Progress 10/01/19 to 09/30/20
Outputs
Target Audience:The primary target audience for this project includes: AES faculty, staff, and students, including 600 academic researchers in around 40 departments at three colleges and one professional school (UCB College of Natural Resources, UCD College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, UCD School of Veterinary Medicine, UCR College of Natural and Agricultural Sciences). Locally based UC ANR Cooperative Extension Advisors Campus-based UC ANR Cooperative Extension Specialists at UC Davis, UC Riverside, UC Berkeley, UC Merced, and UC Santa Barbara Staff and researchers at ANR's nine Research and Extension Centers Staff and researchers at ANR's 10 Statewide Programs and Institutes Secondary audiences include: All researchers in agriculture and natural resources both domestically and internationally Researchers and staff affiliated with the UC Natural Reserve System Research-IT departments in the UC system Changes/Problems:The barriers during this reporting cycle were curtailments in travel and restrictions on in-person meeting from the COVID-19 pandemic, which we successfully adapted to. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?During the reporting period, IGIS taught 6 workshops and 1 short course reaching 475 people. Training topics included: GIS - Forestry (x1, 9 people) Drone Data Processing (x1, 10 people) Introduction to ArcGIS Pro (x1, 13 people) Raster Data Analysis with R (x1, 19 people) Google Earth Engine (x2, 94 people) DroneCamp short course (25 workshops over 4 days, 330 people) In addition to our workshops, IGIS offers extension products and services online, including online Office Hours, video tutorials on software, workshop recordings, and our Tech Notes series describing application-specific workflows. We also deliver presentations throughout the state, reaching over 1,230 people in this reporting period. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?GIS Service Center products are disseminated through a variety of means depending on the project and the needs of the PI. Common channels include meetings with clientele, communications from UC Cooperative Extension, social media, media coverage, scientific publications, presentations, and research pages on our website. We disseminate software algorithms and tools via GitHub, with accompanying documentation and use cases published on our website in our Tech Note series. We use standard search engine optimization techniques on our website to enhance the discoverability of our products, and use standard web analytics to track usage of all our web-based products. Our training curricula are likewise shared through a variety of means by both ourselves and our collaborators. Workshop opportunities are disseminated through our website, blog, email communications, the UC ANR Strategic Communications team, UC ANR Learning and Development group, and social media. All of our training materials are publicly available, including workshop recordings on YouTube, and the DroneCamp program website. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?During the next reporting period, we will continue our approach of providing research support and leadership for UC CE Specialists and Advisors, leveraging the latest advancement in data technology and analytics, and sharing lessons learned through technical documentation, training, and collaborations. Several of our bigger GIS projects will continue into the next reporting period, including the decision support tools in progress (see above). A project coming to fruition in the next reporting cycle will be our collaboration with Cal-Adapt, California's primary data portal for climate data, under which we are developing software tools to work with climate data in ArcGIS Pro and R, online decision support tools tailored to agriculture and land managers (e.g., projected winter chill), and professional development training through workshops and user support. New projects coming online next reporting period include a decision support tool for a team of rangeland CE Advisors and Specialists to help ranchers evaluate soil and water conservation practices in their ranching operations, and receive a tailored set of extension resources. Another significant decision support tool effort launching next cycle is a 2-year project to build a Watershed Spatial Planning and Prioritization information system, with funding and oversight from the CA Natural Resources Agency. Our Drone Services program will resume data collection once travel restrictions are lifted and the head of our Drone Services unit resumes from an extended leave. Expected drone projects include re-flying several hundred acres of the Hopland Research Extension Center that were burnt in the 2018 River Fire for a study on revegetation. In anticipation that the COVID-19 pandemic will continue to curtail in-person programming for the foreseeable future, our professional development program will continue to focus on remote support and virtual training. We