MEGUG Fall 2007 Conference

8:00 - 8:55

Registration

8:55 - 9:00

Welcome
MEGUG Board

9:00 - 9:30

50 States Initiative
Nancy Armentrout, IT Director, MaineDOT, and Member of the Maine Geolibrary Board

The Maine Library of Geographic Information (i.e., Geolibrary) recieved a grant from the Federal Geographic Data Committee's 50 States Initiative Program. The Geolibrary's project is two-fold. First, the GeoLibrary Board is updating its 2002 Strategic Plan and making adjustments to bring the state into closer alignment with formal National States Geographic Information Council Coordination Criteria. Second, the Board will be developing a "road map" to a sustainable technical and political architecture to capture and maintain property data at the parcel level. This will facilitate the implementation of National Spatial Data Infrastructure by focusing on the delivery of statewide cadastral data while working with the local level governments.

9:30 - 10:00

We describe an approach for analyzing ecosystem services provided by coastal banks and ledges in the southwestern Gulf of Maine ranging in size from 8 to 75 km in length. These are areas of high seasonal standing stock and production, and thus focal areas for many ecosystem services. These services are supported by advective and migratory inputs, and they export materials and services through the same means (for example, in the form of propagules from reproduction and increased biomass from feeding). Our goal is to model external and internal (local) processes and responses at a level useful to ecosystem-based approaches to management. We describe the data needs and approaches required to meet this goal.

10:00 - 10:30

Break
Poster Session and Vendor Displays

10:30 - 11:00

The National Geospatial Program Office
Dan Walters, Geospatial Liaison for Maine

The USGS has realigned the geospatial programs for which the USGS has a leadership responsibility into a National Geospatial Program Office (NGPO) to serve the needs and interests of the geospatial community throughout the Nation. This realignment brings The National Map, Geospatial One-Stop, and the Federal Geographic Data Committee into a single program office. With the creation of the NGPO, the essential components of delivering the National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI) will be managed as a unified portfolio that benefits the entire geospatial community. This presentation is an overview of the NGPO and USGS goals to acquire, store, maintain, and distribute base map data in support of the USGS science programs, graphic products (e.g., topographic maps) and the work of state and local government.

11:00 - 11:30

USM GIS Community Presentations: Encoding the Landscape: Project Le Mans
Jan Piribeck, USM Department of Art

The encoded landscape, with its layers of natural and cultural features is an overarching theme in my work. This presentation will describe a "cultural mapping" project done in Le Mans, France with seven students from Ecole Superieure des Beaux-Arts du Mans and three students from Ecole Superieure Des Geometres et Topographes, an engineering and surveying school also in Le Mans. Students identified and made art works in response to sites in Le Mans that contribute to the culture and feeling of the city, but are somehow overshadowed or lost in the public eye. Art and engineering students collaborated using GIS technologies to analyze and map these sites. The mapping of cultural resources serves to give art a more prominent position in the public realm. My long-term intention is to involve students with becoming surveyors and stewards of art and culture within their communities. I am interested in GIS as a means for documenting and preserving creative culture or in using the language of city planners to put art on the map so to speak. BLOG: http://www.encode-lemans.blogspot.com/

11:30 - Noon

USM GIS Community Presentations: Use Of GIS In Health-Related Research
David E. Harris, PhD, USM/L-A Natural and Applied Sciences

Mapping has been used effectively in public health at least since the mid-19th century. More recently, GIS has become an important tool in public health research. Here I report on 3 projects in which I am using GIS in health-related research. In the first project, we used GIS to determine the factors predictive of high hospitalization rates for heart disease in Maine at the town level. We found that the distance from town of residence to the closest hospital was a negative predictor of hospitalization rate. Because rural populations are generally less healthy, this suggests that people who live far from hospitals avoid hospitalization, even when they are ill. In the second project, we performed a similar analysis on hospitalization rates for respiratory disease. In the 3rd project we used GIS to measure the driving distance from 11 Maine high schools to all the venues within 2 km where soda was available and are determining if the availability of soda impacts the diet of students. The data analysis for the 2nd and 3rd projects is ongoing. These projects demonstrate that the application of even a modest level of GIS skills to health-related research can yield interesting and important results.

Noon - 1:00

Lunch

Buffet lunch is included with your registration fee.

1:00 - 1:30

All meeting attendees are welcome to join MEGUGs Members and Board for our annual, but brief, business meeting. The board will consider business issues brought to the floor by members at the meeting. Outside of issues raised by members, only one major item is planned for the meeting agenda: the election of new board nominees by our membership.

