HR 1581: The Great Outdoors Giveaway Act

Officially called the “Wilderness and Roadless Area Release Act," HR 1581, recently introduced by Rep. McCarthy (R-CA) and co-sponsored by Rep. Pearce (R-NM), would roll back protections from 58.5 million acres of Forest Service roadless areas and another 6.7 million acres of BLM Wilderness Study Areas. The bill would nullify the Roadless Rule and eliminate all Wilderness Study Areas. Bird's Eye View created the map below for the PEW Environmental Group to highlight the issue.  Protections would be removed from all the red areas in this map. This has caused a broad coalition of conservation organizations to call it the Great Outdoors Giveaway.

All of these areas represent potential wilderness, and they would all be opened to road-building and off-road vehicle use–impacts. Not only would existing protections for these areas be reversed, but future administrations would be prevented from ever protecting Wilderness Study Areas or unroaded Forest
Service Lands.

For more information go to: PEW Environmental Group

FOSS4G Workshop for Educators at FOSS4G

This fall Bird's Eye View (with the support of the GeoTech Center) will be holding the FOSS4G Workshop for Educators at the Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial Conference (FOSS4G) in Denver, Colorado. This is exciting for at least two reasons. Having the FOSS4G Conference in North America, let alone the United States, is fairly uncommon. In recent years it has been held in Australia, South Africa and Spain. Secondly, the workshop will premier one of the only FOSS GIS curricula in the United States. Entitled Introduction to Open Source GIS and Web Mapping, it is currently being taught at Central New Mexico Community College.

Free and  open source software comprises one of the fastest evolving sectors of GIS. While FOSS GIS software has been around since the 1980's, recent years have seen the software becoming much more mature and user friendly. There are great FOSS GIS products for the desktop, web server, web client, spatial database and mobile GIS. Historically, ease of access and installation has been a major hurdle for those wanting to transition to FOSS GIS software. Now there are intuitive Windows installers for all the leading packages.

The course is expected to become increasingly important to the CNM program. In New Mexico, employers are starting to favor applicants with knowledge of both ESRI and FOSS applications. This is in part due to the economic times. Students at CNM and elsewhere learn GIS in pure ESRI environments. Most are shocked to discover how many capable FOSS GIS software packages exist.

The course sticks to a pure FOSS paradigm. For example, assignments and lectures are provided in Open Office versus Microsoft Office. The students are not introduced to much new GIS material in the course, save web mapping. Rather they are shown how to do things they have learned in other foundational courses using FOSS GIS software. The packages used include: Quantum GIS, GRASS GIS, GDAL/OGR, SpatiaLite, PostgreSQL/PostGIS, and MapServer. They are also introduced to open standards and open data. Midway through the semester they are given a final project assignment. For this they research a FOSS GIS package not being covered in the course lab, and during  the last week of class they present their findings to the class. This exposes the students to a large number of new tools.

The web mapping portion is an introduction to web mapping and the web in general. Part of the overall goal for the course is to make it accessible to students who have completed the Introduction to GIS course. So, this course has no programming requirement. Google maps (although no open source) is used as a gentle introduction to web mapping. Then students move on to labs where they use MapServer to create basic web mapping applications. 

The workshop this fall will target educators wanting to incorporate FOSS GIS into their curricula, or those who are just curious about what FOSS GIS is and what it can do. The course goals, readings, labs and exam structures will be shared. Attendees will also get to try their hand at a lab or two. For more information visit the conference workshop page.

Some maps of the Wallow fire in Arizona

The Wallow Fire in Arizona has now burned more than 300,000 acres and is 0% contained. This makes it the third largest wildfire in Arizona history so far. The smoke plume is spreading past the Rio Grande Valley in New Mexico.  Visibility in Albuquerque has been reduced to 1 mile or less several times during the last week. Here are some of the more interesting maps I've seen recently.

From AZ Central.com here's a fire progression up to June 6th.  You can click on the link go directly to the site.

From NASA here is a MODIS satellite image from June 4th showing the smoke plume spreading far into New Mexico.  Click on the image to go directly to this NASA site. 

From Wildfire Today here is a map of fire danger across the lower 48.

Society for Conservation GIS Agenda Posted!

The agenda for the SCGIS 2011 Annual Conference is online.  This years conference will be held at Northwoods Resort in Big Bear Lake, California (July 16 -19).

Highlights include a keynote address by ecological niche modeling expert Dr. Richard Pearson (AMNH), and a special symposium on Wildlife Habitat Connectivity.  

The symposium includes talks and technical presentations by Dr. Paul Beier (NAU), Dr. Dave Theobald (CSU) and Dr. Carlos Carroll (Klamath Center for Conservation Research ).  Each of these researchers is on the leading edge of connectivity research for wildlife. If you're interested in this topic this symposium is not to be missed!

The remainder of the agenda is full of great talks and workshops including topics like, climate change, aquatic and marine GIS, technology tips and tricks, collaboration, habitat modeling, and sustainable development. 

I hope to see you there!

A day of hiking and birding after a long week of GIS

Embudo Canyon HikeAfter a long week at the computer, today I was able to get out and do some hiking in the Sandias! I started out early and headed up the Embudo trail. The trail was quiet and when I reached the seeps from Embudo Spring there were birds everywhere. The assortment of birds included some of the most colorful the Sandias has to offer. The highlights included a both Black-chinned and Black-throated Sparrows, a flock of Western Tanagers, several Yellow-rumped Warblers, an American Redstart, a Plumbeous Vireo and the ubiquitous Spotted Towhees.  Also heard were lots of Canyon and Rock Wrens.  Photos below.  NOTE:  I can't take credit for the bird photos.  I found redistributable photos off of the internet just to pass on the beauty of today's birding trip. 

American RedstartPlumbeous Vireo

Western Tanager

Black-throated SparrowBlack-chinned Sparrow

Will the real Osama Bin Laden compound please stand up.

In the hours after the announcement of Bin Laden's death people scrambled to Google Earth to find the location of Abbottabad, Pakistan and the compound. There were several incorrect guesses, like the example I found below, and posted Sunday night.

Part of the issue was that until yesterday the imagery Google had for the area was acquired in 2001, years before the compound had been built.  Yesterday Google updated their imagery to data acquired on June 14, 2005 (ZDNet).  In the 2005 data (below) the compound can be seen in an unfinished state.

Below is an image of the compound in it's current state from the CIA.