Check out the NOAA Coastal Imagery Viewer.  The latest for the West Coast is Feb 6-9, 2016.  The imagery was acquired to satisfy a wide range of integrated Ocean and Coastal Mapping (IOCM) requirements, such as emergency response and coastal zone management. Continue reading →

Do you manage or coordinate vegetation or landscape data sets such as field plot/transect data or disturbance/treatment polygons? If so, the LANDFIRE Program needs your data. LANDFIRE is an interagency vegetation, fire, and fuel characteristics mapping program, sponsored by the United States Departments of Agriculture, Forest Service and the Department of the Interior (www.landfire.gov). LANDFIRE data have served as an important data set for programmatic planning, analysis, and reporting for fire and natural resource management.

Is there anything new this year?
LANDFIRE had targeted January 2015 as the key start date for the upcoming remap effort but due to additional data advances with the USGS Land Change Monitoring, Assessment and Projection effort, LANDFIRE is adjusting the beginning of the remap and, as a result, extending the vegetation/fuel plot data call date to March 31, 2016. LANDFIRE is evaluating changing the annual data submission date from January to March for future data calls.

Why should we submit data for remap?
LANDFIRE will be remapping data products with new imagery and new vegetation/fuel plot data to reflect contemporary conditions. There is still time to get your plot data in LANDFIRE, so geospatial landscape data are as reflective of on the ground conditions as possible. Additional plot data have a great potential to improve the quality of the data products especially in areas where lower/limited plot data were available for LF National (circa 2001). For more information on areas that had lower/limited plot data visit: http://www.landfire.gov/participate_plot.php. Locally provided data impact LANDFIRE products and evidence is available for review at http://www.landfire.gov/lf_impacts.php.

What types of data are needed?
Vegetation and Fuel Plot Data:
In preparation for the upcoming remap, LANDFIRE needs contributions of any geo-referenced point, transect, or polygon vegetation or fuel plot data along with any associated digital photos, project descriptions, or final reports. For more information on LANDFIRE’s plot data needs visit http://www.landfire.gov/participate_plot.php where examples of these data and relevant attributes can be found.

Polygon Disturbance and Treatment Activities from 2015/2016:
LANDFIRE uses recent disturbance and treatment data to update map layers in areas where vegetation and fuel have changed. At a minimum, the disturbance/treatment polygons must be attributed by disturbance/treatment (Event) type and year of occurrence. For more information, visit http://www.landfire.gov/participate_contribute.php where examples of these data and relevant attributes can be found.

In addition, LANDFIRE also welcomes feedback on current data products, for more information visit http://www.landfire.gov/participate_feedback.php .

Data Submissions, Contributions, and Thanks:
LANDFIRE collects and welcomes data submissions on an annual basis throughout the year. The data submission deadline has been changed to March 31, 2016 for this data call. Data submitted before March 31 are evaluated for inclusion in the appropriate update cycle, and submissions after March 31 are typically considered in subsequent updates. That said, due to production schedules and the amount of data that needs processing, opportunities to include data that may not have been submitted by the cut-off date often arise. Don’t hold back. Submit data any time.

For more information visit http://www.landfire.gov/participate_refdata.php or contact Brenda Lundberg, LANDFIRE Reference Data Administrator, blundberg@usgs.gov, (406) 329-3405.

LANDFIRE also acquires data from websites and agency data base systems. For a list of these sources see the “Website Agency DB” spreadsheet at http://www.landfire.gov/participate_refdata_sub.php. For a list of past data contributions see the “Compiled Data” spreadsheet at http://www.landfire.gov/participate_refdata_sub.php.

LANDFIRE thanks those who have contributed data in the past and is again asking for your help to enhance and improve LANDFIRE products through your data or information contributions.

Some of the new functionality added to the ArcGIS for Local Government solution:

• The DistrictLookup, NearMe, RelatedTableCharts widgets, along with the Plateau Theme, have been incorporated into Web AppBuilder for ArcGIS and as a result, the Election Results, Early Voting, and Election Polling Places solutions can now be deployed in a fully hosted environment.
• The first release of Blight Status, a configuration of ArcGIS and Operations Dashboard for ArcGIS that can be used by local government leaders to proactively monitor the status of blight complaints and efforts made to reduce blighted properties.
• A new set of ArcGIS Pro-based data aggregation tools have been incorporated into the Community Addresses and Community Parcels solutions.
• The first release of Vision Zero, a configuration of ArcGIS that can be used by the general public to report transportation hazards and dangerous traffic behaviors on roadways.

Many more enhancements as well.  Click here for more info.

ESRI has released World Geocoder for ArcGIS. World Geocoder for ArcGIS enables users to securely map global addresses behind a firewall so that sensitive data is never exposed.

World Geocoder for ArcGIS has several key benefits for organizations in addition to protecting sensitive data. It includes an API that can be used to add geocoding capabilities to ArcGIS apps and custom apps. World Geocoder for ArcGIS has been designed to geocode addresses from multiple countries, using a single locator, for a flat, fixed price.  Licenses come in Basic (250 million geocodes per year), Standard (3 concurrent batch jobs), and Advanced (8 concurrent batch jobs) levels.