- Author: Shane Feirer
Day 2 of the ESRI User Conference was filled with many technical workshops and time speakeing with the lead developers of the tools that IGIS utilize on almost a daily basis. In this post I will highlight some of the technical session I attended and what I saw and learned in the exhibition hall. It was a busy day and i am looking forward to what I learn tomorrow... Now to the highlights...
In the technical sessions I attended the following:
ArcGIS Insights: An Introduction
Before this session I did not know of the capabilities of this app. With app you can take tabular and spatial data and analyze the data in really intuitive ways and share the output and models with your colleagues and the public. For more information about ArcGIS Insights go to the following link.
Cartography Cutting Edge
This session highlighted some of the new symbology and vector tile formatting that can be used with the new map viewer. The methods used included layer special effects, layer blending, and the vector tile base map editor. Using the techniques in this session you could design a nice webmap, but that webmap could not be opened in ArcGIS Pro without pro stripping much of the formatting that you used in the session.
ArcGIS Pro Tasks: An Introduction
For the past several years, I keep thinking that IGIS should use Tasks to teach workshop workflow. This session walk through creating and configuring a basic editing task. I still see how this tool could and should be used in some of the IGIS Workshops.
ArcGIS Pro: Tips and Tricks
This was a nice technical sessionthat highlighted many tips and tricks. As part of this workshop the presenters shared a storymap they created to highlight their tips and tricks. Here is the storymap that they shared with the attendees, enjoy.
ArcGIS Field Maps: An Introduction and What's New
ArcGIS Field Maps continues to improve. Field Maps is ESRI effort to combine 5 separate apps (Collector, Survey 123, Explorer, Workforce, and Navigator) into one. To date they have added the functionality of the first three apps. They have integrated many new features into the app since last year. There is not enough room to discuss the new features. I will say that I am excited to integrate the new features into the IGIS Field Maps training.
Discussions with the Product Developers:
How to optimize multidimensional datasets for faster queries and rasters?
I have been having an issue querying merged netcdf and mosaic datasets of the yearly netcdf data. Both methods have been quite slow. The recommended way to optimize the querying of these data is to create a cloud raster format dataset from the mosaic dataset and that should drastically speed up the queryng of the multidimensional data.
ArcGIS Insights vs Dashboards?
I will have to play with the functionality of insights and see if it could replace dashboards in some of the IGIS use cases.
Sunsetting of Drone2Map?
In the past few months I have heard that ArcGIS Drone2Map is going to be phased out. I asked the developers of the app and they stated that there are no plans to phose out Drone2Map and they are continuing to develop and release new versions. The most recent version is Drone2map 2022.1.
- Author: Shane Feirer
This is the 42nd ESRI User Conference yet in some ways it felt like the first. This is the first in-person user conference since the COVID—19 outbreak after almost 2 and a half years. All in-person participants had to have proof of vaccination to attend, even with that requirement there are over 14,000 participants. I heard more than once that it was nice to be meeting again in person.
The tag line from ESRI this year is ‘GIS – Mapping Common Ground'. They are making the case that GIS will help us as a society meet/share data on Common Ground. This can be when addressing complex issues such as Climate Change, Conservation Planning, Urban Planning etc. All these activities need us all to meet on common ground and mapping helps with that. We heard about the development and use of Geospatial data from Deanne Criswell the Director of FEMA and California's Natural Resources Secretary - Wade Crowfoot Crowfoot and Nate Roth from the Department of Conservation's Chief Science and Data Advisor, they described the data and the tools created for the California 30x30 initiative these data will be available in a web app developed in concert with ESRI https://www.californianature.ca.gov/.
I the coming days I am looking forward to hearing about the new tools that ESRI have been developing. These tools include ArcGIS Insights, Spatial Analysis of Big Data, Knowledge Graphs, etc, I look forward to writing more about the advancements as the week progresses.
- Author: Sean Hogan
- Author: Shane Feirer
IGIS was pleased to attend an excellent “Forest and Shrubland LiDAR Derived Products Workshop” jointly held by the California Natural Resources Agency (CNRA) and California Department of Conservation (DOC), on March 17th.
CNRA has a budget for supporting the development of useful/high value data products that can support forest and shrubland planning and management decisions, including for emergency response. In the interest of seeking feedback from experts and potential users of such data products across the state of California, the goal of this workshop was to gather information for prioritizing LiDAR derived products for fire, vegetation, biodiversity, hydrology, climate change, and public safety decisions in California's forests and shrublands.
The workshop began with an outstanding presentation by Dr. Nathaniel (Nate) Roth (DOC), which provided a brief introduction to LiDAR (light detection and ranging), and operation derived products of this technology. Kass Green and Mark Tukman, from Tukman Geospatial, then presented several excellent use case examples of LiDAR in California, including for: topographic and hydrologic mapping, fine scale vegetation mapping, forest health and management, and vegetation/fuel mapping for forest fire planning and assessing impacts. Next came another impressive presentation by David (DJ) Bandrowski from the Yurok Tribe Fisheries Department, which cited multiple examples of how LiDAR and aerial imagery have been used for management and restoration of forest ecosystems within the Klamath River Basin. These examples include for: Sediment flux, transport and change following dam removal, point cloud classifications of vegetation vs. bare ground, designing and modeling river systems for planning and assessment, and finally for construction projects.
The workshop concluded with a series of surveys, conducted in ESRI's Survey 123 application, to assess and prioritize the needs of the 179 attendees at the workshop, as a representative sample of prospective users. The results of these surveys will undoubtedly be used to steer the allocation of funds provided to CNRA by the California State Legislature to have the most efficient and valuable impacts possible.
A great thanks is owed to Dr. Nathaniel (Nate) Roth, and all the people at DOC and CNRA, for hosting this workshop, as well as the outstanding contributors from Tukman Geospatial and the Yurok Tribe.
Sean Hogan and Shane Feirer
University of California
Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources
Informatics and GIS Statewide Program
Annie Taylor, PhD student and IGIS GSR has been awarded no less than 3(!) new grants to fund her PhD research. Congrats to Annie! The awards are:
Research Grant from Joseph A. Myers Center for Research on Native American Issues
Natalie Hopkins Award and Grant from the California Native Plant Society
Sally Casey Research Scholarship from the Santa Clara Valley Chapter of the California Native Plant Society
These are all funding her research at Año Nuevo State Park, where she is working with the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band to study the biodiversity of cultural plants in a unique coastal grassland ecosystem with decades of frequent fire stewardship.
Stay tuned for more!
- Author: Nina Maggi Kelly
Annie Taylor, UC Berkeley PhD student and IGIS GSR has been awarded no less than 3(!) new grants to fund her PhD research. Congrats to Annie! The awards are:
- Research Grant from Joseph A. Myers Center for Research on Native American Issues
- Natalie Hopkins Award and Grant from the California Native Plant Society
- Sally Casey Research Scholarship from the Santa Clara Valley Chapter of the California Native Plant Society
Stay tuned for more about her work.