will continue our successful Office Hours support, expanding topic areas to include climate data and Google Earth Engine. We are planning a series of introductory online GIS workshops for Spring 2021 focused on core tools from ESRI, including ArcGIS Online, Story Maps, and the new Field Maps mobile data collection platform. These workshops will be targeted to UCANR employees and their collaborators. Accompanying our workshop programs, we will continue to develop our online resources including new video tutorials on using GIS software, workshop recordings, and new and updated Tech Notes. Our 5th consecutive offering of the DroneCamp short course will be held virtually in July 2021, in collaboration with the growing network of institutional partners we've established over the past 2 years. The 2021 curriculum will build upon our extremely successful 2020 course, with many of the same instructors coming back. An objective of the 2021 DroneCamp steering committee, beyond planning the course, is to strengthen the sustainability of the event by dividing planning tasks between the collaborating institutes and seeking funding to support an event coordinator. To improve the discoverability and accessibility of our training and research products, we are working with the UC ANR Communication Services and Information Technology unit to catalog the technical content on our website to ingest into a new global Knowledge Repository feature in the forthcoming UC ANR Integrated Web Project. This will make our training materials and resources easier to find through the main UC ANR website. To make research data more discoverable and reusable, we will continue to build and promote tools that catalog data collections, such as the Drone Image Utilities package for R and ArcGIS Hub. We are also starting a new collaboration with the UC Natural Reserve System, extending a platform they have developed to curate environmental sensor data from field stations to the UC ANR Research and Extension Center System. Once fully implemented, this will enable curation, discoverability and access to environmental sensor data vastly easier and more robust than the current system.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
During the 2019-2020 year IGIS continued to provide leadership in geospatial research and technology innovation for AES faculty, CE Specialists, and CE Advisors. This was a challenging period to be sure, with numerous disruptions from the COVID-19 pandemic, widespread wildfires, and a worsened budget situation. As a technology unit we have been accustomed to working remotely and for the most part managed to maintain a high level of output by responding to the new working conditions and requirements faced by our collaborators. Our unit responded to the multiple challenges facing UC ANR and California during this period through several special projects. To help the ANR network of CE offices prepare for yet another bad fire season, we conducted a Wildfire Risk Assessment for the UC ANR Office of Risk & Safety Services, evaluating the vulnerability of over 50 UC ANR office locations. When COVID-19 struck and extension programs went virtual, we helped address the challenges of poor internet connectivity in rural areas by developing a decision support tool to help local and regional agencies identify areas eligible for broadband infrastructure funding through the California Advanced Services Fund. To help UC ANR cope with another year of budget cuts related to declining funding from the State, we developed a beta decision support tool for ANR Leadership that highlights priority personnel needs and opportunities for increased contributions from local and regional partners. Our GIS Service Center remained extremely busy throughout the year. We started several new multi-year projects centered around decision support, continuing a trend we've seen in increasing demand for decision support systems. Projects launched during this period included: A beta version of the Sonoma County Wildfire Fuel Mapper web app. This tool leverages fire models and mitigation strategies developed by CE Specialists at UC Berkeley, to help landowners assess their vulnerability to catastrophic wildfire and evaluate mitigation options. CalAgroClimate, an app built for CE Specialist Tapan Pathak at UC Merced, to help growers plan crop management in relation to seasonal weather forecasts. The Alameda County Conservation Planning Tool developed for CE Specialist Van Butsic as part of a project to help a citizen advisory committee evaluate and rank the conservation value of parcels in Alameda County for potential acquisition. Our training program this cycle started out with a planned schedule of in-person workshops on Forestry Applications of GIS, Drone Mapping, Raster Data Analysis in R, and remote sensing. Additional workshops were planned but had to be cancelled when COVID-19 struck. We quickly retooled for online delivery, including two new workshops on Earth Engine. Earth Engine is a relatively new remote