Tim Bean

Tim is a PhD student here in the College of Natural Resources. He will be presenting on The Human Footprint project, mapping the last of the wild places on Earth. Tim worked on this project while working with the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS).

Kristin Byrd

Recent Applications of Mapping and Spatial Data in California Academy of Sciences Research and Exhibits

Bio: Kristin received her Ph.D. in 2005 from Maggi Kelly’s lab in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management (ESPM). Kristin’s research has covered the impacts of land use on biodiversity, wetland ecosystems, and fire management through the use of remote sensing, spatial data analysis and field sampling. For her dissertation Kristin studied the long-term effects of agriculture on protected salt marsh in the Elkhorn Slough watershed, located on the coast of Monterey Bay. Kristin completed post-doctoral research with Adina Merenlender, also in ESPM, on the effectiveness of conservation easements for threat abatement. She is currently the GIS Coordinator at the California Academy of Sciences, where she advises and trains researchers on the integration and analysis of geographical data in biological studies that address topics in biogeography, biodiversity hotspots, climate change, and conservation.

Abstract: The objectives of the Research Division of the California Academy of Sciences (CAS) are to explore and explain the evolution and maintenance of life. Scientists seek knowledge about phylogenetic relationships, taxonomic and genomic diversity and the mechanisms of evolutionary change. This work is supported by the museum’s collections containing nearly 20 million specimens. With a Conservation Grant from ESRI, researchers have begun to build on these core research areas to include biogeography, species distribution modeling and applied conservation science. In particular the Center for Biodiversity Research (CBR) explores additional uses of museum collection data through new geographic and computational tools. Their focus is to explain plant and animal distributions based on the verified records provided by museum collections. This talk will highlight some new CAS research projects applying GIS and spatial analysis. These projects include the use of climate data to explain the geographic variation in nesting strategies of the California seed-harvesting ant (Pogonomyrmex californicus), a study of morphological variation in redbud (Cercis canadensis) in Mexico and Texas, and an assessment of spatial patterns of biodiversity in the Gaoligongshan, a mountainous biodiversity hotspot located in Yunnan Province, China, where CAS scientists have completed a 10-year multi-taxa inventory. CBR’s current research focus is in predicting species distribution shifts under alternative climate change scenarios. Several ongoing species distribution modeling efforts are geared toward the design and implementation of wildlife connectivity corridors. Finally, the Morrison Planetarium plans to develop programming that includes earth-based scientific visualization, which will rely on the use of satellite imagery and vector data.

Michelle Koo

Using biodiversity informatics and GIS, Michelle is creating models of the evolutionary landscape for California's endemic species by trying to identify regions of rapid diversification that ultimately may be used in conservation prioritization

Claire Kremen

Climate Change: Challenges and Opportunities for the GIS/Remote Sensing Community

Bio: Claire Kremen is Assistant Professor in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management at University of California, Berkeley, and an Associate Conservationist with the Wildlife Conservation Society. Her primary interest is to use biological, social and economic data to develop conservation plans that benefit both the environment and people, and her work has included a wide array of topics, from the economics and ecology of ecosystem services, to reserve design and ecological monitoring. She was recently awarded a MacArthur Fellowship for her contributions to ecology, agriculture and biodiversity. Her work reaches from theory to practice and includes hands-on conservation action, including design and establishment of one of Madagascar’s largest national parks. Her current research focuses on restoring pollination services within farming landscapes, using both predictive modeling and field studies. She was a member of the recent National Academy of Sciences study on the status of pollinators in North America. In Madagascar, she works to establish a national web-based conservation-planning tool by accumulating data on species occurrences, developing predictive models of species distributions, conducting conservation analyses, and making data and analyses accessible via the Internet. She taught Conservation Biology as a professor at Princeton University from 2001-2005, and continues to teach related topics now that she is at U C Berkeley. She received her Ph.D. in Zoology from Duke University in 1987 as an NSF and James B. Duke Fellow, and her B.Sc. in Biology from Stanford University in 1982. She is a scientific advisor for several conservation organizations and sits on the Editorial Board of Conservation Biology. She is a 2001 recipient of the McDonnell 21st Century Research Award.

