SDMG Notes for 10 March 2005

In attendance:

Matt, Keith, Theresa, Dave H-W, George M-W, Sean

Speaker: Michael Guzy, Research Associate with John Bolte in Bioengineering

discussed the Pacific Northwest Regional Collaboratory’s “Sustainability Indicators Decision Support System”. The SDDS is an online integrative framework for PNWRC projects with “value-added” decision support for natural resource, sustainability planning, and alternative futures analysis. The discussion will include issues of spatial data management, Web Map Services, and also the mechanics of developing and integrating a host of Web Services from the partner institutions. Questions regarding our experience with ArcGIS Server 9 will be welcome.

Treats: Matt
Notes: Keith

Python Group (9 March)

Four new people showed up. A few from Benton County and a few from ODOT. The group attempted to join a table to a Geodatabase (GDB) and export the data to a shapefile. They decided that there was an issue with the path to the GDB featureclass. Next meeting on April 13th.

Meetings:

GIS In Action: March 28-29 in Portland

Forest Service/BLM GIS Meeting: April 18-22 in Phoenix

Society of Conservation GIS Meeting July 31-August 2, 2005 in Monterey, CA

ESRI User Conference in San Diego July 25th-29

Mid Willamette Valley GIS Meeting: March 1 in Albany (report)

2005 Digital Ortho Quads:

Full Color and Color IR 1m/0.5m resolution. The data is 9 terrabytes and will be delivered on disks this December or later. The data is for all of Oregon and was funded in part by the USDA Farm Bureau for farming interests.

Histogram Equalization:

Matt discovered a program called MAD by Todd Schroder that does histogram equalizations between imagery scenes. The program is written in the IDL/ENVI environment.

Training needs:

ArcIMS/ArcSDE: Not in the near future.

ArcGlobe?: Dave did some experimenting, but had refresh issues. Matt had similar issue and resolved it somehow.

Intro to ArcGIS (in October for novices and beginner users)

Plotter training: Theresa is now the contact for the FS users of the plotters in FSL (until decided otherwise by IT Committee). We discussed getting more helpdesk participation with plotter, especially with the PC/drivers and network end of things. Theresa is going to do a general plotter training soon.

Data Storage Issues:

Sean reports that there are now cheaper storage devices on the market (4 TB). Theresa brought up the forGIS migration to SDE issue. Sean and Theresa will compare the Andrews site data in SDE and in the older format to see if the data storage requirements change when migrated to SDE. Sean noted that SDE tracking queries can eat up disk space.

ArcGIS Server:

We now have the CDs. Yeah! Sean will setup test arcGIS server sometime next week. This server will not be for production use.

Round Table:

Theresa – LTER review in July. Web site stability critical to review. Sean will look into upgrades that may help stabilize the web site next week.

Keith – Getting photorealistic visualizations of forested landscapes going. He is using Visual Nature Studio 2 which is an upgrade to World Construction Set. The program is expensive ($2000) and difficult to learn, but produces nice results. The software is made by 3D Nature.

Dave – He and George L. did a GIS talk with OSU students. Main theme was ‘GIS matters’. They also presented dynamic segmentation.

Next Meeting: April 14th
Speakers:

Possibly Lisa to do summary of statistics discussions or Mike Furnas. There was interest in speakers on presentation techniques.