GIS
Welcome to the Minnesota Department of Natural Resource's Geographic Information Systems page.
GIS has been a part of tool used by DNR Staff since the early 1970s. During that time work was performed by a few DNR units, on a project by project basis, in coordination with the Minnesota Land Management Information System (MLMIS) at the University of Minnesota. At that time most of the work was done using early versions of what now is EPPL7.
In the mid 1980s, GIS began to make some major headway in the Department, when the Division of Forestry purchased "Hal", a PRIME 2250 minicomputer, to manage forest inventories using ARC/INFO.
In 1991, the DNR's first GIS UNIX workstations were purchased and GIS data layers, map products and tools began to be developed by various DNR units.
In 1994, the GIS Section in the Management Information Services (MIS) Bureau worked with GIS staff throughout the DNR and developed the "DNR GIS strategic plan" which set the basis for the future of GIS in the DNR. Since that time GIS has become integral to DNR's working environment with hundreds of users spread throughout the department. At the same time the GIS Section has strived to achieve the mission put forth in 1994 which is to "Improve resource management decisions by making quality geographic information, applications and analyses accessible to clients using GIS".
Currently DNR staff uses ESRI (tm) desktop clients including ArcMAP 9.3 and are migrating away from ArcView 3 and OpenSoucrce MapServer software to drive our web mapping efforts. The DNR's data library consists of more than 350 layers of information with more than 200 available to the general public, free of charge, on the DNR GIS Data Deli (http://deli.dnr.state.mn.us). Over the last five years an average of 1.5 terrrabytes of information has been downloaded annually by the general public, academia, all levels of government and the private sector.
The links below lead to various maps, applications and educational materials that the GIS section has developed in pursuit of our mission. We hope you find them useful!
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ArcView extensions, tips, and training materials developed within the DNR |
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Technical documents that describe the GIS infrastructure at the DNR |
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Link to the DNR Data Deli where users may obtain GIS data and metadata |
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A number of examples of how GIS is being used in the department |
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| Southeast Minnesota LiDAR Mapping Initiative |
Information and maps for the LiDAR/High accuracy elevation data collection mission in Southeast Minnesota |
