Mapping Traffic’s Toll on Wildlife

Roadkill and participatory GIS (two of my favorite topics) make it mainstream! A recent article from the New York Times describes a project out of UC Davis using citizen observers to map roadkill.

"Volunteers comb the state’s highways and country roads for dead animals, collecting GPS coordinates, photographs and species information and uploading it to a database and Google map populated with dots representing the kills. The site’s gruesome gallery includes photos of flattened squirrels or squashed skunks."

The project website can be found here: http://www.wildlifecrossing.net/california/

Read the NY times article here.

Clark Labs teams up with Google.org to develop web based land-cover analysis and REDD tools

Land Change Modeler for ArcGIS (Image used with permission from Clark Labs)

From Clark Labs news:

Clark Labs recently received a $451,000 grant from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation to support the development of land-cover analysis and REDD tools for use on Google's Earth Engine. REDD, Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation, is a climate change mitigation strategy that offers developing countries incentives to reduce forest carbon emissions. The complex implementation of REDD relies on substantial computing and data resources, and requires significant effort and investment. It is hoped that providing accessible modeling tools with Google’s cloud computing resources and wealth of geospatial data will encourage broader adoption of REDD.

The grant supports the development of a prototype of the land change analysis and prediction tools for Google.org’s Earth Engine platform, a technology in development that enables global-scale monitoring and measurement of changes in the Earth’s forests. It is planned that Google will host the required geospatial data layers to implement a REDD project, including maps of those factors identified as critical causes of deforestation, such as proximity to roads, slopes or distance from existing deforestation.

The new tools in development will guide the user through the steps of baseline development--land change analysis of the reference, project and leakage areas of a project, the identification of the carbon pools and input of carbon density values, and the estimation of emissions for projected dates. This new functionality will also directly produce the multitude of tables and graphics for the carbon accounting reporting requirement of REDD. The preparation costs of REDD will be significantly reduced by the automation provided by these tools.

Clark Labs is based within the Graduate School of Geography at Clark University in Worcester, MA and is the developer of the IDRISI Taiga GIS and Image Processing software and the Land Change Modeler software extension to ArcGIS. To view the full news release click here.

Wall-E was right, in 3D this time

As a follow-up to the post from last year from NASA showing a nice 2D visualization of the earth's satellites, here posted is a new 3D video visualization of their locations viewed in Google Earth. Why do we never see these critters in our imagery? By Analytic graphics inc. and gearthblog.com

Researching why animals move across the land

Collaring a zebraA very nice article about Wayne Getz's research in Africa: spatial ecology, epidemiology, conservation and citizen science. From Breakthroughs Magazine. 

In this article he talks about his evolution as a scientist from mathematician to geo-nerd. The article states: At the core of Getz’s work is how and why animals move across the land. People have sought answers to these questions for time immemorial - at first to improve success in the hunt and harvest, and much later to understand animals in and of themselves. His approach combines a mathematician’s genius for analysis with hands-on wildlife research. This unique perspective is revealing that animal travel patterns can provide a great number of insights into animal behavior, ecology, and epidemiology.

And now the GIS part: In recent years, the advent of global positioning system technologies, coupled with expanded telecommunications networks, have added up to a revolution in animal tracking. The modern version of the radio collar can map an animal’s position to within a couple of meters every few minutes, upload the stored data automatically to a satellite or cell phone network, and allow biologists to track the beast from afar for many weeks. 

Also read about his work in education and social justice in South Africa. Cool stuff. Check it.

The future is already here – it's just not evenly distributed. Or maybe it is.

William Gibson (yes that one) in the NYTimes Opinion page, writes about Google, and the way it has changed how we interact with information and the world. It is a really interesting article touching on human choice, surveillance, and the catch-up game the law plays with technology. This visionary author of Neuromancer says "Science fiction never imagined Google..." and goes on to describe its omipresence, our ready participation in this process, and our discomfort at the result. He is a fantastic writer. Check it:

Google is not ours. Which feels confusing, because we are its unpaid content-providers, in one way or another. We generate product for Google, our every search a minuscule contribution. Google is made of us, a sort of coral reef of human minds and their products.

