Building an Online System for Research, Outreach, and Education of Geospatial Environmental Research

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Building an Online System for Research, Outreach,
and Education of Geospatial Environmental
Research

• Jim Graham
• Colorado State University
• Fort Collins, Colorado

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National Institute of Invasive Species Science
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Forecasting at Various Scales
Regional
Local
National
Global
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Data Management Challenges
Spreadsheets
Hierarchical Vector data
Geo Referenced Rasters
Temperature
Precipitation
Modeling Algorithm
Model-Specific Data
Geo Referenced Rasters
Map Generation
Example Potential habitat distribution of
invasive plant dalmation toadflax (Linaria
dalmatica) in Colorado, USA
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General Imaging Issues

• Resolution and coverage of available data
• Acquisition costs
• Hardware and software performance
• Data quality
• File Format Compatibility

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Goals

• Create an online system for geospatial-ecological
  science
• End-users researchers, resource managers,
  teachers, and the public
• End-Users can add spatial data
• Vector data (text and Shapefiles)
• Raster data

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Points, Polylines, Polygons
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Vector Data

• A few very large, complex shapes
• National parks
• Countries
• States
• Lots of small, simple shapes
• Individual surveys
• Observation points
• Some regions have very high densities of spatial
  coordinates

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• P Projection time per coordinate
• L Loading time per coordinate
• R Rendering time per coordinate
• N Number of coordinates

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Approaches

• Access only data within viewing area
• 4 Maintain All Required Projections
• Geographic
• 3 UTM Zones
• All are WGS84
• Optimal use of an indexed, relational,
  enterprise-level database

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• MZ Maximum point density

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Topology
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Rendering from Grid Cells
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Maximum Rendering Times

• Equation 7 low resolution
• NC Number of cells
• Equation 8 high resolution
• MH Maximum point density at high resolution
• Q1 maximum time to access indexed data in the
  database

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Limiting Data Quantity
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www.NIISS.org
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Field Data Collection
The Past
The Future
Manual entry
Automatic upload
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Acknowledgements www.NIISS.org

• NIISS Tom Stohlgren, Mohammed Kalkhan, Greg
  Newman, Alycia Crall, Catherine Jarnevich, Tracey
  Davern, Paul Evangelista, Sunil Kumar, Sara
  Simonson
• NSF Grant OCI-0636210
• Volunteer Groups

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System Architecture