Abstract: A key consideration in planning climate change is whether species can track their climate niche as climatic conditions change. Their ability to do so depends both on the spatial distribution of suitable habitat over time, and their dispersal abilities. For 31 lemur species in Madagascar, we created niche-based distribution models based on locality points and climate surfaces in 2000, and then projected these models for conditions in 2020, 2050 and 2080, based on two different climate change scenarios, modeled using three different climate change models. We then defined suitable habitat within the suitable climate space as all grid cells containing a given percentage of forest cover. After identifying regions of suitable habitat for each time slice, we used maximum flow modeling (a graph-theoretic approach) for assessing each species' ability to move between patches of suitable habitat in different time slices. We assumed that species could only move through grid cells with at least 15% forest cover, and assessed their ability to reach suitable habitat patches between time slices based on species-specific estimates of annual dispersal rates (diameter of home range/age at first reproduction). All but two species are predicted to have some suitable habitat in Madagascar in all four time slices. Factoring in dispersal ability shows, however, that some species may not be able to track their climate niches to reach these suitable areas. Specifically, assuming that current forest cover is maintained, three species would not be able to reach areas of suitable habitat. Assuming that no forest cover remains outside of protected areas, four additional species would not be able to reach areas of suitable habitat. However, if all current forests could be protected, about half of the species distributions are predicted to expand with climate change – providing additional motivation for further forest protection. Following these preliminary findings, we plan to conduct an optimal network flow analysis to identify an efficient set of areas that would potentially protect the most vulnerable species (e.g the seven species currently predicted not able to reach suitable areas under the scenario of forest loss outside of Pas) and also reduce the vulnerability of other species, without requiring protection of all remaining forests.rio of forest loss outside of Pas) and also reduce the vulnerability of other species.

Jon Stiles

Jon is the Assistant Director for UC DATA Archive. He is currently directing UC Berkeley's Census Research Data Center (RDC) which offers high resolution census data. Jon will be presenting on the GIS data that is offered through the RDC, and how you can access them.

Tara Byrnes

GeoEye High Resolution Imaging Constellation

Bio: Tara Byrnes, GeoEye Manager, North America Reseller Channel Tara Byrnes joined GeoEye in May of 2007 as Manager of Partner Development for North America. With 12 years of experience in the GeoSpatial Market, spending close to 8 years with leading GIS software company, ESRI, Tara brings a unique perspective to the geo world. Spending time selling GIS software, marketing and selling to commercial, federal and state and local governments, planning GIS conferences and GIS Day events and now managing imagery focused VARs, Tara has a mutli-faceted approach to understanding the rapidly changing Geospatial arena. She holds a degree in Geography and Environmental Science and enjoys skiing, hiking, traveling and hockey.

Abstract: The IKONOS satellite, launched in September 1999, started the high-resolution commercial remote sensing industry. The launch marked the beginning of the "Age of Transparency". For the first time, commercial companies could take advantage of a technology that was previously only available to government intelligence agencies. Finally, high-resolution, map-accurate satellite images could be used for oil and gas exploration, land management, environmental monitoring, local and regional government, disaster relief, news gathering, and many other geospatial applications. With the recent launch of IKONOS' new orbital companion, GeoEye-1, we can see our world better than ever. GeoEye-1 is the world's highest resolution and most accurate commercial Earth-imaging satellite. Using the IKONOS and GeoEye-1 satellite constellation, more frequent imaging is possible. Additionally, 0.5 meter resolution color imagery will lead to even more applications for commercial organizations that map, measure and monitor the world.

Sarah Manley

OpenStreetMap: Past, Present and Future

Abstract: Geodata such as street maps or postcode databases are generally held in state-controlled monopolies, restricting the ability of ordinary hackers to make things and tell stories with maps. OpenStreetMap.org is developing the software and community needed to create open maps collaboratively in a wiki-like way. Maps are made using Yahoo! aerial imagery and freely-available Landsat satellite photography, user-submitted GPS traces with an open RESTful API and four community-written editors. Maps have been bootstrapped from other sources including a delivery company that has GPS units attached to its couriers and public domain maps. Eyeballs and footsteps are used to refine this data into a usable map. This talk will provide a broad overview of OpenStreetMap, it's uses past, present and future.

Gary Geller

TerraLook: Free satellite images for busy people and the technologically disinterested

Bio: Gary is deputy manager of the NASA Ecological Forecasting Program. He has a Ph.D in Biology from UCLA, where he focused on botany and ecology. At JPL he worked on the ASTER instrument which takes pictures of Earth from space, a nine-year task after which he took a 16 month leave-of-absence. During this leave he began, largely by accident, working with biodiversity conservation managers in Southeast Asia and elsewhere to understand why they did not use more satellite data, and TerraLook gradually emerged. He returned to JPL in 2003 and is now Deputy Manager of the NASA Applied Sciences Ecological Forecasting Program.

