Mobile Field Data Collection, Made Easy

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Recommendation from Greeninfo Network's MapLines newsletter:

"Attention land trusts, weed mappers, trail maintainers and others - Are you ready for the Spring field work season?  GreenInfo recommends using this customizable, free app for collecting data in the field - Fulcrum App, which offers a free single user plan for storing up to 100 mb of data."

According to their website, with Fulcrum, you build apps to your specifications, allowing you to control exactly what data is captured from the field and how. Maintain high standards of quality to minimize rework, QA/QC, and error correction by getting it done right the first time.

PROBA-V satellite launched May 7

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Proba-V’s first image of FranceI haven't used PROBA imagery, but many colleagues in Europe rely on this sensor.

PROBA-V (i.e. "vegetation") was launched May 7. The miniature satellite is designed to map land cover and vegetation growth across the entire planet every two days. The data can be used for alerting authorities to crop failures or monitoring the spread of deserts and deforestation.

Less than a cubic metre in volume, Proba-V is a miniaturised ESA satellite tasked with a full-scale mission: to map land cover and vegetation growth across the entire planet every two days.

Proba-V is flying a lighter but fully functional redesign of the Vegetation imaging instruments previously flown aboard France’s full-sized Spot-4 and Spot-5 satellites, which have been observing Earth since 1998.

Check it out: http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Technology/Proba_Missions/Proba-V_opens_its_eyes

Bay Area Inequality & Mass Transit

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Dan Grover and Mike Z created an interactive data visualization that shows the income distribution along mass transit routes in the Bay Area. 2010 Census median household income for each mass transit station within a census tract for MUNI metro and bus, BART, and CalTrain routes are currently viewable. The project was inspired by The New Yorker’s New York City income distribution viewer for the New York Subway here.

Screenshot of data viewer from dangrover.github.io

Google Timelapse

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Google recently released the Timelapse project, hosted by Time Magazine, which shows Landsat images from 1984 to today in a timelapse video animation for the entire globe. The viewer allows users to navigate to any spot on the globe via place name and visualize changes on the earth’s surface over the time period captured by Landsat. Google highlights specific areas of interest such as Dubai, Las Vegas, and the Amazon.

Click the image below for more info and to access the site:

Screenshot of Google Timelapse on Time.com

Denali Repeat Photography Project

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an example from the Denali ProjectFrom Shasta: along the lines of our VTM photo reshoot project, here is a far more advanced example - the Denali Repeat Photography Project.

he Denali Repeat Photography project has assembled more than 200 photo pairs taken across a large cross-section of Denali from the low-lying black spruce forests to ice fields high in the Alaska Range.  What unites these disparate images is that they show repeated views of a single location at different moments in time.  The interval separating the pairs of photos varies greatly – from just a few years to longer than a century!

CPAD 1.9 released today: mapping protected areas in California

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CPAD, the California's Protected Areas Database is releasing a new version. This product maps lands owned in fee by public and nongovernmental organizations for open space purposes, ranging from small neighborhood parks to large wilderness areas.

CPAD 1.9 a major update that corrects many outstanding issues with CPAD holdings data and also has many new additions, particular for urban parks.

CPAD is produced and managed by GreenInfo Network, a 16 year old non-profit organization that supports public interest groups and agencies with geospatial technology. CPAD data development is conducted with Esri ArcGIS products, supplemented with open source web application tools. 

Find the data here.

map of global routes of ship-borne invasive species

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From the BBC. Scientists have developed the first global model that analyses the routes taken by marine invasive species. The researchers examined the movements of cargo ships around the world to identify the hot spots where these aquatic aliens might thrive. The research is published in the Journal Ecology Letters.

Scientists mapped the global routes taken by cargo ships over a two-year period

Marine species are taken in with ballast water on freighters and wreak havoc in new locations, driving natives to extinction.

There has been a well-documented boom in global shipping over the past 20 years and this has led to growing numbers of species moving via ballast tanks, or by clinging to hulls.

Some ports such as San Francisco and Chesapeake Bay have reported several exotic new species arriving every year. Economic estimates indicate that marine invaders can have huge impacts that last for decades.

Now, scientists from the UK and Germany have developed a model that might help curb these unwanted visitors. They obtained detailed logs from nearly three million voyages that took place in 2007 and 2008. The model combines information such as shipping routes, ship sizes, temperatures and biogeography to come up with local forecasts of invasion probabilities.

