M2 - Forestry and LiDAR

-

Module 2 focuses on analyzing LiDAR data from the United States Geological Survey (USGS) and creating a map that will be useful to foresters to understand forest canopy and terrain. This will help them to be cost effective forest management and activities without having to be in the field. This lab taught us to decompress the data from Virginia's LiDAR application and creating DEM, DSM, forest height, forest biomass and canopy density.

I initially tried doing this in my local machine but unfortunately running the 3D Analyst tools usually requires a better video card. I forgot my other laptop that has NVIDIA as video card to run this process smoothly. With the .las file, we had to convert it to raster and geoprocessing the raster into DEM and DSM data. From there, I used the attribute table to create a tree height distribution map with its histogram. Lastly, applying different tools like LAS to Multipoint, Count, Is Null, Con, Plus, