New software from Clark Labs: TerrSet

From Sam: Clark Labs is shipping their new software: TerrSet. They say: TerrSet - a new name, a new concept and a wealth of advances.

         
Clark Labs is pleased to announce that the TerrSet software is now shipping. TerrSet is an integrated constellation of software applications for monitoring and modeling the Earth system. Developed in close cooperation with leading institutions focused on sustainable development and environmental conservation, TerrSet provides groundbreaking tools for addressing major challenges to smart growth - climate change: trends, projections and adaptation; land cover conversion: trajectories and impacts; ecosystem services: present and future value.
 
TerrSet = Space + Time

Thanks for the update Sam!

Croudsourced view of global agriculture: mapping farm size around the world

From Live Science. Two new maps released Jan. 16 considerably improve estimates of the amount of land farmed in the world — one map reveals the world's agricultural lands to a resolution of 1 kilometer, and the other provides the first look at the sizes of the fields being used for agriculture.

The researchers built the cropland database by combining information from several sources, such as satellite images, regional maps, video and geotagged photos, which were shared with them by groups around the world. Combining all that information would be an almost-impossible task for a handful of scientists to take on, so the team turned the project into a crowdsourced, online game. Volunteers logged into "Cropland Capture" on a computer or a phone and determined whether an image contained cropland or not. Participants were entered into weekly prize drawings.

Another new journal: Remote Sensing Applications: Society and Environment

They say: With the launch of this new journal, Remote Sensing Applications: Society and Environment focuses on providing a platform for describing innovative methods and scientific results from the application of remote sensing technology to a wide range of societal and environmental relevant topics including local, national and international policy, regulatory and management challenges.

With over four decades of data and information coming from for instance space-based instruments, remote sensing has become a familiar part of daily life in our modern society. To name just a few, weather forecasts, precision farming, mapping natural phenomena and disasters, population trends, urbanization and dynamic, virtual animations all use remotely sensed data, such as satellite images. Although remote sensing data is widely available, scientific analysis, methodological development and uncertainty characterization is necessary before data can be transformed into information for improved decision making and better understanding of the dynamics of our environment.

(Alice, this sounds like it would have been perfect for our crime paper!)

VTM data helps us understand changes to California forests

Some press on our PNAS paper: Twentieth-century shifts in forest structure in California: Denser forests, smaller trees, and increased dominance of oaks.

• Berkeley News http://newscenter.berkeley.edu/2015/01/20/warmer-drier-climate-altering-forests-statewide/
• Daily Californian http://www.dailycal.org/2015/01/25/campus-team-collaborates-research-showing-decrease-diversity-california-trees/
• National Geographic http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2015/01/150119-california-forests-shrinking-climate-drought-science/
• LA Times http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-forest-study-20150119-story.html
• KTVU SF news http://wn.ktvu.com/clip/11049705/berkeley-drought-to-impact-climate-change-in-forests
• Nice NPR interview with Patrick http://www.scpr.org/programs/take-two/2015/01/22/41216/california-s-forests-see-significant-change-over-l/
• Huffington Post http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/20/california-big-tree-decline_n_6511870.html?utm_hp_ref=san-francisco
• The Conversation: https://theconversation.com/californias-majestic-trees-are-declining-a-harbinger-of-future-forests-36699
• IFL Science: http://www.iflscience.com/environment/california-s-majestic-trees-are-declining-harbinger-future-forests

In the paper we document changes in forest structure between historical (1930s) and contemporary (2000s) surveys of California vegetation. The shorthand is:

1. Statewide, tree density in forested regions increased by 30% between the two time periods, and forest biomass declined by 19%.
2. Larger trees (>60 cm diameter at breast height) declined, whereas smaller trees (<30 cm) have increased.
3. Large tree declines were more severe in areas experiencing greater increases in climatic water deficit since the 1930s.
4. Forest composition in California in the last century has also shifted toward increased dominance by oaks relative to pines, a pattern consistent with warming and increased water stress, and also with paleohistoric shifts in vegetation in California over the last 150,000 years.

Satellite images of Nigerian towns attacked by Boko Haram

Amnesty's before and after satellite images were taken on 2 January and 7 January. Healthy vegetation is shown in red on the graphics.This is related to the paper that Alice and I just published on the use of remote sensing for crime. In that paper, we make it clear that estimates of crime from remote sensing are very difficult to validate; however, these important efforts continue to expand. Case in point from the BBC: Satellite images of Nigerian towns attacked by Boko Haram show widespread destruction and suggest a high death toll, Amnesty International says.

The images show some 3,700 structures damaged or destroyed in Baga and Doron Baga this month, Amnesty said. This is in stark contrast with goverment estimates of destruction.

The BBC's Will Ross says that while the images show the destructive nature of Boko Haram, they do not help establish just how many people were killed.

Last week, Musa Alhaji Bukar, a senior government official in the area, said that fleeing residents told him that Baga, which had a population of about 10,000, was now "virtually non-existent".

The mapping process: musings at the end of 2014

Here are some evocative words about mapping from an unlikely source: in her astounding and engrossing book Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel has Thomas Cromwell say:

But the trouble is, maps are always last year's. England is always remaking herself, her cliffs eroding, her sandbanks drifting, springs bubbling up in dead ground. They regroup themselves while we sleep, the landscapes through which we move..."

Lovely stuff! and a great holiday read (or re-read, or re-listen). It reminds us that mapping is a continual effort, a continuous process. All that we map changes: crops are harvested and fields are replanted, cities evolve, forests burn and re-grow, and people move across the face of the earth leaving traces. Our task is to capture in virtual space the key functional elements of space and time - through maps, through spectral reflectance and lidar, through text and discussions - so that we can find answers to to the key questions facing society today.

Excerpt From: Mantel, Hilary. Wolf Hall. Henry Holt and Company, 2009. iBooks.

New scholarly journal: Geospatial Applications in Natural Resources

The Arthur Temple College of Forestry and Agriculture, in conjunction with Stephen F. Austin State University, will soon launch a new scholarly journal titled “Journal of Geospatial Applications in Natural Resources”.  The focus of the journal will be to publish via a rapid double-blind peer-review process articles that apply geospatial technology to quantify, qualify, map, monitor, and manage natural resources.

There is no website yet, but I will keep you posted.

Wow! new D3 panel visualization

Mike Bostock's visualizations are glorious. This gives me lots of ideas for visualizing temporal variability across space. I can't embed this here, but I recommend you check it out.

http://bost.ocks.org/mike/drought/

They say: We published a more serious graphic today on drought’s effect on crops, but this was a fun animation we made to sanity-check parsing drought data. NOAA publishes monthly values for the Palmer Drought Severity Index going all the way back to 1895! Dark purple represents extreme drought, while dark green represents extreme moisture. In effect, this is a crazy electric version of Haeyoun Park and Kevin Quealy’s graphic, Drought’s Footprint.

Reservoir levels are still way below average

From our Faith Kearns at the UC Water Institute: https://twitter.com/ucanrwater/status/543501860527550464

As great as this bath has been, we still are way behind normal.

Major California reservoir levels (% avg) as of midnight yesterday compared to last week

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