This project/presentation looks at the biological and hydrological resources in City of Lake Elsinore in Riverside County, California to identify areas suitable for mitigation banking of potential jurisdictional waters and California Gnatcatcher (CAGN) habitats. GIS has been used in this project to analyze publicly available data in order to narrow down candidate areas that are suitable for mitigation banking. The results of this project include a stream network going through riparian vegetation in specific areas which were then mapped as candidate areas for wetland/stream mitigation banking. The other result produced by this project includes multiple locations with high percentage of CAGN friendly land cover/vegetation that also have gentle to moderate slopes suitable for CAGN habitat mitigation banking. These results can help developers and investors in the area to complete their projects by acquiring and investing into these suitable areas and converting them into mitigation banks. It also provides the audience/reader with a step-by-step GIS analysis footprint to identify suitable banking areas in any given study area.

Max Ketabi is an experienced Geographic Information Systems professional and FAA-certified drone pilot with an extensive background in environmental planning, land development, photogrammetry, geospatial analysis, and GIS project management. He currently works as the supervising GIS analyst at DCSE (a GIS/IT consulting firm in Southern California). He is also enrolled in the Master of Geographic Information Systems (MGIS) program at Penn State University. He's planning to present his final capstone project for the MGIS program at this conference.