sensing tool from Google with enormous potential in agriculture and natural resources. The Earth Engine workshops reached a total of 94 people with the following evaluation results (all responses on a 5-point ordinal scale, mean scores reported): Would recommend to a friend or colleague: 98% Change in knowledge: +1.74 Change in skill: +1.63 Post-workshop confidence could complete a basic task: 4.44 Post-workshop confidence could complete an advanced task: 3.5 Our flagship training program, a 4-day drone mapping short course called DroneCamp, also had to be transformed from an in-person to a virtual event at extremely short notice. This was a big undertaking because some course sessions cannot be conducted virtually (such as manual flight skills), and we had to coordinate with instructors coming from many partner institutions. However the online format also presented some advantages because we were able to involve instructors who otherwise would not had been able to participate. In the end, we had over 330 participants (far more than we could have handled in person) register for over 30 sessions including 7 new hands-on software tutorials (https://dronecamp.github.io/2020/). We offered scholarships to ensure the training was accessible to UC ANR academics and under-represented groups. Workshop evaluations were very positive: DroneCamp 2020 Workshops Evaluation Results Notes: sample sizes reported reflect number of evaluations returned, not number of participants all values are on a five-point ordinal scale, mean scores are reported DRONE SAFETY AND REGULATIONS OVERVIEW (n = 96) Change in knowledge: 1.2 MISSION PLANNING (n = 95) Change in knowledge: 1.4 EQUIPMENT PLANNING AND PREPARATION (n = 93) Change in knowledge: 1.4 INTRODUCTION TO DRONE PHOTOGRAMMETRY AND DATA PROCESSING (n = 56) Change in knowledge: 1.3 PROCESSING UAV IMAGES WITH ARCGIS PRO (n = 40) Confidence - basic task: 4.2 Confidence - intermediate task: 4.1 INTRODUCTION TO MULTISPECTRAL IMAGE PROCESSING WITH PIX4DMAPPER (n = 19) Confidence - basic task: 3.5 HOW TO BE A GOOD VISUAL OBSERVER (n = 48) Confidence - basic task: 4.2 DATA MANAGEMENT AND SHARING RESULTS (n = 39) Change in knowledge: 1.4 DRONE IMAGERY PROCESSING WITH AGISOFT METASHAPE (n = 11) Change in skill: 1.3 OPEN SOURCE DATA PROCESSING WITH OPENDRONEMAP (n = 29) Confidence - basic task: 4.3 MULTISPECTRAL DATA VISUALIZATION AND EXTRACTION WITH QGIS (n = 14) Confidence - basic task: 3.6 Confidence - intermediate task: 3.7 MAPPING AND ANALYZING DRONE DATA IN ARCGIS PRO (n = 28) Confidence - basic task: 3.4 OPERATING IN CONTROLLED AIRSPACE (n = 28) Change in knowledge: 1.4 NIGHT FLYING (n = 25) Change in knowledge: 2.0 VEGETATION ANALYSIS & CLASSIFICATION IN ARCGIS PRO (n = 38) Change in knowledge: 2.0 Confidence - basic task: 4.2 Confidence - advanced task: 4.3 UAS APPLICATIONS IN COASTAL AND MARINE SYSTEMS (n = 17) Overall satisfaction: 4.6 DATA ANALYSIS METHODS FOR AG RESEARCH (n = 38) Overall satisfaction: 4.8 WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT AND HIGHER ED (n = 15) Overall satisfaction: 4.3 In addition to the increased demand for virtual workshops, we also experienced an increase in requests for GIS software support during Office Hours, as researchers pivoted from field work to data analysis. In response to the high demand, we quadrupled our Office Hours offerings and expanded support areas to include the statistical programming platform R. In Drone Services, COVID-19 halted all non-essential fieldwork for several months, severely curtailing our ability to capture drone data for ANR Advisors and Specialists. Despite the shortened season, we managed to collect over 1845 GB of multispectral and RGB imagery over 23 flight campaigns covering 778 acres for 7 projects. Research questions for drone projects included traditional agricultural experiments on plant response to irrigation treatments, varietal trials, habitat assessment and restoration planning for an endangered species, and a methodological study on detecting an invasive rice species from high resolution imagery. During the months we could not conduct field work, we focused our efforts on developing a data management protocol and automation tools for documenting and archiving our considerable collection of drone data. Using a data server we deployed in 2019, we consolidated 9 TB of processed drone data into a single, organized, searchable, data structure. As part of this migration, we created data management tools to create directory trees, move data, and compile all drone projects into a single, searchable, web map. Complementing this effort, we published an updated version the Drone Image Utilities for R package, with expanded capabilities for creating drone data catalogs. After organizing our data repository, we used the same tools and protocol to assist the UC Natural Reserve System to organize and catalog their considerable collections of drone data collected under the multi-site California Heartbeat Initiative project using a server we host on their behalf.
