geospatial matters
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Friday, August 26, 2011 at 8:15PM 
There are three evacuation zones in New York City that are based on the strength of the hurricane making landfall. Mayor Bloomberg has issued a mandatory evacuation of Zone A, plus areas of the Rockaways that are in Zone B, by 5 p.m. on Saturday. From the NYTimes.
Tuesday, August 23, 2011 at 11:13AM 
A 5.3 in Colorado, and a 5.8 in Virginia! The earlier Colorado tembler (8-23-11) was outside Trinidad, CO, and today's Virginia quake (8-23-11) was east of Charlottsville. Info from the USGS Earthquake site. Everyone at "Talk of the Nation" is freaking out on air!
Tuesday, August 16, 2011 at 1:17PM 
Sometime before the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, a camera was attached to a streetcar travelling north along Market Street, San Francisco, and recorded the hustle and bustle, the multi-modal transportation options, and the wonderful fashions of early 19th century San Francisco. The movie, which I happend to catch last week at SFMOMA as part of their great (but too large) Stein collection, is mesmerizing. Check it out here on You Tube. It is clearly pre-earthquake, but its exact timing has not been known until now.
Ferry Building arrivalIn an article in Photogrammetric Engineering and Remote Sensing, Richard Greene narrows the window of aquisition down to between 24 March and 30 March 1906, just weeks before the earthquake on 18 April. Remember, that earthquake and the fires that followed largely destroyed much of the city. He performs this feat of timing through detailed photogrammetry: determing the time of day, the solar position, and the time of year from shadows on cornices and other architectural details.
Another windy day in the city! these cornices were helpful in determing solar positionSo cool! The article can be found here. Full reference here:
Greene, R., 2011. Dating the fliming of "A trip down Market Street". Photogrametric Engineering & Remote Sensing 77, 839-848.
Check out some fun pics from the movie.
Monday, August 15, 2011 at 8:10AM 
Vegetation anomaly from AVHRRFrom NASA Earth Observatory. More of the United States was in exceptional drought in July 2011 than in any other month in the past 12 years, according to the National Climatic Data Center. The worst of the drought is spread across Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, and parts of Arizona, Colorado, Nebraska, and Louisiana. But 26 percent of the lower 48 states experienced severe to extreme drought in July.
On the other hand, about 33 percent of the contiguous United States experienced exceptionally rainy weather in July. The wet weather occurred largely in the Northern Plains and Western states.
These weather patterns—the mix of unusually dry and unusually wet—are reflected in plant growth throughout the month. The image shows plant growth in July compared to average conditions. Places where plants were growing more than average are green, while unusually poor growth is shown in brown. The image was made with data from the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer on the NOAA-18 POES satellite.
The worst growing conditions are, unsurprisingly, in the Southern Plains. States throughout the region reported poor pasture conditions and struggling crops. Much of the southeast and eastern United States is also mildly dry. These dry conditions weren’t helped by temperatures in July. For most of the United States, July was unusually hot, drying the soil and baking crops.
The Northern Plains and Western States, on the other hand, experienced a cool, rainy July. California had its eighth rainiest July on record, while Montana, North Dakota, Utah, Wyoming, and South Dakota all received above-average rain. This is reflected in plant growth, particularly in Montana and South Dakota.
The culprit behind these unusual weather patterns is a persistent high pressure system that is steering storms away from the south central United States. Based on current conditions, the Climate Prediction Center expects the drought to last through at least the end of October. In some parts of the South, it would take more than 20 inches of rain to end the drought in a month.
Monday, August 8, 2011 at 3:01PM 
Here is a great map tracking Diana Nyad's effort to swim the 103 miles from Cuba to Florida, without a shark cage. This should take about 60 hours. She's about a third there. Oh yeah, and she's nearly 62 years old. Holy moly. Go Diana!
Wednesday, July 27, 2011 at 5:10PM In the new NYT artilce "Digital Maps Are Giving Scholars the Historical Lay of the Land," Patricia Cohen discusses the new academic field known as spatial humanities. Historians, literary theorists, archaeologists and others are using Geographic Information Systems to re-examine real and fictional places like the villages around Salem, Mass., at the time of the witch trials; the Dust Bowl region devastated during the Great Depression; and the Eastcheap taverns where Shakespeare’s Falstaff and Prince Hal caroused.
“Mapping spatial information reveals part of human history that otherwise we couldn’t possibly know,” said Anne Kelly Knowles, a geographer at Middlebury College in Vermont. “It enables you to see patterns and information that are literally invisible.”
Fun stuff!
Monday, July 25, 2011 at 4:25PM Earlier this month I attended the ESRI User Conference in San Diego which consisted of numerous presentations by ESRI as well exhibits by various vendors. Maggi asked that I write up a short
summary. I've been collecting my thoughts and reviewing notes. There were three main points I wanted to explore aside from the overall experience and general opportunity to learn and be a part of the event.
Mobile GIS
ESRI has had a client for the iPhone for some time now. Soon they will have one for the Android platform as well. They had working phones for attendees to use with the ability to do real-time data updates. There is an API in beta for any ESRI customer to download. If you're interested please let me know and I can obtain it. The client software that actually runs on the Android device itself is also in the beta stage but is not yet available to download. Mobile clients can connect to your own ArcGIS server or to data served by ArcGIS Online hosted by ESRI.
The mobile application allows for collection of data, measuring distances, as well as real-time editing and is intended for general users who do not have to be GIS experts. The edits are shared right away with others who may be using a mobile or desktop application. Of course, in many situations users may be in an area without an active cell/data connection. It's still in various stages of development, but the plans are to have the mobile device cache the appropriate levels of map tiles, data, etc., and then sync with the server upon reconnecting much the same way other applications function when away from cell coverage.
