Posts Tagged: igis

California Adaptation Clearinghouse Website Launched

IGIS and the California Naturalist Program are pleased to help celebrate the launch of a new information portal on climate adaptation. The California Adaptation Clearinghouse was officially launched at the California Adaptation Forum in August in Sacramento. The site was developed by the Governor's Office of Planning and Research (OPR) in collaboration with the UC Berkeley Geospatial Innovation Facility, CalNat, and IGIS.

The Clearinghouse is a database-driven platform with a wealth of curated resources for climate adaptation. The site originated out of Senate Bill 246, which mandates OPR to provide resources on climate adaptation for local governments, regional planning agencies, and other practitioners working on adaptation and resilience. The database also contains sea-level rise resources collected by the Ocean Protection Council under Assembly Bill 2516. It's an amazing resource for anyone looking to strengthen climate change preparedness in their local government, community, or business.

The database includes numerous planning resources that have been developed and vetted by experts in the field. For example, the Urban Sustainability Directors Network has a how-to guide for local governments on developing equitable, community-driven climate preparedness plans, which you can find in the Clearinghouse. There are also examples of vulnerability assessments, local plans, and funding strategies. The majority of resources are hosted by other organizations, but unlike a Google search all the resources in the Clearinghouse have been reviewed, annotated, and cataloged by subject matter specialists.

To help find resources, the Clearinghouse has a number of search options, including more than a dozen topic categories adapted from Safeguarding California, the state's overall roadmap for building climate change resiliency. You can also search by Type of Impact (e.g., drought, sea level rise), Resource Type (e.g., case study, assessment, policy guidance), and of course an interactive map. Each resource has a descriptive blurb so you can quickly find what you need.

Adaptation planning can be information intensive, so the Tools and Data section of the website is devoted to helping people find data and crunch the numbers. Interested in rangelands? Check out the CA Landscape Conservation Cooperative's compiled Threat Assessments to California Rangelands. Sea level rise? Perhaps the CosMos modeling tool from USGS, or the Surging Seas tool from Climate Central. Like all resources, each tool and dataset has a user-friendly description, a technical summary, a bit about the data, and links to the source. One of our favorites is the California Energy Commission's Cal-Adapt, which includes both historical and projected climate data downscaled for California.

Providing a more personal perspective, the Clearinghouse also contains stories about climate adaptation from individuals, community groups, and businesses. The stories were collected by the UC ANR California Naturalist Program and their vast network of certified naturalists. The climate stories are diverse and compelling, from a concerned grandmother who becomes engaged in a community choice energy program, to a solar project engineer working to strengthen measures to prevent heat stroke in field staff. An interactive Story Map developed by IGIS helps users find stories from their area, some of which even have audio or video clips so you can hear the story in the speaker's own words.

Climate adaptation is complicated, but information portals like the Clearinghouse allow anyone to tap into the incredible amount of work that has already been done in California and elsewhere. Rather than reinvent the wheel, local agencies can build upon vetted guidelines from similar areas. We are all fortunate that the State of California has invested in a platform to share curated resources for the long-term, because climate adaptation is already part of the new normal. More resources are in the pipeline, so check it out and then check back often to see what's new.

Mapping post-fire landscapes at Hopland Research & Extension Center

The River Fire began July 27, 2018 at 1pm on Old River Road in Hopland. By the evening it had spread, and was threatening numerous buildings in the area. We have a ANR Research and Extension Center (HREC) there, and Shane Feirer from IGIS lives and works here. Evacuations were ordered quickly, and down in the bay area we all held our breath hoping the fire wouldn’t harm people or animals or consume the HREC buildings. By the time it was contained (as part of the Mendocino Complex), it had burned 48,920 acres. We’ve been flying drones over HREC for awhile, and the last month we did more drone flights to map the post-fire landscape. We flew some Hangar 360 flights with a DJI Phantom to get some sweet overviews of the scene (example1, example2, example3), and flew much of the area with our eBee on the first mission and Matrices on the second mission with both multispectral and RGB cameras.

These pics below compare the eBee imagery (2cm) with Planet imagery (3m).

These are pics of the eBee (far left) and the Matrice (far right) getting ready to fly into the blackened landscape, and some snaps from the Hanger pics.

ESRI User Conference 2018 – Day 2

Have you ever wished you had your own geoportal like ArcGIS Online within your own ArcGIS Online Organization,  now you can with Esri Arcgis Hub.  ArcGIS Hub and the Sites it can create will allow you to do just that.  Now within UCANR we can create sub sites within our organization account.  We have the ability to create sub sites for other groups in UCANR like Integrated Pest Management (IPM), 4H, Master Gardeners, to name but a few.  I look forward to rolling out these Sites to other groups and team within UCANR.

ESRI User Conference 2018 – Day 1

Day 1 at the User Conference was dominated by the Plenary talks of ESRI Owner Jack Dangermond and others. The morning plenary by Mr. Dangermond and other ESRI Staff is where they highlight the newest technology that we now have access to from ESRI.  In the past I have heard of the User Conference as the “Show” and it continues to live up to that name.  This year they highlighted the new machine learning and AI tools that have been integrated into ArcGIS and the new capabilities of ArcGIS Online, ArcGIS Portal, and ArcGIS Pro.  Over the coming days I hope to highlight these technologies and more in greater detail.

Meet Jacob Flanagan – IGIS Latest Drone Scientist

IGIS is thrilled to welcome Jacob Flanagan to our team. Jacob will be with IGIS through the end of June 2018 as a Drone Technician and Data Analyst.

Jacob comes to IGIS with a broad background in UAV technology, GIS, computer science, and remote sensing. Prior to joining IGIS, Jacob worked with GreenValley Int'l, where he spent several years designing and developing application software for LiDAR data, spatial databases, technical documentation, and user support.

This is not the first time we've had the fortune to work with Jacob. Those of you who have attended some of our drone workshops may remember his demos of an 'octocopter' drone, large enough to carry a heavy LiDAR sensor. He was also a presenter and flight instructor at the 2017 DroneCamp, and has been involved in drone mapping missions at the Hopland REC.

Jacob joins the rest of the IGIS team as our latest FAA certified UAS pilot, and will be involved in a number of research and extension projects. Please say hi to him if you run into him in the ANR building, our next DroneCamp in San Diego, or somewhere in a field looking up at the sky with a drone controller.

 

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