Publications
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2019
Citation:
Cooper O., Keeley A., and Merenlender A. Curriculum gaps for adult climate literacy. Conservation Science and Practice. 8 Aug 2019. 1(10)
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2020
Citation:
Matzek, V, D Lewis, A O'Geen, M Lennox; S Hogan, S Feirer, V Eviner, K Tate. 2020. Increases in soil and woody biomass carbon stocks as a result of rangeland riparian restoration. Carbon Balance and Management.
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2020
Citation:
Jahanzad, E, B. Holtz, C. Zuber, D. Doll, K. Brewer, S. Hogan, A. Gaudin. 2020. Orchard recycling improves climate change adaptation and mitigation potential of almond production systems.
- Type:
Other
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2020
Citation:
Lyons. Andy. 2020. Encoding Drone Video for the Web. IGIS Tech Note
- Type:
Other
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2020
Citation:
Lyons. Andy, and Sean Hogan. 2020. One Dozen Mission Planning Tips for Getting the Best Possible Orthomosaics. IGIS Tech Note
- Type:
Other
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2020
Citation:
Lyons. Andy, and Sean Hogan. 2020. Mission Planning Resources. IGIS Tech Note
- Type:
Other
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2020
Citation:
Taylor, Annie. 2020. Calculate NDVI from Recent Sentinel Satellite Imagery in Google Earth Engine. IGIS Tech Note
- Type:
Other
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2020
Citation:
Hogan, Sean. 2020. Drone Data Management Tool: Using Jupyter Notebook inside of ArcGIS Pro. IGIS Tech Note
|
Progress 10/01/18 to 09/30/19
Outputs
Target Audience:The primary target audience for this project includes: AES faculty, staff, and students, including 600 academic researchers in around 40 departments at 3 colleges and 1 professional school (UCB College of Natural Resources, UCD College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, UCD School of Veterinary Medicine, UCR College of Natural and Agricultural Sciences). 165 locally based UCANR Cooperative Extension Advisors 115 campus-based UCANR Cooperative Extension Specialists at UC Davis, UC Riverside, UC Berkeley, UC Merced, and UC Santa Barbara Staff and researchers at ANR's nine Research and Extension Centers Staff and researchers at ANR's 10 Statewide Programs and Institutes Secondary audiences include: All researchers in agriculture and natural resources both domestically and internationally Researchers and staff affiliated with the UC Natural Reserve System Research-IT departments in the UC system Changes/Problems:While we do not see major barriers to our approach in next reporting cycle, one of our staff left at the end of the current reporting period, which at least for the short term will reduce our capacity particularly in terms of drone data collection and analysis. Given the ongoing fiscal austerity that UC ANR is facing overall due to a flat budget allocation from the state, we are exploring a variety of options to maintain our field capacity including collaborating with other campuses and short-term positions. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?To plan and prioritize professional development programming, we conducted a comprehensive training needs assessment on geospatial data and technologies among all ANR employees. The healthy sample size (n=360) revealed strong demand for all forms of training, in particular introductory training for both desktop and web GIS, mobile app development, drone mapping, and working with spatial data in open source platforms. During the reporting period, IGIS taught 17 workshops in nine locations reaching 338 people. Workshop topics included: 360 Visualization (x1, 22 people) Drone Technology (x4, 98 people) GIS - Forestry (x6, 130 people) Geospatial Data in R (x2, 30 people) Mobile Data Collection (x1, 8 people) StoryMaps (x3, 50 people) A highlight of professional development in the current reporting period was a series of GIS workshops for professional foresters and forest managers that we developed and implemented in five locations in central and northern California. The new curricula featured real-world mapping applications in forestry and guest speakers from the forestry industry, and was very well received. In addition to our workshops, IGIS offers extension products and services online, including online office hours, technical news and reviews on our blog, and a series of application-specific Tech Notes articles. We also deliver presentations throughout the state, reaching over 1,300 people in this time period. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Through Other Products previosuly listed. