California Protected Areas Database (CPAD 1.5) released

The new California Protected Areas Database (CPAD 1.5) has just been released in geodatabase and shape file formats.  Please visit www.calands.org to download.  Updates and improvements to CPAD are described in the CPAD Manual also available on the CALands web site.

WHAT'S NEW IN CPAD 1.5: CPAD 1.5 includes many updates and corrections to federal and state lands in the Sierra Nevada region, as well as a thorough review of the San Joaquin Valley and Bay Area.  CPAD data is better aligned to parcels, and we have more accurately captured managing agencies.  Urban parks data has generally been significantly improved in CPAD 1.5, with many missing parks now included and boundaries and attributes made more accurate.

VIEW CPAD DATA ONLINE, REPORT ISSUES: For those who do not use GIS or prefer to view CPAD via the web, you can do so though a google map overlay at http://www.calands.org/review.php.  We welcome input from the CPAD user community to keep us informed about errors and updates in CPAD.  Please report errors by clicking on the "Report Error" button.

GET NOTIFIED WHEN CPAD IS UPDATED: We encourage you to receive CPAD updates.  You can do this by clicking on the "Receive Update Notification" link on the calands.org homepage.  We will not distribute any of your information or use your email outside of the CPAD mailing list.  Registering helps us better serve the CPAD user community.

Hot of the Presses! Field Guide to California Agriculture

Anyone who travels California's byways sees the many faces of agriculture. A huge entwined business, farming and ranching are the state's dominant land use. Yet few Californians understand what animals and crops are raised or how agriculture reflects our relationship with nature. This fascinating and gorgeously illustrated field guide gathers essential information about agriculture and its environmental context, and answers the perennial question posed by California travelers: “What is that, and why is it growing here?” Paul F. Starrs's lively text explores the full range of the state's agriculture, deftly balancing agribusiness triumphalism with the pride of boutique producers, sketching meanwhile the darker shadows that can envelop California farming. Documented with diverse maps and Peter Goin's insightful photographs, this book captures the industry's energy and ingenuity and its wildly diverse iconography, from the mysteries of forbidden crops (like marijuana) to the majesties of scale in food production.

Check it.

ArcGIS.com online mapping now available

ESRI has just launched a public beta version of their online mapping service on arcgis.com. 

At the ArcGIS.com site, you can browse featured ArcGIS Online content such as maps and applications published by ESRI and the ArcGIS community, and add comments and ratings. You can upload and share your own items, either with specific groups that you created or are a member of, or you can share your items publicly. Use the newly designed Web Mapping application to quickly create online mashups that you can also share with others.

The design and interface is nicely done, and includes easy access to many of ESRI's online basemaps.  This site launch coencides with a greatly updated version of ArcGIS Explorer which provides a much improved free GIS viewer, tightly integrated with ArcGIS desktop layers and outputs.

First in new fleet of GPS satellites launches May 27, finally

The GPS IIF artworkMay is a big month for GPS. Ten years ago selective availability of GPS signals was disabled, making accurate GPS technology available to the public rather than just the U.S. military. Boy was field work hard back then - all that map reading!

And this week the Air Force will launch the first of the next generation of GPS satellites - the IIF SV-1. The new satellites each transmit three civilian GPS signals — we’ve typically been making do with just one for years — including a military-strength transmission that should enable autopilots to land with zero visibility. This means always-on GPS that’s accurate to within 3 feet, even indoors and in concrete urban canyons. From Wired.

According to the launch material, each IIF satellite will deliver:

• Two times greater predicted signal accuracy than heritage satellites;
• New L5 signals for more robust civil, commercial aviation;
• Military signal "M-code" and variable power for better resistance to jamming in hostile environments;
• A 12-year design life providing long-term service and reduced operating costs; and
• An on-orbit, reprogrammable processor, receiving software uploads for improved system operation.

More information here.

Denali's quilted pixels

The map portion of the quilt.Quilt detailThis is amazing. Denali Quilters created this giant (~10m2) quilt to interpret Denali National Park and Preserve's landcover types, based on an Earth Satellite Corp. classification. Each pixel is a 2 cm (!) quilt square (see detail at left).  Website here.

Google Map of Red Shirt Conflict in Bangkok

This upto-date Google map of red shirt conflict in Bangkok gives an interesting spatial perspective on the events taking place. Travelling here, it's also a helpful navigation tool to get around the city. I write this from an apartment marked by the red teardrop just to the right of the action.

Link to Google Map Here

Oil Spill Monitoring

A nonprofit called Skytruth has been monitoring the growing oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico using NASA/MODIS satellite imagery and publishing daily reports and analysis as the situation develops. They've also developed an interactive mapping site (Gulf Oil Spill Tracker site) where people can share photos or videos. Here is an example of one of the images they've produced:

 

 http://www.skytruth.org/

Mapping Ancient Civilization, in a Matter of Days using LiDAR!

From Science News in the NYTimesNYTimes covers lidar! The husband-and-wife team of Arlen F. Chase and Diane Z. Chase used lidar sensors to penetrate the jungle cover to get 3-D images of the site of ancient Caracol, in Belize, one of the great cities of the Maya lowlands. See article.

ArcGIS 10 coming in June

The latest ArcGIS release, ArcGIS 10, is slated to become available in June with a lot of big updates.  Check out ESRI's website to see more about what's coming.  They have several informative videos that demo the new software. 

Some of the improvements listed include:

• Faster display, smoother navigation, and the ability to run geoprocessing in the background.
• Perform in 3D virtually everything you can do in a 2D environment: modeling, editing, visualization, and analysis.
• Simplify map creation and production with streamlined sketch-based Desktop (2D/3D) and Web editing.
• Use and manage imagery more efficiently on the desktop and on the server.
• New image analysis window for image interpretation and processing.
• Automate common tasks and analyses with Python scripting.

The Wandering 48

Radical Cartography's latest project the Wandering 48 is a beautiful illustration of the distorion inherent in projections.