SOD: still spreading in the bay area

A nice article in SF Chron on Matteo's citizen science approach to mapping new SOD spread.

The article states: The deadly pathogen known as sudden oak death is spreading throughout the Bay Area, infecting more trees in more places than have ever been seen before, according to scientists tracking the disease. The Forest Pathology and Mycology Laboratory at UC Berkeley used 10,000 tree and plant samples collected by 500 citizens between April and June this year to document a dramatic increase in the infection rate from Napa to the Carmel Valley and virtually everywhere in between.

Read more.

U.S. Forest Service and UC study ways to reduce wildfire severity

New article in the UC Green Blog on our SNAMP project, written by Kim Ingram. Includes some great field pics!

The University of California Cooperative Extension (UCCE) recently co-hosted a field trip with the U.S. Forest Service to view the implementation of a forest fuels reduction project on the Tahoe National Forest.

Over 45 stakeholders, including representatives of state, federal, and local government, industry and environmental groups and local residents attended to see the project, known as the "Last Chance Project," which involves thinning the forest by removing small and medium-sized trees, masticating or mowing down brush, and burning dead material through prescribed fire. The work, being done by Sierra Pacific Industries, under contract to the U.S. Forest Service, should be completed by fall 2012.

MIT releases new Urban Network Analysis Tool for ArcGIS 10

The MIT City Form Research Group recently released a new open-source plugin for ArcGIS 10 to perform advanced spatial analyses on network data such as urban street networks. The tool can give researchers a better understanding of how the spatial layout of cities and their social, economic, and environmental processes affect the way people live in it.

The tool measures reach, gravity, betweenness, closeness, and straightness on spatial networks. This means you can assess the number of services or resources within a certain walking distance and can analyze the volume of traffic along sidewalks and streets. Like other network analysis tools, the tool evaluates network element geometry and distance and distinguishes between shorter and longer links. What is unique about this tool is that it not only operates with node and edge elements like other network analysis tools, but it can also incorporate additional network elements such as buildings. Individual buildings or objects can be characterized within spatial networks and can be weighted to give more or less influence. For example, more populated buildings can be set to have a greater impact on results. The tool can also be used to assess urban growth and change.

Click here for the press release.

Local Ground at UCB

Last week we used Sarah Van Wart's Local Ground application to augment the GPS Art excercise in my GIS class. Local Ground is a site where you can contribute your own local knowledge to a digital map, even if you don't have access to a smart phone or a GPS device. It was a hoot. Here are the results. One example is posted below.

Travel time and housing prices map

Our Bay Area regional planning agencies have just released a new interactive map that lets you visualize your housing options given your employment location, income, and desired commute time and mode. It's all part of the regional planning efforts that are happening statewide as a result of SB 375, which requires the integration of housing and land use planning to encourage people to drive less.

The press release gives more details: "If you're in the market to buy a home in the Bay Area, wouldn't it be nice to know how long it would take to commute from neighborhoods in your price range to your work place? Well, now you can, thanks to a new mapping tool on OneBayArea.org.

The interactive map shows you approximately how far you can get from any address within the nine-county region by car, public transit, bike, or on foot, at different times of the day. You can customize your view by the travel time between areas, and the median price of homes in each area."

Animal tracking with "Smart Collars"

There is an interesting arcticle in today's New York Times about the use of a new breed of animal tracking collars that use on board computers to track valuable information about an animal, beyond location alone.  The new "smart collars" can be used to track when an animal is sleeping, when it is feeding, and lots of other metrics.  The additional data being gathered gives biologists more information to work with while trying to understand the animals habits and needs, in order to provide informed wildlife management decisons.

Fire in the Great Dismal Swamp, VI

A nice example of remote sensing for fire: this visualization allows you to compare the utility of hyperspectral images to see through the smoke and map fire scars. The article is about a lightning strick fire in the fantastically named "Great Dismal Swamp" in Virginia. Hurricane Irene might put a damper on the fire.

“Eight inches of rain will not put the fire out,” said Tim Craig, Fire Management Officer for the refuge. “It will buy us time to clear our way through the downed trees back to the fire zone after the storm.” Irene generously drenched the swamp with 10 – 15 inches of rain, but initial assessments show that the fire is still burning. Before the storm, the Lateral West fire was 35 percent contained. Smoke still rose from at least 30 acres after the storm though open flames were no longer visible and the fire did not spread under Irene’s strong winds, said local news reports. The sudden flush of rain left puddles that are still soaking in to the soil and may yet help extinguish the fire.

