How to Download Lots of Lidar from the Digital Coast

Via LASTOOLS: Kirk Waters, physical scientist at NOAA, describes in his latest blog entry how to efficiently download lots of compressed LiDAR data in LAZ format from NOAA's Digital Coast servers:

http://www.csc.noaa.gov/digitalcoast/geozone/how-to-download-lots-of-lidar-on-digital-coast

He also conjectures that more LiDAR software will be able to input and output the LAZ format soon. After FME, TopoDOT, GlobalMapper, RiProcess, QT Modeler / QT Reader, ... (see http://laszip.org for a complete list of LAZ-enabled software and LAZ download sites).

The Coastal Services Center, home of the Digital Coast, is one cool place. I visited there in the 1990s while at NOAA-Beaufort and working with the C-CAP program.

Check out the GIF workshops for Spring 2013

The GIF workshop schedule for Spring 2013 has been posted! We have a new workshop this semester on Lidar! check it out!

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.

Undergraduate students can apply for financial assistance to take a workshop through the GIF Undergraduate Scholarship Program.

Check them all out here.

Mapping and interactive projections with D3

D3 is a javascript library that brings data to life through an unending array of vizualizations.  Whether you've realized it or not, D3 has been driving many of the most compeling data visualizations that you have likely seen throughout the last year including a popular series of election tracking tools in the New York Times.

You can find a series of examples in D3's gallery that will keep you busy for hours!

In addition to the fantastic charting tools, D3 also enables a growing list of mapping capabilities.  It is really exciting to see where all this is heading.  D3's developers have been spending a lot of time most recently working on projections transformations.  Check out these amazing interactive projection examples:

Projection Transitions

Comparing Map Projections

Adaptive Composite Map Projections (be sure to use chrome for the text to display correctly)

Can't wait to see what the future has in store for bringng custom map projections to life in more web map applications!

New Landsat Satellite set to launch Feb 11th

NASA's Landsat Data Continuity Mission (LDCM) is scheduled to launch Feb. 11 from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. A joint NASA and U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) mission, LDCM will add to the longest continuous data record of Earth's surface as viewed from space.

LDCM is the eighth satellite in the Landsat series, which began in 1972. The mission will extend more than 40 years of global land observations that are critical in many areas, such as energy and water management, forest monitoring, human and environmental health, urban planning, disaster recovery and agriculture. NASA and the USGS jointly manage the Landsat Program. Check out more info.

Lisa Schile is off to Abu Dhabi

Dr. Lisa Schile is off to Abu Dhabi for a postdoctoral research position with the Smithsonian Institution. She'll be working on a project monitoring carbon sequestration in wetlands. We checked out some of the available Abu Dhabi imagery on-line. The country has a long and interesting coastline, with many mangroves and wetlands, and of course the ever increasing coastal development. Here is a snapshot from NASA of coastal development. Lisa has started a blog, and taking lots of pics for us to see.

VTM wrap-up: check out some neat photos and videos...

The VTM collection is a great resource from the 1920s and 1930s that we are woking with as part of our Keck project. David Ackerly, Patrick McIntyre, Jim Thorne and I are working with four different parts of the collection:

• 17,860 plots with digitized vegetation and locality data (UC Berkeley, Geospatial Innovation Facility);
• ~195,000 square kilometers of digitized and georeferenced vegetation maps, covering 45% of the total area of California (UC Davis Information Center for the Environment);
• 20,791 herbarium specimens with locality and collection information (UC Berkeley & Jepson Herbaria); and
• ~ 3,100 digitized photographs (UC Berkeley Marion Koshland Bioscience and Natural Resources Library).

Pretty cool stuff! Some related cool VTM-related work out there:

First, Jim Thorne's fabulous movie about using VTM data to look at change in vegetation: http://vimeo.com/41524838.

Also, a nice photo re-shoot project from Elsmere Canyon that Patrick McIntyre pointed out...

And one of his own before and after photos.

The original VTM version...

Patrick's retake, 2012

Launch of Sonoma County Veg Mapping Program

The Sonoma County Agricultural Preservation and Open Space District has begun a 3-5 year program to map Sonoma County’s diverse plant communities.

An accurate, up-to-date map of vegetation and habitat type is key to ensuring good planning and management for watershed protection, flood control, fire and fuels management, and wildlife habitat conservation. A vegetation map is also critical to assessing climate benefits provided by the landscape, such as the amount of carbon being absorbed from the atmosphere or the degree to which the landscape is buffering extreme weather events.

These folks are using 3-6-inch CIR imagery and obia to map vegetation across Sonoma County. GIF is serving up the imagery! Check it out!

Resource for learning programming

From Jenny: check out codeacademy.com for resources on a variety of programming languages in series of courses grouped to help you master a topic or language. Choose one to start learning! Looks good. Thanks Jenny!

Report from the Lidar and NCALM workshop

December 2 2012 the GIF and UC Merced scientists hosted a workshop on lidar for CZO support. This is an annual workshop organized by Dr. Qinghua Guo.

Qinghua presented an overview of his lidar work, which is pretty extensive, and Juan Carlos Fernandez Diaz from NCALM presented an overview of the NCALM program. He talked about the NCALM workflow and their instruments, including their new bathymetric lidar instrument (that can get bathy and terrestrial simultanously for coastal studies), their waveform lidar instrument, and their new balloon-based lidar instrument (cool!) They can run a suite of instruments at the same time: waveform and camera, etc. One of the great things he brought up is the support for graduate students:

The National Center for Airborne Laser Mapping surveys up to ten projects (each generally covering no more than 40 square kilometers) each year for graduate student PIs who need Airborne Laser Swath Mapping data. Beginning in 2012, graduate student PIs can specify either near infrared (Optech Gemini, 1064 nm) or green (Optech Aquarius, 532 nm) bathymetric ALSM data (only one wavelength can be selected), as well as optionally request high resolution aerial photography in conjunction with the ALSM collection. Graduate student proposals must define a basic research question in the geosciences (broadly defined). Check it out!

The 21st century map: it involves citizens and the web

Check out this neat article about how research will likely increasingly use the web, mobile apps and the citizens who love them, in gathering data and in sharing information.

Rawiya Kameir says, in the article entitled "Researchers must harness powers of web and citizen science, experts say": As the web and web-based apps become more and more sophisticated, the role played by citizen science is growing in scope and size. And as the scientific process evolves, citizen involvement - especially in scientific endeavors that require large data sets - will become a cornerstone of research.

As the web and web-based apps become more and more sophisticated, the role played by citizen science is growing in scope and size. And as the scientific process slowly evolves, citizen involvement - especially in scientific endeavours that require large data sets - will become a cornerstone of research

Read more: http://www.itproportal.com/2012/11/10/researchers-must-harness-powers-of-web-and-citizen-science-experts-say/#ixzz2DRtd9Mvy

searchers must harness powers of web and citizen science, experts say

Read more: http://www.itproportal.com/2012/11/10/researchers-must-harness-powers-of-web-and-citizen-science-experts-say/#ixzz2DRtWckCW

Researchers must harness powers of web and citizen science, experts say

Read more: http://www.itproportal.com/2012/11/10/researchers-must-harness-powers-of-web-and-citizen-science-experts-say/#ixzz2DRtQgyqP

http://www.itproportal.com/2012/11/10/researchers-must-harness-powers-of-web-and-citizen-science-experts-say/#ixzz2ChoOfadS