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geospatial matters

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Friday
Sep132013

Photos from the American Fire

These are courtesy of Christopher Dow, crew leader for our SNAMP field work. They were in the Last Chance area gathering post-treatment data when the American Fire started. They were able to collect all the field data we needed for SNAMP before leaving. Which is great news for SNAMP. The fire burned through our northern control and treatment firesheds. Check out the SNAMP project here.

Monday
Sep092013

Fall 2013 GIS class ideas...

Here are the tag clouds from this year's GIS class: the why, how and what of our upcoming semester's projects. Word clouds from Wordle.

The Why: what are the key problems class members want to focus on...

The How: possible methods we will use...

The What: some of the datasets that might be used...

 

Sunday
Sep082013

Welcome to Fall 2013!

Fall semester is here! Summer was a great adventure, with a terrific Intro to GIS workshop at the Forest Camp (see Sam's photo below), and a just fantastic workshop down at Google where we learned about some really cool new Google tools with former Kellylabber Karin Tuxen and the rest of the Google crew.

Teaching GIS at the terrific Zivnuska HallThis summer we said goodbye to a few Kellylabbers - Sarah Lewis graduated (update here), and Jessica O'Connell is moving back to the southeast for research. New lab members include undergraduate student Tiffany Yu and graduate student Lauren Haumann, who are working on the OurSpace project. New postdocs and visitors include Alice Kelly, ESPM PhD (from S&E division), who will be working on her NSF postdoc project "Sustainability and Safety in the Pacific West's National Parks," and Paulina Wong, who comes from Hong Kong on a Fulbright Scholarship and whose background is in the use of three-dimensional (3D) spatial analytical tools to simulate visualize urban environments, she'll be working on the OurSpace project.

Also, check out the individual project pages at the right for news about what we are working on: SNAMP, VTM, Keck, Wetlands, OakMapper, OurSpace, and Oak encroachment, among other things.  Welcome back to Berkeley!

Tuesday
Aug272013

San Francisco circa 2072

SF archipelago, c. 2072

Some fun before the semester starts! Like something out of a great scifi novel: from Burrito Justice (and via Mark O.) "March 20th, 2072 (AP), Northern California Association of City States: With the surprising acceleration of sea level rise due to the melting of both the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets over the past decade, the San Francisco canal system was officially abandoned this week. Additional ferry service has been announced between the new major islands of the San Franciscan Archipelago while the boring machines make progress under the Van Ness Passage and Richmond Pass for new transit tunnels." This rad poster is available for sale!

Sunday
Aug252013

Update on the American fire and SNAMP

American fire as of 8-26-13The American fire is burning into our SNAMP study areas. It looks like our northern treatment and control sites have been burned through. Here is a snapshot of our study site and the fire perimeter (red) as of 8-26-13. SNAMP control (yellow) and treatment (purple) watersheds are shown.

American Fire Status from Incident Report as of 8-26-13: Fire Status: The south, west and north perimeters of the fire remainin patrol status. Some pockets of heat were found interior to the westside containment line and extinguished last night. Crews have completed burning operations adjacent to the Mosquito Ridge Road, along the eastern perimeter. These burning operations have consisted of fire fighters lighting low intensity (“cool”) fire with the intent of reducing ground fuels between the fire perimeter and the main fire. This tactic was highly successful as it reduced the potential of themain fire escaping containment lines. Crews continue to transition into detecting and extinguishing any remaining hot spots. With increased containment of the fire, crews have begun work repairing areas affected by fire fighting activities. This has included chipping material piled next to roads during fire line construction as well as identifying needs to construct water control devices along fire lines throughout the fire area. Forest visitors are asked to adhere to area and road closures. These closures are in place to protect visitors and fire fighters. The roads and areas that have been closed are unsafe due to fire-weakened, burned trees that pose a risk of falling, as well as frequently heavy smoke making visibility extremely poor. These areas and roads will be re-opened as soon as possible.

Summary Stats:

  • Total acres burned: 24,935 acres
  • Containment: 88%
  • Containment expected: Thursday August 29th, 2013 approx. 12:00 AM

Some resources:

We will keep you posted.

For more on the SNAMP project see: http://snamp.cnr.berkeley.edu/

This was originally posted on http://kellylab.berkeley.edu/.

 

Tuesday
Aug202013

American fire burns into SNAMP sites

American fire perimeter (red) as of 8-20-13The American fire is burning into our SNAMP study areas as of yesterday. Here is a snapshot of our study site and the fire perimeter (red) as of today (8-19-13 perimeter in orange). SNAMP control (yellow) and treatment (purple) watersheds are shown.

All SNAMP field crews are safely evacuated, with almost all field work completed for the year.

From the Incident Report: "The American Fire burning in heavy fuels on extreme slopes about 10 air miles northeast of the community of Foresthill, California, and eight air miles south of Interstate 80 has grown to 14,765 acres. While the fire is predominantly SimTable animation of American fire spread - modeled thru 8-14 I am guessingburning on the Tahoe National Forest within the North Fork of the Middle Fork American River drainage, there is a potential, given changes in weather or fire behavior, for the fire to threaten areas near Foresthill.

Active fire behavior continues on the eastern and southern flanks of the fire. Overnight, crews continued to build hand and dozer line to contain the active fire while evaluating future containment options. Firefighters will mop up and patrol containment line along Deadwood Road and Foresthill Divide Road south to the dozer line. Indirect line construction and mop up will continue down Deadwood Ridge. On the east side near Antoine, Manila and Screwauger Canyons, American fire as of 8-20-13 from ESRI onlinedirect and indirect line construction will continue, with support of retardant drops.