See the interactive tool and article here.

Interactive map of Irene: NYTimes

Here is the NYTimes live map showing Irene's progress.

Looks like it went directly over Beaufort and the NOAA Marine Lab. Hope everyone is ok.

Irene as of 8:30 PST

The NYTimes site also has some great tools showing current wind speed.

New York hurricane evacuation map

There are three evacuation zones in New York City that are based on the strength of the hurricane making landfall. Mayor Bloomberg has issued a mandatory evacuation of Zone A, plus areas of the Rockaways that are in Zone B, by 5 p.m. on Saturday. From the NYTimes.

Here's an earthquake map you don't see every day...

A 5.3 in Colorado, and a 5.8 in Virginia! The earlier Colorado tembler (8-23-11) was outside Trinidad, CO, and today's Virginia quake (8-23-11) was east of Charlottsville. Info from the USGS Earthquake site. Everyone at "Talk of the Nation" is freaking out on air!

Photogrammetry in action: dating the great "A trip down Market Street", 1906

Sometime before the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, a camera was attached to a streetcar travelling north along Market Street, San Francisco, and recorded the hustle and bustle, the multi-modal transportation options, and the wonderful fashions of early 19th century San Francisco. The movie, which I happend to catch last week at SFMOMA as part of their great (but too large) Stein collection, is mesmerizing. Check it out here on You Tube. It is clearly pre-earthquake, but its exact timing has not been known until now.

Ferry Building arrivalIn an article in Photogrammetric Engineering and Remote Sensing, Richard Greene narrows the window of aquisition down to between 24 March and 30 March 1906, just weeks before the earthquake on 18 April. Remember, that earthquake and the fires that followed largely destroyed much of the city. He performs this feat of timing through detailed photogrammetry: determing the time of day, the solar position, and the time of year from shadows on cornices and other architectural details.

Another windy day in the city! these cornices were helpful in determing solar positionSo cool! The article can be found here. Full reference here: 

Greene, R., 2011. Dating the fliming of "A trip down Market Street". Photogrametric Engineering & Remote Sensing 77, 839-848.

Check out some fun pics from the movie.

Southwestern US drought from NASA

Vegetation anomaly from AVHRRFrom NASA Earth Observatory.  More of the United States was in exceptional drought in July 2011 than in any other month in the past 12 years, according to the National Climatic Data Center. The worst of the drought is spread across Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, and parts of Arizona, Colorado, Nebraska, and Louisiana. But 26 percent of the lower 48 states experienced severe to extreme drought in July.

On the other hand, about 33 percent of the contiguous United States experienced exceptionally rainy weather in July. The wet weather occurred largely in the Northern Plains and Western states.

These weather patterns—the mix of unusually dry and unusually wet—are reflected in plant growth throughout the month. The image shows plant growth in July compared to average conditions. Places where plants were growing more than average are green, while unusually poor growth is shown in brown. The image was made with data from the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer on the NOAA-18 POES satellite.

The worst growing conditions are, unsurprisingly, in the Southern Plains. States throughout the region reported poor pasture conditions and struggling crops. Much of the southeast and eastern United States is also mildly dry. These dry conditions weren’t helped by temperatures in July. For most of the United States, July was unusually hot, drying the soil and baking crops.

The Northern Plains and Western States, on the other hand, experienced a cool, rainy July. California had its eighth rainiest July on record, while Montana, North Dakota, Utah, Wyoming, and South Dakota all received above-average rain. This is reflected in plant growth, particularly in Montana and South Dakota.

The culprit behind these unusual weather patterns is a persistent high pressure system that is steering storms away from the south central United States. Based on current conditions, the Climate Prediction Center expects the drought to last through at least the end of October. In some parts of the South, it would take more than 20 inches of rain to end the drought in a month.

Tracking Diana Nyad swim from Cuba to Florida

Here is a great map tracking Diana Nyad's effort to swim the 103 miles from Cuba to Florida, without a shark cage. This should take about 60 hours. She's about a third there. Oh yeah, and she's nearly 62 years old. Holy moly. Go Diana! 

GIS and historical analysis: a good mix

In the new NYT artilce "Digital Maps Are Giving Scholars the Historical Lay of the Land," Patricia Cohen discusses the new academic field known as spatial humanities. Historians, literary theorists, archaeologists and others are using Geographic Information Systems to re-examine real and fictional places like the villages around Salem, Mass., at the time of the witch trials; the Dust Bowl region devastated during the Great Depression; and the Eastcheap taverns where Shakespeare’s Falstaff and Prince Hal caroused.

