Welcome to Upstate GIS

Scroll down to learn about many of the services we offer!

Introduction

Upstate GIS digitally created a detailed map of the Village of Cambridge, NY with a historic, hand-drawn style. Copies of the map are sold in the local bookstore and online.

Upstate GIS is located in the small village of Cambridge, New York in rural Washington County. It is the sole proprietorship of  Rick Lederer-Barnes , an Independent Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Specialist, Cartographer and Environmental Planner with over 20 years of GIS experience. Upstate GIS provides contracted support to consulting firms in the Northeast, as well as direct services to organizations and municipalities. The primary focus of Upstate GIS is to provide geospatial analyses and high-quality maps and graphics; whether the focus is a small neighborhood or a large region. Upstate GIS specializes in cartographic design, data creation and analysis, viewshed analyses and build-out analyses. Upstate GIS also provides professional planning services in the areas of farmland and open space preservation, zoning, SEQR preparation and review, environmental review and analysis, fiscal analysis, and community visioning. In addition to his professional experience, Rick served on the Cambridge Village Board as a trustee for five years, two of which as the Deputy Mayor, and is currently a board member of the Cambridge Valley Community Development and Preservation Partnership.

Expertise in GIS and cartography, combined with experience in planning, particularly natural and agricultural resources, as well as municipal governance, allows Upstate GIS to offer a unique set of skills and perspective. Scroll through to learn more about Upstate GIS, or jump to specific topic areas using the links above.

When viewing on a mobile device, landscape view is recommended, or  click here  for a mobile-friendly version.

Areas of Focus

Upstate GIS has completed hundreds of projects since 2012, however, there are core areas of focus as outlined below.

Natural Resources Projects

Upstate GIS has completed numerous Natural Resources Inventories (NRIs), Community Preservation Plans and other Open Space plans. These projects involve inventorying important resources, such as water, wetland and forest resources, important habitats, climate-resilient areas and many other natural features. Frequently a prioritization analysis is also completed to identify the most critical areas of a town or region for future protection. In many of these projects, a web-based set of maps is created as well to allow parcel-level examination by involved agencies.

The map at right shows active and completed projects with a focus on natural resources. Click any of the polygons for more information about the projects shown.

Example Natural Resources Inventories (NRIs) maps completed by Upstate GIS - Above: The Town and Village of New Paltz where Upstate GIS was the lead consultant; Below: The Town of Poestenkill where Upstate GIS was the mapping subconsultant to the Rensselaer Land Trust.

Project Highlight - Rensselaer County Conservation Plan

Upstate GIS helped the Rensselaer Land Trust (RLT) complete an award-winning* Conservation Plan for the county in 2018. The plan’s focus is to identify and map those lands and waters that are most critical to supporting Rensselaer County’s quality of life. Upstate GIS inventoried, mapped, and assessed the natural resources and the significant open spaces and landscape features of the county. Upstate GIS also assisted with public meeting facilitation, led by the NYS DEC Hudson River Estuary Program (HREP) staff, and the subsequent digitizing of hundreds of comments annotated on workshop maps. Upstate GIS performed an extensive GIS inventory for the county – both consolidating and editing existing datasets and creating several new datasets. These datasets were used to calculate priority areas for conservation. To complete the project an ArcGIS Online StoryMap was created which summarizes the plan and provides interactive maps throughout. Click here for the  Full Plan  or the  StoryMap  (Screen grab from the StoryMap shown at right)

 * Best Practice Award awarded by American Planning Association New York Upstate Chapter and Erastus Corning, 2nd Achievement Awards for Intermunicipal Cooperation awarded by the Capital District Regional Planning Commission 

Agricultural and Farmland Projects

Upstate GIS has completed, or is currently working on, over a dozen projects with an agricultural focus. Several municipal and county Farmland Protection Plans have been a partnership with  Community Planning and Environmental Associates . Nearly all the agricultural projects involve identifying high-priority farmland areas, including an existing statewide project for the Connecticut Farmland Trust. Prior to starting Upstate GIS, Rick led the Town of Charlton, in Saratoga County, in the completion of the first municipal farmland protection plan approved by the New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets.

The map at right shows active and completed projects with a focus on agriculture and farmland. Click any of the polygons for more information about the projects shown.

Map of Priority Farmland prepared by Upstate GIS, for the Seneca County Agricultural and Farmland Enhancement Plan.

Rick did a terrific job leading our committee of volunteers through the development of our Farm Land Preservation Plan for our town. He was always very prepared for meetings and was very easy to work with. He had great suggestions and ideas. At the conclusion of the process, he delivered a high quality finished product. - Town of Charlton committee member

Land Trusts

When Upstate GIS started in 2012, the first client was the Agricultural Stewardship Association (ASA) in rural upstate New York, and ASA is still a client today, having completed multiple projects for ASA and provided GIS technical assistance. Working with land trusts has been a major focus from the beginning, as Upstate GIS has completed over a dozen projects for ten different land trusts. Many of these projects involved priority analyses for farmland, ecologic, water, scenic and/or other resources.

The map at right shows active and completed projects for land trusts. Click any of the polygons for more information about the projects shown.

Map prepared for the Hudson Highlands Land Trust  Green Corridor Plan , depicting prioritization results of combining over three dozen datasets to identify areas of highest conservation value in the New York Eastern Highlands region.