Abstract: Access to satellite images has traditionally been limited to science communities with specialized tools and expertise, even though other communities, such as conservation, also could use them. TerraLook addresses this problem by providing satellite images as simple, georeferenced jpeg images and packaging them with uncomplicated software for viewing and analysis. Users can select and order the images with the US Geological Survey "Glovis" tool, which provides access to the full ASTER image archive since 2000, plus Landsat images from about 2000, 1990, and 1975. The TerraLook desktop software is a free, Open Source, image processing and GIS (Geographic Information System) package that supports overlay creation and display, image adjustment and annotation, image comparison, and a variety of other GIS capabilities. In this talk Gary will discuss the origins of TerraLook, what it does, and some examples of how it is being used.

http://terralook.cr.usgs.gov/

Josh Livni

Wallkable Neighborhoods

Bio: Josh Livni is the founder of Umbrella Consulting, a consortium of GIS and web developers. His specialty is in helping organizations to analyze and visualize their spatial data, and in integrating analytic, cartographic, and statistical tools with modern web technologies. He is an active participant in the open source geospatial community, a co-founder of CUGOS (the Cascadia Users of Geospatial Open Source), and contributes to a number of open source GIS software projects.

Abstract: Walkable neighborhoods offer surprising benefits to our health, the environment, and our communities. Throughout the world, but especially in Europe, Canada, and the United States, numerous jurisdictions are starting to consider impacts of walkability in health and urban planning. This presentation will describe how a popular website, walkscore.com, integrated open source solutions in their recent analysis of the top forty most populous cities in the United States. Walkscore.com is a project of Front Seat, a civic software company and incubator.

The presentation will describe some of the reasons for using Open Source, and the methodology of the analysis. The workflow of publishing point datasets to raster tiles on the web will also be covered, as will a brief overview of the new App Engine based API. While the case study is walkability, this presentation may be of interest to anyone who is interested in PostGIS for analysis, or useful methods for displaying large datasets on an interactive map.

Brian Soland

Land Use, Health and GIS in Richmond, California

Bio: Brian Soland is a planner at MIG Inc. in Berkeley, California. His recent work focuses on transit-oriented development, urban design, and physical planning for successful projects such as the Richmond General Plan Update, San Pablo Avenue Specific Plan, and the Railroad Avenue eBART Station Area Specific Plan in Pittsburg, California.

Abstract: This presentation will provide real world examples of how land use policy, health and GIS analysis can come together and foster positive change for communities. Planner Brian Soland of MIG, Inc. will describe the planning process, health indicators, and analysis conducted for the City of Richmond's revolutionary Community Health and Wellness Element. Funded through a grant from the California Endowment, the Element is one of the first of its kind in California and features extensive analysis of land use and community health as part of the City of Richmond's General Plan Update.

Tim Sinnott

Tim Sinnott is the GIS Manager at GreenInfo Network in San Francisco. He will be presenting on GreenInfo's use of GIS for public interest groups and discussing/demonstrating some current marine and land conservation projects.

Alicia Torregrosa

Climate Change: Challenges and Opportunities for the GIS/Remote Sensing Community

Bio: Alicia Torregrosa is a physical scientist with the Western Geographic Science Center of the US Geological Survey (USGS) in Menlo Park, CA. She will be presenting examples of climate change research from across the USGS and results from her "phenocams" --ground-based digital cameras deployed to monitor phenological shifts.

Abstract: Professionals in the geographic and remote sensing science community are in a unique position to help society understand climate change and explore options for adapting to our changing world. Current climate change research at the USGS is diverse and depends heavily on existing programs such as land cover and land use change research, hydrologic stream gaging, and status and trends monitoring of natural resources. Remote sensing and geographic information sciences enable us to quantify the drivers of change and track the interdependencies across scales. More work is needed to better understand the impact of increasingly frequent extreme climatic events, regional shifts in temperature and precipitation, and synergistic interactions of increased nitrogen or other atmospheric inputs. Several USGS programs will be described that aim to develop a stronger GIS/RS community that can step up to the challenge.

Zach Wilson

Exploring Economic and Demographic trends in CA using 4-Dimensional GIS

Bio: Zach Wilson manages both product development and marketing at a software company that aims to make data and analytics more accessible and GIS easier to apply. He is the cofounder of UUorld, Inc. (pronounced "world"), which has just released four-dimensional mapping software (3D +time). His immediate background is in economic research and industry analysis and prior to that he worked as an entrepreneur in green building.

Abstract: Zach will review recent innovations in the geo-information industry and place his current work in that context. Then he will use maps and videos created by UUorld to explore economic and demographic trends in California at county and zip code level. In conclusion he will discuss the future of UUorld and invite comments and questions.