“Mapping spatial information reveals part of human history that otherwise we couldn’t possibly know,” said Anne Kelly Knowles, a geographer at Middlebury College in Vermont. “It enables you to see patterns and information that are literally invisible.”

Fun stuff!

2011 ESRI User Conference

Earlier this month I attended the ESRI User Conference in San Diego which consisted of numerous presentations by ESRI as well exhibits by various vendors.  Maggi asked that I write up a short

 summary.  I've been collecting my thoughts and reviewing notes.  There were three main points I wanted to explore aside from the overall experience and general opportunity to learn and be a part of the event.

Mobile GIS

ESRI has had a client for the iPhone for some time now.  Soon they will have one for the Android platform as well.  They had working phones for attendees to use with the ability to do real-time data updates.  There is an API in beta for any ESRI customer to download.  If you're interested please let me know and I can obtain it.  The client software that actually runs on the Android device itself is also in the beta stage but is not yet available to download.   Mobile clients can connect to your own ArcGIS server or to data served by ArcGIS Online hosted by ESRI.

The mobile application allows for collection of data, measuring distances, as well as real-time editing and is intended for general users who do not have to be GIS experts.  The edits are shared right away with others who may be using a mobile or desktop application.  Of course, in many situations users may be in an area without an active cell/data connection.  It's still in various stages of development, but the plans are to have the mobile device cache the appropriate levels of map tiles, data, etc., and then sync with the server upon reconnecting much the same way other applications function when away from cell coverage.

ArcGIS Server Configuration

Web servers are typically configured to accept connections from web browsers on TCP port 80.  Behind the scenes there can be many other servers feeding information on other ports.  Sometimes the other servers can accept direct connections without the web server in the middle.  For a number of reasons, security primarily, these other servers are often behind a firewall and do not accept direct connections from web browsers but do allow connections from the web server.  ArcGIS Server communicates GIS data on port 8399.  Since we generally have not had a need to serve confidential or sensitive data we have always allowed a direct connection to our servers on port 8399.  Recently one of our clients found that their in-house network did not allow connections to port 8399 and no GIS data was appearing in their maps.  Thanks to the help from Brian and Sarah V. we were able to come up with an implementation to allow the end users to connect without problems.  But, it was unclear if this was consistent with the ongoing functionality of ArcGIS Server.

There are a number of ways to configure the web server to accept a connection for ArcGIS Server on port 80 and then go behind the scenes to port 8399.  We have been experiencing various issues during the configuration process as outlined in ESRI and other documentation.  There is a lot of good information available, but it has been in the form of a number of different help articles andconfiguration instructions.  It has been difficult to locate one set of cogent instructions to get things configured start to finish.

Thankfully, I was able to sit down one-on-one with an ESRI technical staff member at the conference. He was able to walk through the process on a demo computer outlining the various steps and explain the process.  I had gotten so far on my own, but he was able to go further showing me the steps real-time.  I will be taking a closer look at how to implement this configuration – which is generally considered to be the "correct" method in lieu of direct connections to port 8399 – in our environment.

ArcGIS Software Updates

Both ArcGIS Server and Desktop will be updated to version 10.1 with an expected release of spring 2012 and a number of functions are to be deprecated.  Of course, the most visible changes are to the Desktop application. 

ArcGIS Server 

• improved handling of API functions, query requests, and database optimization
• Web Application Developer Framework (ADF) deprecated
• rewritten to be 64-bit, 32-bit version deprecated
• easier set-up
• integrated printing function
• improved Linux support
• ArcIMS deprecated

ArcGIS Desktop 

• scale bars with dual units (such as miles and kilometers)
• use of magnetic north as a north arrow
• coordinate system filtering – those inapplicable  to the current map extent not presented as choices
• Maplex included for free at all license levels
• new toolbox tools
• accept GPS data in GPX format and convert to a layer
• areal interpolation – for example census tract to ZIP code
• filtering by time
• support for LIDAR files in .las format
• ArcInfo Workstation deprecated (version 10.0 will continue to function)
• VBA deprecated for new development

ArcGIS Runtime 

• a new developer tool to distribute with applications
• no separate installation
• does not require ArcGIS to be installed
• small memory requirement, fast processing
• Windows and Linux, 32- and 64-bit versions
• mobile version later on, can be used offline

