Chieko Plotts

Application of LiDAR for engineers and environmental scientists

LiDAR technique was intensively applied for various projects such as transportation, salamander habitat, and flood modeling. The LiDAR technique involved the following: Generate alignments as well as estimating peak water flow along the alignments, identify rocky habitat using slope, canopy, and intensity for a threatened salamander species, create 3D surface and remove highway and levees, derive highest points on highways for flood modeling.

Mark Roest

Neo-Geography for Community Sustainability

Communities of science working with communities on the ground, and designing sustainable economies, using eco-regions & their ecosystems, cultures, and appropriate technologies as the basis. Let's crowd-source it as neo-geography -- the Diaspora is invited!

Daniel Gluesenkamp

Calflora's integrated mapping toolbox

Calflora started as an 8-character dos code for a database available only floppy disk. The emergence and expansion of the World Wide Web has made Calflora's services widely available to nearly 19,000 registered users. The nonprofit is now an important source of wild plant information for thousands of citizens, educators, researchers, and conservation professionals, who use depend on Calflora for location information, species information, photos, and other resources. In 2006 Calflora began working with the Bay Area Early Detection Network (BAEDN) to build neoGIS tools for use by conservation professionals reporting and managing harmful invasive plants. This collaboration has grown into an integrated mapping platform that brings together a great diversity of field data collection methods to move plant occurrence information into the shared cloud database, and then provide users with a growing set of powerful visualization and resource management tools. Recently, supporting partners (including BAEDN, Cal-IPC, CNPS, and NRCS) have invested in data compilation efforts, as well as exciting new tools that give land managers and scientists improved ability to map, manage, and understand our changing flora.

This talk will provide an overview of Calflora's suite of tools, including Android and iPhone mapping apps, geotagged photo submission tools, GIS upload and display tools, and even tools for planning and tracking conservation action. Finally, we will discuss upcoming projects, how these tools and information can be applied to solving growing conservation challenges, and talk about what it will mean when we know where all California's plants can be found.

Cynthia Powell

Mapping Invasive Plants Using Quantitative and Qualitative Data

The California Invasive Plant Council is using a unique combination of quantitative GIS data and qualitative expert knowledge data to create statewide maps of invasive plant species locations. Then we use the presence points and mask out absence areas with software Maxent to display future potential range in 2050. These maps are an essential tool for making strategic decisions that make the most cost-effective use of our conservation resources. They are available here http://calweedmapper.calflora.org/maps/

Chris Clasen

Remote Sensing for California Earthquake Monitoring and Response

This presentation describes Naval Postgraduate School's DHS funded research efforts in earthquake response using remotely sensed data. The project is in its initial phase. The goals are to dovetail emergency management requirements with remote sensing capabilities; develop prototype products and review these with selected California State and local emergency service personnel against identified emergency response requirements; and identify gaps between requirements and capabilities and recommend solutions where possible. The researchers are interested in feedback to overcome the challenge of delivering simple to use products derived from complex sensors, the last ten minutes will be used for audience input.

Landon Blake

Leveraging GIS to Solve Problems Faced By Central Valley Communities

GIS can be used to help find solutions to three challenges faced by communities in the California Central Valley. The first challenge is managing flood hazards. The second challenge is preserving farmland. The third is reducing urban sprawl. This talk will briefly discuss these three (3) challenges and will explain how GIS could be used to find solutions to these challenges. The focus will be on practical application of GIS to real world challenges.

Bruce Joffe

Public Access to County GIS Basemap Data: the Supreme decision

In 2009, the California Court of Appeal affirmed the public's right to Santa Clara County's GIS basemap data. In 2010, the Sierra Club sued Orange County for access to their GIS parcel basemap, and lost in both the trial court and Court of Appeal. Two cases, same kind of geodata, different outcomes. The California Supreme Court is deciding the policy that will affect all California counties and perhaps national policy as well. We will discuss the facts of these cases and their implication for the GIS community.

John Ridener

Open Data, Data Sharing, and GeoData@UC Berkeley

Sharing geospatial data is an important part of working in GIS, especially for researchers and students. With increased demands on data providers to provide open data, how can data be shared in an effective and appropriate way? GeoData@UC Berkeley is an effort to do make geospatial data available to the public in a user-friendly way that emphasizes search and data discovery for both expert and novice GIS users using a web browser. Come see what GeoData@UC Berkeley can do, and discuss open data, data sharing, and development.