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?During the next reporting period, we will continue our basic model of providing research support and leadership for campus and UCCE academics, leveraging the latest advancement in data technology and analytics, and sharing lessons learned through technical documentation and training. Our research program will continue to focus on developing best practices for data collection including drone mapping and mobile data collection apps. We will continue to develop and expand data portals for UC ANR and UC NRS, and will expand our technical guidance to encompass open data standards and interoperability, and data management options for live streams of sensor data from field stations. Our project with Cal-Adapt will make climate data more accessible to adaptation planners, and we anticipate at least two pilot applications that incorporate climate data into decision support needs. In support of professional development, we will build upon the results of the 2019 training needs assessment and develop new workshops and platforms, including ArcGIS Pro, mobile data collection tools, and Google Earth Engine. These workshops will be targeted to UCANR employees and their collaborators. We will continue to develop our network of collaborators through multi-disciplinary research programs including our ongoing project with Cal-Adapt on climate change adaptation. We will also continue to serve as a hub for expertise on drone mapping, which allows us to connect academics within UC ANR through our leadership on the UAS Work Group and participation with the UC Center for Excellence on UAS Safety and teaching program at UC Davis, UC Merced, and UC Berkeley. We will once again serve as the lead unit for the 4th annual DroneCamp short course in June 2020, expanding the network of instructors to include additional CE Specialists and faculty from UC campuses including Davis, Berkeley, Merced, and Santa Cruz, with additional instructors from California State University at Monterey Bay. To maximize the engagement between CE Advisors and ANR Staff, we are also planning to provide scholarships to ANR employees across the division.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
During the 2018-2019 year IGIS strengthened its research services for AES faculty, CE Specialists, and CE Advisors through expanded use of the most recent developments in spatial technology, computing platforms, and data analytics. In 2019 we had the good fortune to continue our collaboration with the UC Natural Reserve System on the California Heartbeat Initiative. This ambitious project is centered on collecting longitudinal multispectral drone images at 10 UC reserves across CA. In 2019 we flew 1300 acres at 7 reserves for the CHI project, and provided additional support training UC NRS employees and helping them develop a data management system for the long-term. Monterey Bay DART, Cal State Monterey Bay (CSUMB), and UC Santa Cruz Fort Ord Natural Reserve were our primary partners in putting on our third annual DroneCamp. DroneCamp is our flagship training event, which continues to get bigger, more comprehensive, and with a more polished curriculum. Monterey Bay DART is a non-profit spearheading technology focused regional development in the Monterey Peninsula, including an industry UAS symposium that we scheduled to align with DroneCamp. CSUMB provided amazing logistic support and modern facilities for the data processing sessions. Our flight practice sessions were held at the beautiful nearby UCSC Fort Ord Natural Reserve. Although it took a lot of effort to coordinate all the pieces, the joint program went brilliantly and we're getting the band back together for 2020. Our long-term collaboration with the UC Berkeley Geospatial Innovation Facility (GIF) ramped up this year with the launch of a new three-year project funded by the Strategic Growth Council. The goal of the project is to develop new ways to access complex climate data from California's official portal for climate data, Cal-Adapt, also managed by the GIF. Under the new project, we are conducting climate needs assessments for climate data in agriculture and natural resources, and developing new software tools to make it easier to access and analyze both historic and forecast climate data. We also continue to be regular instructors at the GIF's GIS workshop series. We maintain collaborations with the state agencies through a number of projects. We continued to be the lead unit developing the California Adaptation Clearinghouse, with funding by the Governor's Office of Planning and Research and technical work done by the GIF. We are a members of the California Natural Resources Agency UAS Work Group, along with Dr. Brandon Stark from the UC Center of Excellence on UAS Safety. This has led to some valuable collaborations, including the participation of the California Dept of Fish and Wildlife in our drone workshops at Hastings Reserve. Sean is also a regular at the Ag Day at the State Capital, where he talks about applications of GIS and drone data in agriculture. Our drone services program collected almost 1,000 acres of RGB and multispectral imagery across California, primarily for research in crop science, rangeland sustainability, fire ecology, and ecosystem dynamics. This allowed us to provide services to more than a dozen campus