California Coastal LiDAR Project (CCLP) to be available later this year

The California Coastal LiDAR Project (CCLP) is a collaborative effort to produce high-resolution topography data from Oregon to Mexico, extending from the shoreline up to the 10 m topographic contour. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) began a coastal aerial LiDAR collection in October 2009 as part of the National Coastal Mapping Program (NCMP). A combined effort by NOAA and USGS was developed in the latter half of 2009 to conduct LiDAR surveys of the San Francisco Bay Area extending from the Carquinez Strait to outside of the Golden Gate. The two projects are expected to be completed by mid-2010. Datasets will become publicly available by the end of 2010.

http://www.opc.ca.gov/webmaster/ftp/pdf/opc_cclp_report_final.pdf

http://www.opc.ca.gov/2010/01/mapping-californias-coastal-areas/

The volunteer mappers who helped Haiti

Using an image slideshow, BBC News tells the story of how volunteer mappers used OpenStreetMap, an open source mapping platform, to construct a detailed map of Port au Prince in Haiti with layers of geographic information. The geographic information was accessed and used by the rescue personel on the ground. This short slideshow highlights the importance of PPGIS/webGIS, mobile GIS, open source/platform, crowdsourcing, and public participation in a critical situation like the rescue effort in Haiti.

To view the slideshow, please click here.

CPAD 1.4 drops today! California Protected Areas Database

From GreenInfo Network.  The new California Protected Areas Database (CPAD 1.4) has just been released in geodatabase and shape file formats.  Please visit www.calands.org to download.  Updates and improvements to CPAD are described in the CPAD Manual also available on the CALands web site.

WHAT'S NEW IN CPAD 1.4:  CPAD 1.4 contains a number of important data improvements - more coverage of urban parks, more complete alignment to parcels, broader implementation of management designations, and more.

VIEW CPAD DATA ONLINE, REPORT ISSUES:  For those who do not use GIS or prefer to view CPAD via the web, you can do so though a google map overlay at http://www.calands.org/review.php.  We welcome input from the CPAD user community to keep us informed about errors and updates in CPAD.  Please report errors by clicking on the "Report Error" button.

GET NOTIFIED WHEN CPAD IS UPDATED: We encourage you to receive CPAD updates.  You can do this by clicking on the "Receive Update Notification" link on the calands.org homepage.  We will not distribute any of your information or use your email outside of the CPAD mailing list.  Registering helps us better serve the CPAD user community.

Bing Maps adds new enhanced features

Bing Maps, Microsoft's online mapping application, has just launched a big update in Bing Maps Beta with lots of cool new features.  As you will see, the new maps site requires the installation of "silverlight" which you will be prompted to install, but it can be used in most ie, firefox, or safari browsers. 

Though there are many new features, be sure to check out the "Streetside" viewer, Microsoft's answer to Google's Street view.  Streetside takes a similar aproach in displaying photos along streets, but also takes advantage of the building surfaces for 3D viewing.



DataSF.org - a new San Francisco data resource

The City of San Francisco has recently developed a new website (http://datasf.org) to help disseminate data related to the city’s elections, environment, geography, health, housing, public safety, public works, and transportation.  Many of which are available in GIS format!

From the site:

DataSF is a clearinghouse of datasets available from the City & County of San Francisco. While there is plenty of room for improvement, our goal in releasing this site is:
(1) improve access to data
(2) help our community create innovative apps
(3) understand what datasets you'd like to see
(4) get feedback on the quality of our datasets.

In addition to the wealth of data sources, there is also a section showing off some of the applications that outside developers have created with the data.

New NAIP imagery available for CA!

New Bay Bridge construction as seen in the 2009 NAIP imagery

Two great new resources from the National Agriculture Imagery Program (NAIP) are now available for the State of California, and can be download via Cal-Atlas:

2009 Natural Color Imagery: Divided into counties, natural color imagery is now available in MrSid Format.  These images were acquired in the summer of 2009.

