Working as an intern for NiJel gave me a lot of practice with basic GIS work, such making shapefiles.  I also realized that working with open source software can be as simply as working with “other”  software.   This experience brought me closer to society’s needs for GIS work.  Moreover, I learn the many way in which one can make mistake when trying to create a shapefile.  This help become more aware and write a helpful presentation for those after me.  I hope this helps other as a point out tips as possible places for debugging.   Lastly, I want to give a special thank you to Sarah Elwood for referring me to NiJel, Lela Prashad, Nancy Jones and JD Godchaux for helping me in every aspect of the Oakland Refugee Project and for being amazing to work with.

Thank you once again,

Alexis Monetti

Links to Presentation:

Word Document: http://tinyurl.com/6rvg24

Powerpoint Presentation: http://tinyurl.com/649wy2

I was poking around the EPA Region 7 website today (really just looking for an address) when I came across this nice little Google Maps mashup of Region 7’s news items. Not bad! I’m all for this kind of thing obviously, and I hope R7 and all the other Regions (where are you Headquarters?) will consider putting as much of their geospatially enabled data on the web for public consumption. Even if you’re not interested in making a map of say, all the TRI facilities (TRI data are available, but individual facilities are not located in an easily mashable form – just aggregated by county) in a Region, at least create a GeoRSS or KML feed that updates when new data are avialable. By doing that, then other users can create mashups, for instance, a map showing water quality in wells and municipal supplies with poverty rates. EPA doesn’t have to make these maps themselves – others will mash them up with other relevant data. We’re now in an age where we expect transparacy from our government agencies, and this would be a good step toward making EPA more obviously transparent.

In July, the Cabinet Committee on Environmental Affairs (CCEA) has approved a plan to subsidize and provide incentives for both public and privet sector to cultivate medicinal plants. The eventual goal is to cover 80.000 to 1 million hectares with medicinal plants. In addition, the National Medicinal Plants Board, the body to carry out this plan, will encourage farmers to intersperse medicinal plants among traditional crops.The full article can be read here.

http://feeds.bignewsnetwork.com/index.php?sid=385932

The more I read, the more ignorant I feel. I have no idea how medicinal plants are traded or regulated in China. I grew up drinking all kinds of brown bubbling bitter brew. Even though this article from the International Development Research Centre is from 2001, it is also quite informative. It seems like this plan came none too soon to generate more income for Indian’s rural poor, help provide some quality control, and provide a relief for wild medicinal plants from overharvest.  According to the World Bank, more than 4 billion people use medicinal plants as their primary care. Many plants are already extinct and hundreds more are threatened by overharvesting, destructive harvesting techniques, and loss of habitat. At the same time, as a global society, we need to raise people’s standard of living because that’s one of the best ways to increase societal stability.

For anyone who is interested in learning more about Indian medicinal plants, the following site is pretty neat.

http://envis.frlht.org.in/

It lists plants from 5 states. Maharashtra has about 2000 plants. It even has a digital herbarium. Dried speciemens will never beat fresh ones but being able to visualize the plants is sweet.

If it took this long for governement and NGOs to put such actions to motion for plant with realized, measurable economic value, how long would it take other natural resources with not so easily measurable economic value?

And sustainablity? That’s another kettle of cuttle fish.

NASA’s Natural Hazards Observatory is featuring imagery from the MODIS instrument of a thick cloud of haze over Beijing on August 5. Another image (below) from August 3 shows a clear sky over Beijing, and, as NHO points out, the air quality has been wildly different over the last few weeks leading up to the Olympics. As athletes are arriving, many are concerned about how the air might impact their performances. The U.S. Cycling Team arrived today wearing masks.

NHO has a great description of why air quality has not dramatically improved in recent days, even though the Chinese government has ordered hundreds of thousands of cars off the road, and has closed several major factories and power plants:

Besides high population density and rapid industrialization, Beijing’s location presents an ongoing challenge for maintaining healthy air quality. The city lies in an arid region not far from the Gobi Desert, and both factors lead to high levels of suspended particulate matter. In addition, wind patterns often transport pollution from other cities hundreds of kilometers away. A “blue-sky day” in Beijing is characterized as a day when trees, buildings, or people cast shadows, not necessarily when skies appear blue. As the 2008 Olympic Games approached, some visiting athletes planned to train outside the city, to minimize their exposure to pollution.

August 5, 2008

August 3, 2008 (Beijing in center of image)

I came across this BBC article today detailing the OneGeology Project, which will serve a dynamic, web-based map of the geology at the earth’s surface globally at 1:1,000,000 scale. The finished product will be unveiled in a few days at the International Geological Congress in Oslo, but you can view the prototype here (doesn’t work in Firefox 3 though). Being a trained geologist, I’m very happy to see all of these geological data in one place, which will obviously foster collaborative partnerships between researchers and probably generate some new, possibly groundbreaking ideas about tectonics that have yet to be solved. As a web-mapping professional, I’m also intrigued that the group decide to use WMS and that participants will serve up their own data via their own WMS service. In a way, this is a participatory effort where new information (say a new field study identifies more complexity in the geology) can be added to a local WMS and those changes will be reflected in the global map instantly. Very cool!