You're an amazing cartographer, and your analytical skills/insights have probably influenced more municipal policy than any other single person in this region! - Past land trust Director of Natural Resources

StoryMaps and Web Apps

Sometimes print maps are not enough to tell the whole story - interactive web maps and/or StoryMaps can provide additional insight into existing resources or enhance public understanding of a project. Upstate GIS has prepared several web apps that catalog resources in a series of interactive web maps - users can zoom view an entire town or region to see larger patterns or zoom into the parcel level to see which particular resources may be on a property of interest. StoryMaps created by Upstate GIS can serve as an executive summary of a plan, or highlight important project aspects.

The map at right shows active and completed projects that include a StoryMap and/or web app. Click any of the polygons for more information about the projects shown.

Landing page for the web app created by Upstate GIS for the Town and Village of New Paltz Natural Resources Inventory -  Click here to view the Web App 

Project Highlight - New Hampshire Zoning Atlas

Upstate GIS is part of a team, led by Saint Anselm College, which created an interactive statewide zoning atlas for New Hampshire. Upstate GIS coordinated a small GIS team to collect existing zoning layers for NH, digitize zoning from 'paper' maps, and merge all of the data into a complete statewide zoning layer. Upstate GIS then combined the GIS data with zoning regulations, compiled by others, to create an interactive viewer (Screen grab shown at right). Upstate GIS also performed several analyses and created summary maps pertaining to housing regulations in NH, much of which is summarized in a StoryMap created for the project. In addition to the project StoryMap, Upstate GIS created a StoryMap tutorial to walk users through the interactive NH Zoning Atlas. All of these online resources are available at   NHZoningAtlas.org  . The NH Zoning Atlas was launched in May of 2023, however updates are ongoing.

Screen grab from the NH Zoning Atlas Visual Summary (StoryMap). Upstate GIS provided the analysis, cartography and design for the StoryMap.

...we’ve just been blessed to work with Rick Lederer-Barnes who has done tremendous work in making things so easy to understand visually... - Ben Frost, speaking to the success of the NH Zoning Atlas project

Cartography

A map can have the best data in the world on it, but if no one wants to look at it, or can't understand what they're seeing, then how useful is the map? That is why Upstate GIS pays particular attention to good cartographic design. From the small inventory map that will be no more than a footnote in a report, to a commissioned map made for resale, cartographic principles are at the heart of each map that Upstate GIS produces. Rick is a member of the North American Cartographic Information Society and stays up to date on cartographic best practices. This is one of the qualities that sets Upstate GIS apart, the attention to detail that goes into every map, from font selection, to colors, to layout.

The maps shown at right are a sampling of the many maps produced by Upstate GIS. Scroll down for additional examples.

Lake Monticello, Virginia

The Lake Monticello Community Foundation commissioned this map to be used in a fundraising campaign. The foundation is planning to print and sell 500 copies of the map to raise funds for a new accessible playground. This map provided a challenge to get as much detail as possible into a predefined poster size of 18" x 24," while still having the map be legible and inviting to the viewer. The map was created entirely in ArcGIS Pro (apart from the custom north arrow) with a "hand-drawn/inked" style.

Restore Forward - Conceptual Site Plan

This map was prepared for a site plan review submittal. Upstate GIS imported CAD data into GIS and styled the data to give it a hand-drawn aesthetic while maintaining spatial accuracy. Having a site plan in this style can "soften" the look, which can be helpful for volunteer boards to review, where members may not be accustomed to more technical drawings.

Rensselaer County Watershed Education Project

One of the first projects completed by Upstate GIS was a watershed education project for the Rensselaer Land Trust. Upstate GIS prepared an  interactive web map  and a summary poster (at right). The project intends to help residents of the county understand the resources within, and importance of, the watershed in which they live. The web map includes statistics for each watershed, as well as points of interest in the county. The poster also includes points of interest as well as brief synopses of important county resources.

Family Project

This map is not a commercial deliverable but a personal family project. It depicts the route Rick's grandfather traveled while working on a steel freighter in the 1930s. The ports were derived from his diaries as was some of the route detail. The base map was made using Natural Earth data and all of the cartography was completed with ArcGIS Pro.

Upstate GIS Project Locations

The maps above highlight several Upstate GIS projects, while the map below depicts all of the significant projects completed, or in progress, by Upstate GIS. There are hundreds of small projects, like providing maps for SEQRA compliance, that Upstate GIS has assisted other firms with, which are not included on this map. While the majority of projects are found in New York, locations extend from the State of New Hampshire to the community of Lake Monticello, Virginia.

Upstate GIS Current and Completed Projects

Contact Information

As stated above, Upstate GIS is located in Cambridge, New York

For project inquiries feel free to reach out:

  • By phone: 518-588-7331

Upstate GIS digitally created a detailed map of the Village of Cambridge, NY with a historic, hand-drawn style. Copies of the map are sold in the local bookstore and online.

Example Natural Resources Inventories (NRIs) maps completed by Upstate GIS - Above: The Town and Village of New Paltz where Upstate GIS was the lead consultant; Below: The Town of Poestenkill where Upstate GIS was the mapping subconsultant to the Rensselaer Land Trust.

Map of Priority Farmland prepared by Upstate GIS, for the Seneca County Agricultural and Farmland Enhancement Plan.

Map prepared for the Hudson Highlands Land Trust  Green Corridor Plan , depicting prioritization results of combining over three dozen datasets to identify areas of highest conservation value in the New York Eastern Highlands region.

Landing page for the web app created by Upstate GIS for the Town and Village of New Paltz Natural Resources Inventory -  Click here to view the Web App 

Screen grab from the NH Zoning Atlas Visual Summary (StoryMap). Upstate GIS provided the analysis, cartography and design for the StoryMap.