Wow. Here is another example of his engaging and illuminating prose:

Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon* prison design is a perennial metaphor in discussions of digital surveillance and data mining, but it doesn’t really suit an entity like Google. Bentham’s all-seeing eye looks down from a central viewpoint, the gaze of a Victorian warder. In Google, we are at once the surveilled and the individual retinal cells of the surveillant, however many millions of us, constantly if unconsciously participatory. We are part of a post-geographical, post-national super-state, one that handily says no to China. Or yes, depending on profit considerations and strategy.

The title of this post comes from his oft-cited quote in 2003 in The Economist.

*About the Panopticon from wikipedia: The Panopticon is a type of prison building designed by English philosopher and social theorist Jeremy Bentham in 1785. The concept of the design is to allow an observer to observe (-opticon) all (pan-) prisoners without the incarcerated being able to tell whether they are being watched, thereby conveying what one architect has called the "sentiment of an invisible omniscience."

GIF Open House Today!

Thursday, September 2, 1-3 PM 

111 Mulford Hall

Check out new equipment and find out how mapping technology can enhance your research! 

The Geospatial Innovation Facility (http://gif.berkeley.edu) will be hosting an open house on Thursday, September 2 at 1PM.  Meet UC students, faculty, and staff who are interested in geospatial applications, and learn how the GIF can help you to utilize technologies including GIS, GPS, Remote Sensing, WebGIS, and 3D Visualization. 

Root beer floats will be available while supplies last!

Welcome to Fall 2010 with this stunner of a pic from NASA

Mataiva Atoll, Tuamotu Archipelago, South Pacific OceanFrom the NASA Earth Observatory Image of the Day: The Tuamotu Archipelago is part of French Polynesia, and forms the largest chain of atolls in the world. This astronaut photograph features Mataiva Atoll, the westernmost atoll of the Tuamotu chain. Mataiva Atoll is notable in that its central lagoon includes a network of ridges (white, image center) and small basins formed from eroded coral reefs. Mataiva means “nine eyes” in Tuamotuan, an allusion to nine narrow channels on the south-central portion of the island. The atoll is sparsely populated, with only a single village—Pahua—located on either side of the only pass providing constant connection between the shallow (light blue) water of the lagoon and the deeper (dark blue) adjacent Pacific Ocean. Much of the 10-kilometer- (6-mile-) long atoll is covered with forest (greenish brown). Vanilla and copra (dried coconut) are major exports from the atoll, but tourism is becoming a larger part of the economy.

This is not a satellite image, but a photograph taken by the Expedition 24 crew from the International Space Station (I think) on August 13, 2010, with a Nikon D2Xs digital camera using a 400 mm lens. More here.



Everyone should listen to today's Fresh Air interview

Not directly map related, but might be. As I sit here with three screens, email open, working on multiple projects, including upcoming semester's lectures, AND listening to today's Fresh Air, I am struck dumb. In this interview, in which dear old Terry Gross reveals her late nite email addiction (et tu Terry?), the guest Matt Richtel (NTimes) reveals the answers to the following questions (and many more): Why is email addicting? Are there downsides to our constant focus on multiple influxes of infomation? What are the psycological and neurological underpinnings to this madness? The answers involve dopamine, stress hormones, declining capacity to concentrate and create, and a whole lot of scary.

Are there parallels or lessons for us in our deluge of map-related technology and data? Yikes!

NASA's AIRS Instrument Sees Spread of Wildfire Pollution

A gripping watch: this animation focuses on the Russian fires, as seen from various angles. It shows carbon monoxide concetration at altitude 18,000 ft (5.5 km) as measured by the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument on NASA's Aqua spacecraft.
Image credit: NASA/JPL

USGS seeks input for new carbon accounting plan

A draft methodology is proposed in response to requirements by the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 to assess ecosystems for carbon stocks, carbon sequestration, and greenhouse-gas fluxes. The assessment will be conducted to estimate capacities of ecosystems to increase carbon sequestration and reduce greenhouse-gas fluxes, in contexts of land-use, land-cover, and land-management scenarios as well as other controlling processes, such as climate change and wildland fires. Results of the assessment will be useful for evaluating a range of choices for formulating mitigation strategies and other land management policies.

• Download the draft methodology document
• Read an abstract of the methodology
• Provide comments about the draft methodology