based faculty and UCCE Advisors, with projects ranging in size from 5 to over 500 acres. Our UAV data covering the River Fire (which burned over half of the UCANR Hopland Research and Extension Center) has been instrumental in developing vegetation restoration goals for the center, as well as serving as a baseline for future research on the effects of vegetation treatments on fire dynamics, post-fire vegetation recovery, and soil dynamics. One additional new project is a focused mission supporting agriculture management at Lindcove Research and Extension Center, where we have flown multiple missions using multispectral cameras, and helped map individual orchard trees for productivity studies. To help researchers turn their data into insights and actionable information, we stay abreast of the latest advances GIS and computational modelling platforms, including ArcGIS, R and Python. Our GIS Service Center develops customized data processing and visualization products for CE Specialists and Advisors who lack the skills or time to manage increasingly long workflows from data acquisition, processing, analysis, and visualization of results. Mirroring the trend toward big data and integration of increasingly diverse datasets, our web app projects have increased in complexity and technical requirements. Two examples of large web apps that came to maturity this reporting period include the Climate Adaptation Clearinghouse, which provides curated case studies and documentation of climate adaptation, and the CA Land Trends Site, which documents patterns of agricultural land ownership and crop distribution in California. We extended upgraded training materials to help ensure our clientele are kept up with the latest developments in software. There's been a huge shift in the world of desktop GIS in the last couple of years, with industry giant ESRI announcing the retirement of the venerable ArcMap suite in the early 2020s, and pumping out new features for ArcGIS Pro. The transition has been bumpy for a lot of people, but is a lot easier with a workshop that explains the layout of the new software. The Forest GIS workshop series we pioneered with Rick Satomi also featured the newer version of the software, and highlighted its interoperability with cloud based storage, visualization, and processing. We also did a major upgrade to the Spatial Analysis with R workshop, which is offered every semester at UC Berkeley, incorporating standards from the new sf R package, which has been a game changer in the R world.
Publications
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2018
Citation:
Easterday, K., Paulson, T., DasMohapatra, P., Alagona, P., Feirer, S. and Kelly, M., 2018. From the field to the cloud: A review of three approaches to sharing historical data from field stations using principles from data science. Frontiers in Environmental Science, 6, p.88
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2018
Citation:
Easterday, K., Kislik, C., Dawson, T. E., Hogan, S., & Kelly, M. 2019. Remotely Sensed Water Limitation in Vegetation: Insights from an Experiment with Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs)
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2018
Citation:
Csillik, O, J Cherbini, R Johnson, A Lyons, and M Kelly. 2018. Identification of citrus trees from UAV imagery using Convolutional Neural Networks. Drones 2(4), 39
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2019
Citation:
G. W. Frankie, J. C. Pawelek, S. S. Leon Guerrero, R. W. Thorp, M. A. Rizzardi, M. H. Chase, C. C. Jadallah, A. Smith-Pardo, A. Lyons, I. C. Feng, and S. L. Witt "Survey of Native and Honey Bees from Agricultural Brentwood and their Constructed Bee Gardens in Northern California, 2010-2018," Journal of the Kansas Entomological Society 91(4), 2018, pp. 310-331
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2019
Citation:
Spiegal, Sheri, Richard E. Estell, Andres F. Cibils, Darren K. James, H. Raul Peinetti, Dawn M. Browning, Kirsten B. Romig, Alfredo L. Gonzalez, Andrew J. Lyons, and Brandon T. Bestelmeyer. 2019. "Seasonal Divergence of Landscape Use by Heritage and Conventional Cattle on Desert Rangeland." Rangeland Ecology & Management
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2019
Citation:
Deitch M.J. and Feirer S.T. 2019 Cumulative impacts of residential rainwater harvesting on stormwater discharge through a peri-urban drainage network. Journal of Environmental Management 2019 Aug 1, 243: 127-136
|
Progress 04/30/18 to 09/30/18
Outputs
