Proposal Draft

The Gumball 3000 and it's Impacts on Critical Habitats

Tyler Clausen
Siena College
Loudonville, NY 12211
October 7, 2014

Introduction:
          The Gumball 3000 is an annual British 3,000 mile motor rally which occurs internationally on open public roads.  In the 2014 rally, 110 official "entered" cars registered and countless thousands of other "non-entered" racers drove along the route as well.  The starting line began in the Miami, FL, USA, passed through Atlanta, and finished in New York City.  Then the cars were loaded into planes and flown over to Edinburgh, UK, continuing through London, Paris, and Barcelona, before making to the finish on the island of Ibiza.  This took a total of 8 days to complete.
          Cars are well known to cause negative impacts to the environment.  All of these cars traveling across the country would have been emitting carbon dioxide gases, disturbing wildlife, and bringing about other negative impacts.  There are certain species and habitats that are of great importance for many reasons.  We call these critical habitats, which are areas essential to the conservation of a threatened or endangered species under the Endangered Species Act.  Designation of critical habitats are essential to these species because they have the best living conditions for them.  The aim of this study is to analyze the impacts of this rally on critical habitats along the route.

Objectives:
          This project will make use of data collected from critical habitat data bases and the known route of the 2014 Gumball 300 to make data points in GIS.  These data points will be mapped according to how severe a species is impacted (how threatened or endangered; IUCN), and investigate to what degree the rally caused disturbance.

Data Sources:

• Areal photography
• Satellite imagery
• GPS point data
• Existing maps of the Gumball route

Tentative Schedule:
10/9- Work on Project Proposal
Week of 10/13- Meet with Dr. M about preexisting Critical Habitat data, do research
The rest TBD!