It's clear that ESRI intends to continue enhancing their online functionality.  Much of their effort is going toward making their desktop application more integrated with online data sharing.  There is, of course, the arcgis.com service which is an appealing alternative for those without their own server.  Mobile options are growing and again the emphasis is on real-time sharing and not just data collection with an upload later on.  Right along with their online service is ArcGIS Server which ties together all the various clients and applications for an integrated approach.   Your GIS data is the important focus – the same from desktop to mobile to server – and how you access it is, at best, secondary.  ESRI has shown that they are willing to move forward and recognize today's environment by discontinuing older products such as Web ADF, ArcInfo Workstation, ArcIMS, and so on after having supported them beyond their prime levels of functionality.  Overall the conference was a very positive experience, and I'm quite pleased to have had the opportunity to participate.

Details on ESRI's solar radiation tools

June solar radiation in YellowstoneA nice case study of detailed solar radiation modeling/mapping for Yellowstone National Park. All using existing ESRI spatial analyst tools.

Scientists at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Ames Research Center, including our buddy Chris Potter, the Yellowstone Ecological Research Center (YERC), the Creekside Center for Earth Observation (CCEO), and Esri have created 30-meter solar and temperature distribution maps in mountainous Yellowstone National Forest using tools in the ArcGIS Spatial Analyst extension. These products support ecological management in Yellowstone. 

An overview of ESRI's Solar Radiation Tools can be found here. Go forth and insolate.

New evidence of indirect land use change from biofuel production in Brazil

Querência, in Mato Grosso, BrazilA new article in Environmental Research Letters “Statistical confirmation of indirect land use change in the Brazilian Amazon," looks at how mechanized agriculture in Brazil affects the country's forest in the Amazon, which is the second largest forest in the world. The article is authored by Marcelus Caldas, an assistant professor of geography at K-State, and colleagues Eugenio Arima from the University of Texas at Austin, and Peter Richards and Robert Walker from Michigan State University. Using data from 2003-2008, the team statistically linked the loss of forest area as the indirect effect of changing pastureland into space for soybean and biofuel crops in counties bordering the Amazon.

Marcelus Caldas, an assistant professor of geography at K-State says: "Between 2003-2008 soy production expanded in Brazil by 39,000 square kilometers. Of this 39,000 square kilometers, our study shows that reducing soybean production by 10 percent in these pasture areas could decrease deforestation in heavily forested counties of the Brazilian Amazon by almost 26,000 square kilometers -- or 40 percent."

The Brazilian government says soybean and sugarcane are grown largely in degraded pasture, but data from the team's spatial analysis work cascading impacts: many of these crops have crept into the Brazilian savanna, a large area bordering the Amazon that's used for cattle. Consequently, this has created deforestation in the savanna, driving cattle inside the Amazon.

"Our data shows that the Amazon now has 79 million heads of cattle," Caldas said. "Fifteen years ago, it had less than 10 million. That means that there's a problem with cattle moving inside the forest."

This could be exacerbated with increased global demand for food crops in Brazil. The tradeoffs between food, fuel and forest could continue to come down on the side of food and fuel, at the expense of forests.

More here. Official press release here.

Wetland Tracker site, updated with new wetland data

Berkeley close up: orange are planned wetland restoration sites; yellow lines are impacted streams, blue lines are natural streams.SFEI's Wetland Tracker site has been updated with new wetland data. Specifically, the site makes available BAARI data. BAARI - the Bay Area Aquatic Resource Inventory - is a detailed base map of the Bay Area's aquatic features that includes all wetlands, open water, streams, ditches, tidal marshes and flats, and riparian
areas. The BAARI data will be used to track changes in the extent and condition of aquatic habitat, aid in ecological sample drawing, and is featured on the California Wetlands Portal, where users can browse the area's
aquatic features and restoration projects on an interactive map.

Geo-Immersion Makes Maps Come Alive

Very cool application developed at USC.  Geo-Immersion adds realtime video and data feeds to map of USC campus.  Check out the article from NSF's Science Nation, and the video below.

A bit late, but the tornado track from Tuscaloosa, AL

NASA has released a unique satellite image tracing the damage of a monster EF-4 tornado that tore through Tuscaloosa, Alabama, on April 27th. It combines visible and infrared data to reveal damage unseen in conventional photographs.

"This is the first time we've used the ASTER instrument to track the wake of a super-outbreak of tornadoes," says NASA meteorologist Gary Jedlovec of the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, AL.

How would you map it? as a line or as a field?

Another cool image of the tornado track.