliency Map ... created in large part by local individuals who know what's under their feet and growing in their neighborhoods!

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Santa Fe County Geographic Information Systems

GRASS - http://grass.osgeo.org