SDMG Notes for 26 April 2007

In attendance:

Keith Olson, Terralyn Vandetta, Garrett Meigs, Rebecca Kennedy, Ray Drapek, Kelly Christiansen, Matt Gregory, Theresa Valentine, Ken Pierce, Heather May, Dave Hockman-Wert

Notes: Heather

Treats: Terralyn

Agenda:

1. Speaker:

Theresa gave a demo of using animation in maps and graphs. You can export the animation to AVI or quicktime format. Theresa would like a tutorial on graphing – Ken said he will work on that.

2. Meetings:
  • Geospatial 2007: May 6th-11th. Website Theresa is on a team planning this event. It’s primarily a USFS/BLM event, but if others want to attend, it may be possible. (The registration page on the website gives options for non-BLM/USGS organizations, but the title does say “employees and selected guests” are invited.)
  • GIS In Action: April 17-18. (no report)
  • ESRI International User Conference: June 18-22 San Diego. Theresa and Heather going
  • Geoprocessing Group Meeting: Wednesday, May 23 from 10:00 - 12:00 location?
  • Society for Conservation GIS conference June 25-28 in Monterey, CA. Website
  • Open-source geospatial conference September 24-27 in Victoria, BC (Matt probably going).website
    3. Announcements
  • ArcGIS 9.2 contains 30m DEM for entire earth in data and maps folder.
  • Arc2Earth software available for exporting GIS data to be viewed with Google Earth. Dave sent us a link to a free script that does the same thing: website
    4. Round Table:
  • Matt: Mired in data requests.
  • Kelly: Working with model builder to replace some aml code – says it’s pretty easy but you’re limited to geoprocessing tools in the toolbox.
  • Rebecca: Involved with debate about vegetation mapping procedures, in particular trying to decide what scale is appropriate for managers to make management decisions on. Identifying the trade-offs and assumptions in different approaches and addressing the climate change issue.
  • Garrett: Ordered data from gateway for soils, precipitation.
  • Keith: Working with Python and NumPy for CLAMS scenarios on BLM land – looking at how ecological indicators respond to different strategies.
  • Dave: Dealing with confusing usage issues for geodatabases – tried to make a buffer from linear referenced stream data and got lots of overlapping polygons. He fixed it but it wasn’t easy.
  • Ken: He’s playing lots of racketball, although not winning very much. Working with Ecognition, GNN, GIS to determine appropriate scale for GNN maps. Creating hierarchical resolutions for a region and running GNN to see where scales start to converge.
  • Heather: SQL
  • 5. Next Meeting: May 17
  • Notes: Dave
  • Treats: Matt
  • Speakers: ?