DNRGarmin + QGIS for a free and useful way to map properties

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This website shows how any average computer user and/or landowner or forester can utilize the Quantum GIS open source freeware to do professional analyses of their land or their clients' land for free. Thanks Bob Wagoner!

http://www.centralillinoisforestry.com/index.php/illinois-forestry-blog/73-quantum-gis-for-landowners-and-practitioners

New report on sierra forest health and carbon storage

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The Sierra Nevada Conservancy has just released a new report on System Indicators for Forest Health and Carbon Storage. This fourth report in the System Indicators series focuses on Sierra Nevada forests, and includes indicators related to Forest Health and Biomass/Carbon Storage on forest lands. In addition, this report describes the extent, character, and ownership of forest land in the Sierra Nevada Conservancy (SNC) Region. The lead author on the report is our Susie Kocher, from UC Cooperative Extension, and from SNAMP.

See the report here: http://www.sierranevada.ca.gov/about-us/SystetmIndicatorsForestHealth.pdf/view

LDCM releases first images of Earth!

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Turning on new satellite instruments is like opening new eyes. This week, the Landsat Data Continuity Mission (LDCM) released its first images of Earth, collected at 1:40 p.m. EDT on March 18. The first image shows the meeting of the Great Plains with the Front Ranges of the Rocky Mountains in Wyoming and Colorado. The natural-color image shows the green coniferous forest of the mountains coming down to the dormant brown plains. The cities of Cheyenne, Fort Collins, Loveland, Longmont, Boulder and Denver string out from north to south. Popcorn clouds dot the plains while more complete cloud cover obscures the mountains.

Much more on the story and the images here:

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/landsat/news/first-images-feature.html

Cal-adapt in the news

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Kevin and I wrote a blog story for UC's Center for Forestry on Cal-Adapt. We walk through the local tools for a community by focusing on Eureka in Humboldt County. Humboldt County, located in Northwest California, is the southern gateway to the Pacific Northwest. The County is bound on the north by Del Norte County; on the east by Siskiyou and Trinity counties; on the south by Mendocino County and on the west by the Pacific Ocean. The County encompasses 2.3 million acres, 80 percent of which is forestlands, protected redwoods and recreation areas. Humboldt County faces a range of changes to its local climate: temperature, snowpack, fire regimes and sea level. Each of these can be explored with Cal-Adapt Local Snapshot tool.

Check it out: http://ucanr.edu/blogs/blogcore/postdetail.cfm?postnum=9573

The New Cartographers

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 Interesting article by Emily Underwood in Science Magazine 

The New Cartographer

"Geographers have traditionally studied how the natural environment contributes to human society and vice versa, whereas cartographers have focused more explicitly on the art and science of mapmaking. Over the past couple of decades, a new field has emerged: geographical information systems (GIS), blending the study and expression of geographic information. Cartography and geography have overlapped and spawned innumerable subspecialties and applications. Modern geographers and cartographers are involved in diverse projects: tracking fleets of vehicles or products, helping customers locate a Dunkin' Donuts, modeling environmental scenarios such as oil spills, and studying the spread of disease."

 

more online

ANR Statewide Program on GIS

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Mission Statement: IGIS aims to support high-priority programs to advance research and extension projects that enhance agricultural productivity, natural resource conservation and healthy communities into the future by providing Informatics and Geospatial Information Systems tools and applications.

ANR Recently announced the development of a new Statewide Program called the Informatics and GIS (IGIS) program. The new program aims to over the next five years become the nexus for ANR’s rich and diverse geospatial and ecological data, research information, and resources for academics and the public who rely on geospatial and informatics data, analysis and display.  Through data capture, information sharing, and collaboration, we aim to increase our ability to make meaningful predictions of the agricultural, ecosystem, and community response to future change, to increase our understanding of California’s diverse natural, agricultural and human resources, and to support research and outreach projects that enhance agricultural productivity, natural resource conservation and healthy communities into the future.

The IGIS team needs your input to design this resource to be an efficient and helpful delivery of information and GIS support. If you are affiliated with ANR, please take a few minutes to complete the Survey of Informatics and GIS Needs, Knowledge and Data Availability.  This is a short and comprehensive survey that will assess GIS, data and information needs, evaluate your level of informatics and GIS expertise and use of geospatial tools and data.  Your response will be of great assistance toward building a successful State-wide program.

Google is fined for collecting private info with Street View

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We're not just taking pictures any more... All over the channels this morning is the $7B fine paid by Google to multiple states for violating public privacy.

