National Park Maps All in One Place

Kudos to Matt Holly, a member of the National Park Service’s (NPS) National Resource Stewardship and Science Directorate.  Matt has been uploading all of the NPS maps into a single portal available online.  At the moment these maps are available in GIF, JPEG, and PDF...but maybe shapefiles will follow??  You can search the maps alphabetically by park, or by state.  Access the website here.  

Mapping the Housing Divide

The Washington Post, using data from Black Knight Financial Services, recently published an amazing series of maps showing disparities in the United States' housing recoveries.  They argue that these disparities have exacerbated inequality and have particularly worked against Americans of moderate means and minority neighborhoods.  Check the full article out here and explore the maps.  

Visualizing Vandalism in National Parks

A webmap featured in an article in the High Country News shows where vandalism has been reported most in protected areas across the West since 2013.  As the article associated with the map states, the areas most impacted are those closest to urban areas, particularly in the desert parks.  

Data Visualization of WWII

Here in the Kelly Lab we talk a lot about effective ways to visualize data.  How do we show the true weight and impact of those data we work with?  How do we communicate uncertainty?  I think this fellow Neil Halloran did a pretty great job with WWII.  This short video is a combination of visualization and narration.  While effective visualization on its own is ideal, I think the narration offers different avenues of talking about uncertainty in the data.  Check out his video HERE.

Plague Mapping!

Alice's first webmap at Forestry Camp

Here is my first webmap I made a camp!  This represents Berkeley's population from 2007.  

Kelly Lab SPUR Students Visit Point Reyes National Seashore

Kelly Lab SPUR Students Drew Adamski and Ryan Avery have been participating in lab research all semester.  In particular they have been helping classify trails within the Pacific West's National Parks.  This month we were lucky enough to travel out with them to Point Reyes National Seashore to see some of those trails in person.  We were also lucky enough to spend the day with Chief Ranger Schifsky who was kind enough to talk to us about what issues different trails in the park were facing and which trails seemed to be changing most rapidly.  Chief Schifsky was also kind enough to show us some of the points in the park where the landscape had changed dramatically over time due to fire, restoration projects, or differing management strategies.  Overall it was a really inspiring and informative trip!

SimplyMap & PolicyMap

Today I went to a great D-Lab Workshop on Demographic Mapping Tools.  Berkeley's GIS and Map Librarian, Susan Powell walked us through the use of several very easy to use mapping tools available through UC Berkeley.  Both are really great for quickly visualizing data from many different sources. 

#1: SimplyMap:  http://sm2.simplymap.com/index.html

Pros: This interface allows the easy visualization of census data (back to 1980), crime data, as well as lifestyle and market data.  SimplyMap is accessible with a UC Berkeley login and can be accessed through the Berkeley Library website.  It allows you to export data as shapefiles or image files, has a table-building function, and allows limited data filtering and masking.  The data provided come with metadata.  Most data available can be visualized down to the census tract or zipcode level.  You can save and share maps from your private account.

Cons: You cannot combine variables or years of data in the map itself, but you can do this in SimplyMap's table building function and export that.  The user interface is not always simple or straightforward. 

Above: Dollar amount spent at restaurants in Berkeley in 2014 by census tract. Map created using SimplyMaps.

#2 PolicyMap: http://ucberkeley.policymap.com/maps

Pros: PolicyMap includes census data (back to 2000), housing, health, government programs, crime, and education data.  Like SimplyMap this allows the quick and easy visualization of data in a single year.  PolicyMap also allows you to upload and overlay your own data with its existing datasets and generally allows for a bit more overlaying of datasets--point data can be added on top of polygons.  You can generate quick pre-defined reports on specific cities or areas.  You can also define a custom study area in PolicyMap.  It has a table-builder as well as a really great data-dictionary that explains where its data come from.  

Cons: There are no private accounts.  All of Berkeley has a single account, so you can see everyone else's data, and they can see yours.  Thus, you must log-in through UC Berkeley's website to gain access.  This datasharing may not be an absolute con, but it is a little weird.  PolicyMap does not allow you to export shapefiles, but it does allow you to build tables that can be easily joined with shapefiles if need be.  It too has some user-interface quirks that could probably be improved upon. 

Mapping the Berkeley Boom: Social Media and Mapping Help Unravel a Mystery

Last night we heard the Berkeley Boom again.  We’ve been hearing this thunderous boom quite frequently in the last month here in Berkeley, but this one sounded bigger than most.  Car alarms went off on the street.  The dog jumped.  “What IS that?” I wondered aloud.  With a quick search on the internet I found that that the Berkeley Boom is a phenomena whose Twitter reports are being actively mapped.  While Berkeley police and residents still have no idea what the mystery boom is, through the combined powers of social media and mapping we are gathering an understanding of where it is happening.  As Berkeley residents continue reporting the boom (#BerkeleyBoom), perhaps we’ll get to the bottom of this, the newest of Berkeley’s many mysteries. 

For more on the Berkeley Boom see the Berkeleyside article: http://www.berkeleyside.com/2015/03/31/the-unsolved-mystery-of-the-berkeley-boom/

Map from Berkeleyside Article:

Geo-tagged Tweets in Yosemite

Check out the Geo-tagged tweets in Yosemite Valley.  If you look closely you can see that people are tweeting from the top of Half-Dome, The Mist Trail, Glacier Point, and many parts of Yosemite Valley.  Harnessing this publicly available information may help in understanding what people are thinking and doing in our National Parks.  

All 6 Billion Geo-tagged Tweets are available to view at: https://api.tiles.mapbox.com/v4/enf.c3a2de35/page.html?access_token=pk.eyJ1IjoiZW5mIiwiYSI6IkNJek92bnMifQ.xn2_Uj9RkYTGRuCGg4DXZQ#14/37.7386/-119.5548