The board wishes to let our members know that after many years of service to MEGUG, the following board members wish to step down; Sari Hou, formerly of Unity College, Matthew Bampton from the University of Southern Maine and Jim Thomas, formerly with the Town of Freeport, now with gisSolutions.

New board nominees selected to fill these openings are Aimee Dubois from the Town of Scarborough, Cindy Pellett of Eastern Maine Development Corporation and Vinton Valentine from the University of Southern Maine.

Continuing board members wish to express our utmost gratitude to our departing board members for their outstanding service to MEGUG and we hope that our membership will join us in electing Aimee, Cindy and Vinton to serve on the board.

If the election of nominees is successful, the proposed makeup of next year's board will be as follows:

Chair - Mike White of Dirigo Spatial Systems
Vice Chair - Dan Walters of the USGS
Secretary - Greg Copeland of the City of Biddeford
Treasurer - Steve Harmon of UPC Wind Management

At-Large Members:
Aimee Dubois of the Town of Scarborough
Claire Kiedrowski of Kappa Mapping
Ken Murchison of the Northern Maine Development Commission
Cindy Pellet of the Eastern Maine Development Corporation
Vinton Valentine of the University of Southern Maine

1:30 - 2:15

History is spatial! Historical data that can be adapted and used in GIS is everywhere around us — historical maps, census data, city directories, pamphlets, and even phone books. For this presentation I will show a number of explorations I have made into the realm of historical GIS — from using raster analysis to compare historical maps, to reconstructing past landscapes and historical events.

2:15 - 3:00

"Visualize Your Community in 3D" is a free program created by Green Mountain GeoGraphics, Ltd. with support from Google. It is designed to help communities get started in 3D GIS. The core of the program involves the creation of Community Modeling Teams of 10 - 12 people that, following training will agree to model 10 buildings in their community. Completed buildings will be posted for use in Google Earth. These models will also be converted for use in ArcGIS. All of this is accomplished with freely available software. Team members that complete their 10 assigned buildings and are accepted for use the the Google Earth 3D layer will receive a free copy of Google Earth Pro. All models will be freely available for use and download through the Google 3D Warehouse. All training, modeler support, and model review are provided at no cost to participating communities.

3:00 - 3:30

3:30 - 4:00

In order to more readily delineate the geologic and geomorphic features of Greece, the Aegean Sea and western Turkey, digital satellite (LANDSAT-5/TM) data analysis were combined with datasets from many different sources. The GIS database uses the following primary data sources: Digital image MODIS and/or LANDSAT-5/TM; Digital Elevation Model (DEM) Source: NOAA GEOSAT and ERS-1 Satellite Altimetry Mission Data; Earthquake Epicenters - from NGDC CD - Seismicity Catalogs; Digital Geologic Showing the Geology, Oil and Gas Fields, and Geologic Provinces of Europe and Adjacent Turkey, US Geological Survey; World Stress Map Data - from 2000 Release of the World Stress Map; and GPS Data: velocity vectors indicating plate motion The geology of the region is a part of the complex geology of Greece, the Aegean Sea and the eastern Mediterranean. The rocks and structures ultimately reflect the tectonic framework and basin accretional sequences of the eastern Mediterranean. The compound interaction of the closing of the Mediterranean in the north-south direction and the westward movement of Anatolia (Turkey), have contributed to the production of metamorphosed rocks overlain by extrusive igneous materials in a highly faulted, earthquake-prone, region. Efforts are underway to assemble this data into a Geologic Atlas of the Aegean and make it readily available using ArcExplorer

4:00 - 4:30

Sociality may begin when kin settle near each other, and to learn more about the evolution of sociality, we can study species located at these early stages. Woodchucks are considered solitary marmots that do not associate with kin; however, few studies have examined their social system in detail. I studied a population of woodchucks in Maine and used DNA to determine genetic relatedness. I documented spatial organization by direct observations and radiotelemetry then measured amount of home range overlap and distance between home range centers using GIS software. Animals that were more closely related lived closer to each other. Females resided closer to female kin, and males lived closer to male kin. Woodchucks that were more closely related also shared more space than more distantly related animals. Females shared more space with more closely related females, but overlap and kinship were not related for males. Between males and females, amount of overlap in core home ranges increased with relatedness. Thus, kinship influences spatial patterns in woodchucks, which has implications for the nature of social interactions and development of sociality in this and other less social species.

4:30