FEMAT data – Ken Vance-Borland found an old 8-mm tape from 1994 with these data on it. Luckily, Forestry Computing still had a tape reader, so Terralyn loaded the data into Fordata.
USFS can connect to SDE even through their firewall, with an account name and password. This is promising for the larger goal of sharing Fordata across campus.
Sean has installed 2005 SQL Server and is starting to set it up in various locations. He will be moving databases over to this version gradually.
Theresa will be testing this. Her husband loaded it and lost his customized ArcToolboxes. John Wells is also going to be testing 9.2, trying it with SQL Express. Version 9.2 is available on the Resources drive, but the License Manager connection needs to be handled manually for the time being. Note, there is a service pack available as of 12/27/06
Kelly - We raised $165 for George L’s retirement gift, including a $100 gift certificate for Fiddler’s Green.
Dave – He is starting to prepare metadata for a number of his GIS layers. Remember him in this time of trial.
Jerry – She is waiting for people to test ArcGIS v9.2 before she loads it onto the lab computers. George’s XTools class was full, and now people are wanting it to get loaded as soon as possible. They are starting to push software installations using SMS (Server Management Software?), a new tool.
Heather - Finally getting to do some GIS work! But now she’s back to the database. She’s been doing a lot of metadata for the database and GIS, working with Matt to get it set up for web display. She also met with George L. to get some ideas for how they can best set up and integrate their system.
Dave - Going back to the basics: writing DOS batch files and Access Macros to automate file importation and database management. USGS will be getting v9.2 in January.
Keith – – Running the LAMPS model (landscape management) most of the time these days. Going through the process for promotion to Senior Faculty Research Assistant.
Theresa - Trying to get data for NEON locations. NEON is the National Ecological Observatory Network, and some LTER sites such as H.J. Andrews and Wind River may potentially be part of the network. It is very data management intensive, with lots of technological monitoring devices.
She was also finding a problem with inconsistent watershed areas between raster and vector datasets, using the 3D Analyst Surface Area calculations. (Follow-up note: Dave discovered that the 3D Analyst Surface Area 2D area value appears to be incorrect.)
Matt - “Oh, mexico / It sounds so sweet with the sun sinking low / Moons so bright like to light up the night / Make everything all right” – JT. Besides vacation, he’s been doing a lot of XML work lately (see Heather’s report). They’d like to automate the metadata production using XML to harvest information from the database. Theresa suggested that Matt talk with Yang, the resident XML expert.
Also, Ken Vance-Borland and Tom Manning are developing a Forest Science seminar series focusing mostly on the work of FRAs and post-docs, for Spring Term (?). If anyone is interested in giving a presentation, check with Ken.