2005 Color Infrared Imagery: Divided into quarter-quads, color infrared image tiles from the 2005 dataset are now available for the entire state in jpeg2000 format. 

Michael Byrne, California’s Geographic Information Officer, estimates that the color infrared imagery from the 2009 dataset will be available in 6-7 months.

TauDEM software: for your hydro modeling needs

This was recommended to me recently by Orien; he is using it to create topographic indices to use as ancillary data in an object-based classification of palustrine wetlands in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada. These wetland sites are terrifically important for rails, and mapping them efficiently is a challenge.  Topographic information is proving useful in the classification, and Orien used this software rather than the ArcGIS hydro modeler suite.

From David Tarboton at Utah State: Terrain Analysis Using Digital Elevation Models (TauDEM) is a set of tools for the analysis of terrain using digital elevation models. TauDEM currently provides numerous capabilities that expand on the ESRI suite including (more listed on website):

• Computation of flow directions and slopes;
• Contributing area using single and multiple flow direction methods;
• Multiple methods for the delineation of channel networks that include curvature;
• Delineation of watersheds and subwatersheds draining to each stream segment; and
• Specialized functions for terrain analysis, including wetness indices, accumulation measures, and downslope and upslope functions.

Some favorite ecology-related mashups

From Ken-ichi Ueda and friends: iNaturalist.org.

• Where you can record what you see in nature, meet other nature lovers, and learn about the natural world. Colorful, well-designed and useful, this site is a must for all you explorers of the natural world, or those of you who just ponder the wildlife in your backyard.

From GreenInfo Network and CalLands:

• The new California Protected Areas Database (CPAD 1.3) has just been released in geodatabase and shape file formats, and is available through google maps overlay here.

From UC Davis' Road Ecology Center and the Information Center for the Environment: California Roadkill Observation System.

• You can report roadkills you observe anywhere in the state, helping all of us to understand the causes of roadkill and how we can reduce the conflict between animals and vehicles. Roadkill is a major cause of mortality for many animals in California, but designing appropriate management responses takes political support, money, and knowledge of where and how to act. Roadkill data are an important part of that equation and we invite you, our expert colleagues, to join us in collecting these data on a public site.

From my lab: the OakMapper.

• OakMapper is designed to let users explore the locations of confirmed P. ramorum sites, and contribute to our database by reporting trees that might have the disease. And it is now mobile! Speaking of mobile:

From Imperial College London: EpiCollect.

• A mobile phone application will help professional and "citizen" scientists collect and analyse data from "in the field", anywhere in the world. The EpiCollect software collates data from certain mobiles - on topics such as disease spread or the occurrence of rare species - in a web-based database. Uses Android. The BBC article.

Bing map layers now available in ArcGIS applications

ESRI and Bing Maps (formerly Microsoft Virtual Earth) have recently developed a seamlessly integrated solution to view Bing’s aerial, road, or hybrid data as a base map in ArcGIS applications.  These layers are the same that can be viewed via Bing Maps web interface offering a huge variety of imagery throughout the world including very high resolution sources.

The layers are easily integrated into ArcMap by adding the .lyr files from ESRI’s website to any project.  These small .lyr files may be saved on your hard drive and accessed just like any other layers that you have stored locally.   In order to use these layers, however, you will need to have the latest version of ArcMap (9.3.1) installed, and a new license must be installed as described in the link.  For those of you connecting through UC Berkeley’s license server, you will be happy to know that this license update has already been made.

Indigenous mapping network at UC Berkeley

Our friends from DataBasin are on campus on Monday. Kai Henifin is a Cultural Ecologist/GIS Analyst with the non-profit organization Conservation Biology Institute, the developers of DataBasin. Kai will be speaking about "Incorporating Indigenous Knowledge to Improve Conservation through Data Sharing" as part of the Berkeley Indigenous Mapping Network. For more info on the event.

We have some interesting cross-overs with CBI and DataBasin: we added our SOD data to DataBasin recently (see image at left); and CBI have a nice modeling project looking at fisher in the southern Sierra that Reg and Rick are using in their SNAMP work.