Target Audience:The primary target audience for this project includes: AES faculty, staff, and students, including 600 academic researchers in around 40 departments at 3 colleges and 1 professional school (UCB College of Natural Resources, UCD College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, UCD School of Veterinary Medicine, UCR College of Natural and Agricultural Sciences). 165 locally based UCANR Cooperative Extension Advisors 115 campus-based UCANR Cooperative Extension Specialists at UC Davis, UC Riverside, UC Berkeley, UC Merced, and UC Santa Barbara Staff and researchers at ANR's nine Research and Extension Centers Staff and researchers at ANR's 10 Statewide Programs and Institutes Secondary audiences include: All researchers in agriculture and natural resources both domestically and internationally Researchers and staff affiliated with the UC Natural Reserve System Research-IT departments in the UC system Changes/Problems:While we do not anticipate any major changes to our focus or programmatic approach, we continue to be wary of the long-term declining financial climate facing the University of California in general, and UC ANR in particular. To prepare for the likelihood of fiscal austerity continuing into the next reporting period, we have diversified our revenue streams, shared costs and resource effort through collaborations, and gone after larger projects that provide direct FTE support. As always, we keep our eye on technological developments and the emergence of new tools. This is both a challenge and an opportunity to support research innovation that bridges important research questions and the latest tools for data collection, informatics, and analysis. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?During the reporting period, IGIS taught 8 workshops in five locations for 198 people. Workshop topics included: Image processing and GIS for Crop Ag with CERES Imaging Working with Geospatial Data in R Intro to ESRI StoryMaps ArcGIS Pro Drone Mapping Applications of GIS in Forestry LiDAR Data Processing DroneCamp How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?IGIS offers extension products via the web: we have a website, an IGIS Blog, we contribute to the ANR email listserv, and we produce a series of Tech Notes articles. IGIS posts an average of around 60 posts per year, with an average of 33,000 web hits per year. Our application-specific, 'Tech Notes', provide detailed tutorials on how to apply tools to real-life scenarios. We also deliver presentations throughout the state (we have reached 1,400 people in this time period), the IGIS program delivers research support through a GIS and Informatics service center for project level work that has UC-wide application. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?For the next reporting period, we will continue our basic model of providing research support and leadership for campus and UCCE academics, leveraging the latest advancement in data technology and analytics, and sharing lessons learned through technical documentation and training. Our implementation approach will continue to center around collaborations, with several new collaborations coming to fruition next reporting period. We have a project in the pipeline to work with UCCE Forestry Advisors to develop a GIS curricula tailored for forestry professionals, and implement a series of in-person workshops at four different locations in California in collaboration with community colleges and CSU campuses. We also plan to repeat and expand DroneCamp, which in 2019 will be hosted by Cal State University at their new campus in Monterey Bay, in collaboration with Fort Ord Reserve, and a local economic development initiative called Monterey Bay DART. We are also launching an exciting new collaboration with Cal-Adapt - California's official portal for historic and projected climate data. With support from the California Strategic Growth Council, we will conduct a needs assessment of climate data and decision support tools for growers, ranchers, and foresters. We will also be creating new low-level tools for accessing Cal-Adapt data in R and Python, developing documentation and tutorials for developers, and creating pilot decision support tools. To guide our training program for the next several years, we will conduct a division wide Training Needs Assessment for GIS and Informatics (the last one was in 2014). Based on those results, we will review and develop training curricula including in-person workshops, self-paced materials, webinars, and technical support. We are also planning to launch a UAS Work Group, to develop connections between UCANR's diverse network of drone users on campuses, county farm advisors, and field stations. The mission of the work group is to identify cross-cutting needs and opportunities, and develop collaborations within a field that is increasingly become compartmentalized into drone operators, data managers and processors, and analysts.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