Active fire behavior and roll out of burning material continue to be of concern, and will be closely monitored. Strong, erratic outflow winds and lightning may occur today, as the National Weather Service’s Red Flag Warning remains in effect until 11 p.m. Wednesday.

Active fire behavior in very steep, inaccessible terrain makes preparation of contingency lines critical. Indirect attack is the safest way to manage fire in areas of steep and difficult terrain."

In the images to the left, both from ESRI online, there are a number of thermal hotposts in SNAMP territory American fire as of 8-21-13 from ESRI online(the red dots outside of the fire boundary) that were detected as of 10:30am 8-20-13 (upper image). As of 8-21-13 the MODIS hotspots indicate possible fire movement along Foresthill Rd to the east, and into the SNAMP control study area.

 

 

 

 

 

  Some resources:

We will keep you posted.

For more on the SNAMP project see: http://snamp.cnr.berkeley.edu/

This was originally posted on http://kellylab.berkeley.edu/.

Tuesday
Aug132013

Fall 2013 GIF Workshops Scheduled

The Fall 2013 schedule of workshops has been posted! Check them out at: http://gif.berkeley.edu/support/workshops.html.

Workshops include:

  • Intro to Geographic Information Systems (GIS): Environmental Science Focus
  • Intro to Geographic Information Systems (GIS): Social Science Focus
  • Intro to Global Positioning Systems (GPS): Working with Garmin receivers
  • Intro to Remote Sensing: Understanding digital imagery
  • Intro to Remote Sensing: Pixel-based analysis
  • Intro to Remote Sensing: Land cover change analysis
  • Intro to Remote Sensing: Object-based image analysis (OBIA)
  • Intro to Open Source GIS: Working with Quantum GIS (QGIS)
  • Intro to species distribution modeling
  • Creating your own web maps

ANR members are invited to attend. 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.

Tuesday
Aug062013

IGIS Retreat 2013

We just concluded our first IGIS Program all-hands-on-deck retreat. We evaluated our program components and made huge progress on planning for the future.  Key in our discussion was GIS Training for ANR, and linkages with the ANR Research and Extension Centers (RECs). The IGIS Program components include:

  • GIS Services Center: If you are in ANR and need help with your GIS Project, check out the ANR Services Center!
  • Training: We are developing a curriculum of GIS training.  Stay tuned! The first session ("Intro to WebGIS for ANR" involving Google and ESRI products) will be scheduled by the end of 2013.
  • ANR InfoBase: We are developing a database of REC related data and research project information.  These data will be made available through an online webGIS portal that is linked to other similar and complementary efforts statewide (including HOLOS).  
  • ANR EON: Eddy covariance towers and climate sensors will be placed at each ANR RECs. All sensor data will be available to ANR and other researchers. Check out Todd's post on setting up one of these towers.
Sunday
Aug042013

Workshop wrap up: Google Earth Higher Education Summit 2013

For three days in late July 2013 Kevin Koy, Executive Director of the GIF and Maggi spent time at Google with 50+ other academics and staff to learn about Google Earth's mapping and outreach tools that leverage cloud computing. The meeting was called Google Earth for Higher Education Summit, and it was jam packed with great information and hands-on workshops. Former Kellylabber Karin Tuxen-Bettman was at the helm, with other very helpful staff (including David Thau - who gave the keynote at last year's ASPRS conference). Google Earth Outreach has been targeting non-profits and K-12 education, and are now increasingly working with higher education, hence the summit. We learned about a number of valuable tools for use in classrooms and workshops, a short summary is here.  

Google Mapping Tools - the familiar and the new

  • Google Earth Pro. You all know about this tool, increasing ability to plan, measure and visualize a site, and to make movies and maps and export data.
  • Google Maps Engine Lite. This is a free, lite mapping platform to import, style and embed data. Designed to work with small (100 row) spreadsheets.
  • Google Maps Engine Platform. The scaleable and secure mapping platform for geographic data hosting, data sharing and map making. streamlines the import of GIS data: you can import shapefiles and imagery. http://mapsengine.google.com.
  • Google Earth Engine. Data (40 years of global satellite imagery - Landsat, MODIS, etc.) + methods to analyze (Google's and yours, using python and javascript) + the Cloud make for a fast analytical platform to study a changing earth. http://earthengine.google.org/#intro
  • TimeLapse. A new tool showcasing 29 years of Landsat imagery, allows you to script a tour through a part of the earth to highlight change. Features Landsat 4, 5 7 at 30m, with clouds removed, colors normalized with MODIS. http://earthengine.google.org/
  • Field Mobile Data Collection. GME goes mobile, using Open Data Kit (ODK) - a way to capture structured data and locate it and analyze after home.
  • Google Maps APIs. The way to have more hands-on in map styling and publishing. developers.google.com/maps
  • Street View. They have a car in 32 countries, on 7 continents, and are moving into national parks and protected areas. SV is not just for roads anymore. They use trikes, boats, snowmobiles, trolleys; they go underwater and caves, backpacks.

Here are a couple of my first-cuts:

Wednesday
Jul242013

New Google Earth Engine Timelapse tool! Very cool

Check out this new tool from Google:

This wicked cool tool is called Earth Engine Timelapse. check it out at http://bit.ly/timelapseearth

Explore a global timelapse of our planet, constructed from Landsat satellite imagery. Watch as mines spread across the surface of Wyoming. Each frame of the timelapse map is constructed from a year of Landsat satellite data, constituting an annual 1.7-terapixel snapshot of the Earth at 30-meter resolution. The Landsat program, managed by the USGS, has been acquiring images of the Earth's surface since 1972. Landsat provides critical scientific information about our changing planet.

Here is my first attempt showing some forest changes in the Sierra Nevada