From the NYTimes: Google on Tuesday acknowledged to state officials that it had violated people’s privacy during its Street View mapping project when it casually scooped up passwords, e-mail and other personal information from unsuspecting computer users.

Google says "we work hard to get privacy right at Google, but in this case we didn’t, which is why we quickly tightened up our systems to address the issue.” A more sceptical view is found here: Scott Cleland's blog: http://www.precursorblog.com/ (including a Google Privacy Rap Sheet).

The new settlement, which requires Google to set up a privacy program within six months, that includes an annual privacy week event for employees, and training for the public on how to protect themselves.

New 2012 SOD Confirmations Added to OakMapper!

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New SOD Blitz 2012 Data

New confirmed cases of Sudden Oak Death (SOD) (P. ramorum) have been added to OakMapper, a project that tracks the spread of Sudden Oak Death from data collected by citizens and organizations. All official SOD cases are collected and confirmed by the California Department of Food and Agriculture or the University of California. Community SOD cases are submitted by citizens via the OakMapper website and iPhone application. 613 new points collected in 2012 have been added to OakMapper bringing the total number of confirmed SOD locations to 2804. The new data consists of laboratory confirmed cases collected by the annual SOD Blitz campaign of 2012 from the Forest Pathology and Mycology Lab run by Dr. Matteo Garbelotto. 

Click on the image in the upper left to view a close-up of the new confirmed SOD data (in green) from the SOD Blitz 2012. 

Explore the new data online here.

OakMapper.org

Update from LDCM

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Some updates from this video from NASA:

  • Imagery should be available late May 2013
  • Landsat 7 has enough fuel to last until 2016
  • LCDM has a 5 year mission, but they are hopeful for a 10 year mission
  • Data continuity is the key to this whole deal: "continuity drives landsat"
  • High resolution data does not have the temporal resolution as Landsat - via Kass G.

Very excited.

LDCM FAQ here.

 

Landsat 8 is up and orbiting!

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Atlas 5 Rocket With Landsat PayloadFun day today watching the LDCM (Landsat Data Continuity Mission) make its successful launch of the newest and coolest sensor in the Landsat family. The flawless launch from Vandenburg AFB was witnessed with lots of cheering and earth-themed cupcakes in Mulford Hall!

While I am not actively using Landsat imagery, I used Landsat 4 and 5 imagery for my dissertation, back in the day, and use it still to introduce geographic concepts in class. And I am super excited to see the new imagery. The sensor has similar spectral bands to the ETM+ sensor on Landsat 7, but also I think includes a new coastal aerosol band (443 nm) and cirrus detection band (1375 nm). The legacy of the Landsat program is tremendous; the program has given us reliable, comprehensive, and detailed views of a dynamic earth for decades. It is a government sponsored science program with lasting impact.

Some nice write-ups about Landsat:

NASA Earth Observatory Landsat Looks and Sees
NASA Landsat: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/landsat/main/index.html
USGS Landsat Missions: http://landsat.usgs.gov/
Landsat Top 10: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/landsat/news/landsat-40th-top10.html

Anyway, it was nice to have everyone on board to witness the launch! Thanks GIF folks and everyone else in the lab. Now we just have to watch out for DA14 on Friday!

How to Download Lots of Lidar from the Digital Coast

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Via LASTOOLS: Kirk Waters, physical scientist at NOAA, describes in his latest blog entry how to efficiently download lots of compressed LiDAR data in LAZ format from NOAA's Digital Coast servers:

http://www.csc.noaa.gov/digitalcoast/geozone/how-to-download-lots-of-lidar-on-digital-coast

He also conjectures that more LiDAR software will be able to input and output the LAZ format soon. After FME, TopoDOT, GlobalMapper, RiProcess, QT Modeler / QT Reader, ... (see http://laszip.org for a complete list of LAZ-enabled software and LAZ download sites).

The Coastal Services Center, home of the Digital Coast, is one cool place. I visited there in the 1990s while at NOAA-Beaufort and working with the C-CAP program.

Check out the GIF workshops for Spring 2013

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The GIF workshop schedule for Spring 2013 has been posted! We have a new workshop this semester on Lidar! check it out!

GIF workshops offer hands-on applications oriented training in a variety of geospatial topics. Workshop fees are available at a subsidized rate of $84 for all UC students (graduate and undergraduate), faculty, and staff. Workshop fees are $224 for all non-UC affiliates.

Undergraduate students can apply for financial assistance to take a workshop through the GIF Undergraduate Scholarship Program.

Check them all out here.