National Conservation Programs: PCIC
Pronatura Centers of Information for Conservation (CPIC, in Spanish)

The Pronatura Center of Information for Conservation is an area at the Pronatura Northeast regional office that works with Geographic Information Systems. This tool is very useful for the identification of potential sites for conservation and/or restoration.

The PCIC concentrates the information taken in the field by Pronatura personnel, plus back up information such as digital and printed material from INEGI (National Institute of Statistics, Geography and Data Processing) and satellite images.

Every Pronatura has a PCIC and the plan is to establish a national server that concentrates all of the information, so that the latter can be distributed. The National PCIC Network is currently integrated by 5 Centers located in:

• Pronatura South (San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas)
• Pronatura Northeast (Monterrey, N.L.)
• Pronatura Northwest (Ensenada, B.C.)
• Pronatura Yucatan Peninsula (Mérida, Yucatán)
• Pronatura Veracruz (Xalapa, Veracruz)

Functions

The PCIC Network gives support to the Land Conservation Program and to different projects within the organization. Among the responsibilities of the department is the elaboration of cartography, the construction of data bases, the implementation of spatial models and analysis of information.

The information produced is put at the disposal of other organizations, research and educational centers, with the object of aiding other investigations as well as forming strategic alliances oriented towards establishing mechanisms of natural resources conservation. In this way, PCIC has become an important decision making tool for conservation at the local, regional and national levels. Through the establishment of joint agreements with the government, the private sector and with local, national and regional partners, PCIC has been fundamental for the distribution of information on conservation and biodiversity in Mexico.

The PCIC integrates geographical information on:

• Species
• Ecosystems
• Natural Protected Areas
• Land Ownership
• Land Use

Types and characteristics of existing products and services:

Digitalization of polygons through the capture of coordinates and photo interpretation, satellite image classification and orthophotos.*

Elaboration of Cartography in diverse scales*

Plotter impression in diverse sizes*

Elaboration of the Geographical Information Services (GIS) with an emphasis on environmental management.*

Software and hardware administration related to GIS.

*These services are available to the general public


Arriba Network

At present, we are part of a network called NatureServe for Latin America and the Caribbean and the ARRIBA network (Spanish for Regional Alliance of Networks on Information on Threatened Biodiversity). This network is integrated by members from different countries: Paraguay, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Guatemala, Mexico, Panama and Puerto Rico; who also collaborate with the Data Centers of the United States and Canada.

Links of interest

• ARRIBA
• Inegi
• Conabio
• Esri
• Nature Serve

Glossary

Geographic Information System: Data base with a geographic reference. An assembly of tools to gather, store, recover, transform and represent spatial data of the real world for a particular group of purposes.

Photo interpretation: A study technique, interpretation and analysis of the terrain’s surface through aerial photographs or images.

Orthophoto: Photographic image of the terrain that has been submitted to a rectification process to obtain the same metric properties as in a map and a constant scale.