ArcGIS Server Configuration
Web servers are typically configured to accept connections from web browsers on TCP port 80. Behind the scenes there can be many other servers feeding information on other ports. Sometimes the other servers can accept direct connections without the web server in the middle. For a number of reasons, security primarily, these other servers are often behind a firewall and do not accept direct connections from web browsers but do allow connections from the web server. ArcGIS Server communicates GIS data on port 8399. Since we generally have not had a need to serve confidential or sensitive data we have always allowed a direct connection to our servers on port 8399. Recently one of our clients found that their in-house network did not allow connections to port 8399 and no GIS data was appearing in their maps. Thanks to the help from Brian and Sarah V. we were able to come up with an implementation to allow the end users to connect without problems. But, it was unclear if this was consistent with the ongoing functionality of ArcGIS Server.
There are a number of ways to configure the web server to accept a connection for ArcGIS Server on port 80 and then go behind the scenes to port 8399. We have been experiencing various issues during the configuration process as outlined in ESRI and other documentation. There is a lot of good information available, but it has been in the form of a number of different help articles and
configuration instructions. It has been difficult to locate one set of cogent instructions to get things configured start to finish.
Thankfully, I was able to sit down one-on-one with an ESRI technical staff member at the conference. He was able to walk through the process on a demo computer outlining the various steps and explain the process. I had gotten so far on my own, but he was able to go further showing me the steps real-time. I will be taking a closer look at how to implement this configuration – which is generally considered to be the "correct" method in lieu of direct connections to port 8399 – in our environment.
ArcGIS Software Updates
Both ArcGIS Server and Desktop will be updated to version 10.1 with an expected release of spring 2012 and a number of functions are to be deprecated. Of course, the most visible changes are to the Desktop application.
ArcGIS Server
ArcGIS Desktop
It's clear that ESRI intends to continue enhancing their online functionality. Much of their effort is going toward making their desktop application more integrated with online data sharing. There is, of course, the arcgis.com service which is an appealing alternative for those without their own server. Mobile options are growing and again the emphasis is on real-time sharing and not just data collection with an upload later on. Right along with their online service is ArcGIS Server which ties together all the various clients and applications for an integrated approach. Your GIS data is the important focus – the same from desktop to mobile to server – and how you access it is, at best, secondary. ESRI has shown that they are willing to move forward and recognize today's environment by discontinuing older products such as Web ADF, ArcInfo Workstation, ArcIMS, and so on after having supported them beyond their prime levels of functionality. Overall the conference was a very positive experience, and I'm quite pleased to have had the opportunity to participate.
Thursday, July 21, 2011 at 12:54PM 
June solar radiation in YellowstoneA nice case study of detailed solar radiation modeling/mapping for Yellowstone National Park. All using existing ESRI spatial analyst tools.
Scientists at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Ames Research Center, including our buddy Chris Potter, the Yellowstone Ecological Research Center (YERC), the Creekside Center for Earth Observation (CCEO), and Esri have created 30-meter solar and temperature distribution maps in mountainous Yellowstone National Forest using tools in the ArcGIS Spatial Analyst extension. These products support ecological management in Yellowstone.
An overview of ESRI's Solar Radiation Tools can be found here. Go forth and insolate.
Thursday, July 21, 2011 at 9:16AM 
Querência, in Mato Grosso, BrazilA new article in Environmental Research Letters “Statistical confirmation of indirect land use change in the Brazilian Amazon," looks at how mechanized agriculture in Brazil affects the country's forest in the Amazon, which is the second largest forest in the world. The article is authored by Marcelus Caldas, an assistant professor of geography at K-State, and colleagues Eugenio Arima from the University of Texas at Austin, and Peter Richards and Robert Walker from Michigan State University. Using data from 2003-2008, the team statistically linked the loss of forest area as the indirect effect of changing pastureland into space for soybean and biofuel crops in counties bordering the Amazon.
Marcelus Caldas, an assistant professor of geography at K-State says: "Between 2003-2008 soy production expanded in Brazil by 39,000 square kilometers. Of this 39,000 square kilometers, our study shows that reducing soybean production by 10 percent in these pasture areas could decrease deforestation in heavily forested counties of the Brazilian Amazon by almost 26,000 square kilometers -- or 40 percent."
The Brazilian government says soybean and sugarcane are grown largely in degraded pasture, but data from the team's spatial analysis work cascading impacts: many of these crops have crept into the Brazilian savanna, a large area bordering the Amazon that's used for cattle. Consequently, this has created deforestation in the savanna, driving cattle inside the Amazon.
"Our data shows that the Amazon now has 79 million heads of cattle," Caldas said. "Fifteen years ago, it had less than 10 million. That means that there's a problem with cattle moving inside the forest."
This could be exacerbated with increased global demand for food crops in Brazil. The tradeoffs between food, fuel and forest could continue to come down on the side of food and fuel, at the expense of forests.
Monday, July 18, 2011 at 7:38AM 
Berkeley close up: orange are planned wetland restoration sites; yellow lines are impacted streams, blue lines are natural streams.SFEI's Wetland Tracker site has been updated with new wetland data. Specifically, the site makes available BAARI data. BAARI - the Bay Area Aquatic Resource Inventory - is a detailed base map of the Bay Area's aquatic features that includes all wetlands, open water, streams, ditches, tidal marshes and flats, and riparian
areas. The BAARI data will be used to track changes in the extent and condition of aquatic habitat, aid in ecological sample drawing, and is featured on the California Wetlands Portal, where users can browse the area's
aquatic features and restoration projects on an interactive map.