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The “Call for Abstracts” supporting The National Map Users Conference and GIS Workshop to be held May 10-13, 2011 in Denver has been extended to February 6, 2011. Information and submission form.
- USGS e-mail
USGS wants you to know:
To better interact with users of The National Map and to work with science-related GIS professionals, we are happy to announce a Users Conference to be held May 10-13, 2011 in Lakewood, Colo.
Currently, we are issuing a Call for Abstracts. Since we want to encourage dialog among our user community, the conference agenda will be largely determined by accepted abstracts.
In a post to the Washington Post’s Post Carbon blog, USGS Director Marcia McNutt reminded everyone that Landsat data was the basis for the imagery used in Google’s new Google Earth Engine (see my APB post on GEE). As if to say, "hey the USGS had a hand in collecting the data…don’t forget about us," Ms. McNutt exposed the largest glaring weakness of our earth observation program: It doesn’t shout loud enough about its investment, and the ROI on that investment, of remotely sensed data. Since the launch of the Landsat-1 in 1972, satellite data has been under appreciated by the masses and certainly under marketed by the USGS. Until Google Earth.
It is fundamental to the longevity of the the Landsat program that the USGS do a better job of promoting the benefits but has rated a grade of "D" in my book. Since my days working as a contractor for the USGS at the EROS Data Center in the early-80’s, I always felt that if the only people who could afford data were the universities with huge government grants and the oil companies, then the applications of satellite data where never going to be well understood. Thankfully Google Earth changed that. Maybe its only a private company that could afford to turn pixels into pearls…those of the wisdom kind. Because now, the world knows about satellite data. And now, the world will use satellite data. And now perhaps even businesses will use satellite data, like those counting cars in parking lots on Black Friday. Let’s hope word reaches our Congressmen who need to fund the program. Perhaps they will have already learned how to spin the Google Earth Globe to find their house. Maybe GE will turn politicians into pixel heads.
A local paper in Virginia profiles the new electronic topos the USGS now offers. The program is referred to as US Topo. The article concludes with one individual’s concerns:
While response has been positive in emergency response circles, the man in charge of a set of maps in wide use locally is far from happy, saying that while on-demand maps made by assimilating existing data offer convenience, a complete shift in that direction risks losing the fine details and pinpoint accuracy for which the USGS is known.
Quads are already sub-par for trail use in many cases, said Thomas Kaye, the maps chairman for the Potomac Appalachian Trail Club. Some trails, such as the Appalachian Trail, are listed on such maps. But groups such as the PATC make specialty maps that show a more useful set of trails for the average hiker. Quads remain perhaps the best way to navigate across unknown country.
Kaye worries that the new maps, which can be updated simply by acquiring new sets of data, will lead to fewer features being routinely updated.
“Essentially, what you’re going to have updated is roads at the end of the day, and maybe some rivers and lakes, but it’s not going to be the USGS quads that we know and have come to trust,” he said.
Back in July Eric Wolf at USGS shared a bit about a trial of OpenStreetMap's software stack and editing environment on some state geodata. He asked for some help on the OSM mailing list. This week Wolf was on This Week in Maps (podcast page, about minutes 28:00-32:30) telling more of the story (now that USGS has said that's ok). What they did:
- Set up OSM software on their own server
- Loaded street data from State of Kansas GIO
- USGS staffers edited it to FGDC best practices for road data
- Kansas data is not great, usually get it from counties, wanted to see how we could update state data to that level
- Locals in Kansas did some editing too
- Proof of concept for data collection/editing
- This is the fourth attempt to engage citizens in map data collection/editing (ranging from Map Corps, to ArcIMS, etc.)
- Big question with these efforts: how to merge non-authoritative data with USGS authoritative data in cost effective way