The current reporting period was the first year of our new five year NIFA project. IGIS strengthened its research services for AES faculty, CE Specialists, and CE Advisors through expanded use of the most recent developments in spatial technology, computing platforms, and data analytics. Our drone services program collected almost 6000 acres of RGB and multispectral imagery across California, primarily for research in crop science, rangeland sustainability, fire ecology, and ecosystem dynamics. To keep up with the demand for drone services, we expanded our research capacity with a new drone technician / data analyst position, and procured a fixed wing research drone allowing for efficient data collection over much larger areas. This allowed us to provide services to more than a dozen campus based faculty and UCCE Advisors, with projects ranging in size from 3 to over 3500 acres. An example of a project that our expanded capacity made possible for the first time was a large mapping study we conducted after the River Fire burned over half of the UCANR Hopland Research and Extension Center. Within 2 months, we collected RGB and multispectral imagery for 3500 acres of the center, including the entire burned area, as well as eleven aerial 360 panoramas. These data accompanied a call for research proposals on fire-ecology and management, and will serve as a baseline for future research on the effects of vegetation treatments on fire dynamics, post-fire vegetation recovery, and soil dynamics. Another large, long-term mapping project that took root during the reporting period is a multi-site study of water-vegetation dynamics in collaboration with the UC Natural Reserve System. The PIs for this project are based at multiple UC campuses, and the 10 study sites are spread across California. During the reporting period, our expanded drone services capacity enabled us to fine-tune our workflow for planning, field safety, data acquisition, data management and analysis. We share these lessons through presentations and original technical documentation, which we publish on your website. During the reporting period, we published Tech Notes on working with memory cards, mission planning tips, and preparing for the FAA Part 107 remote pilot exam. We also run a 3-day comprehensive drone mapping short course, covering the entire workflow for drone mapping. We delivered two such short courses during the reporting period, one in collaboration with The Wildlife Society and our flagship training event called DroneCamp. DroneCamp 2018 was our largest drone training to date, with over 50 researchers, students, and land managers from across California and as far away as the Caribbean and West Africa, and nearly a dozen instructors. The course was highly successful, with 100% of respondents saying they learned something they will use in their work; and 100% rating DroneCamp as "good" or "excellent". One participant wrote, "Hands on, well organized, expert instructors, good learning environment, non-biased tips, approachable instructors". DroneCamp 2018 was held at UC San Diego, which is not an AES campus but has some of the top UAS and computational data programs in UC. This choice generated further benefits in terms of networking with faculty and staff at UCSD, the UCSD Drone Lab, and San Diego Supercomputer Center. To help researchers turn their data into insights and actionable information, we stay abreast of the latest advances GIS and computational modelling platforms, including ArcGIS, R and Python. Our GIS Service Center develops customized data processing and visualization products for CE Specialists and Advisors who lack the skills or time to manage increasingly long workflows from data acquisition, processing, analysis, and visualization of results. Mirroring the trend toward big data and integration of increasingly diverse datasets, our web app projects have increased in complexity and technical requirements. Two examples of large web apps that came to maturity this reporting period include the Climate Adaptation Clearinghouse, which provides curated case studies and documentation of climate adaptation, and the CA Land Trends Site, which documents patterns of agricultural land ownership and crop distribution in California. In a similar vein of making data available for research and extension, we continued to develop and maintain data portals for select datasets we manage. During the reporting period, we continued to manage several long-term datasets, and developed a new data portal for the UC Natural Reserve System. These tools allow users to bring data directly into GIS environments, research platforms, and web platforms.
Publications
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2018
Citation:
Easterday K, McIntyre P, Kelly M. 2018. Land ownership and 20th century changes to forest structure in California. Forest Ecology and Management. 2018 Aug 15; 422:137-46.
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2018
Citation:
Eisen, RJ, S Feirer, A Monaghan, K Padgett, MB Hahn, and R Lane and M Kelly. 2018. A climate suitability model of the western blacklegged tick (Ixodes pacificus) in California forests, grasslands, scrub-shrublands and riparian areas. Journal of Medical Entomology 55 (5): 11331142
- Type:
Theses/Dissertations
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2018
Citation:
Easterday, K. 2018. Historical legacies shape contemporary forests and woodlands: a study of California landscapes integrating historical and modern ecological data.
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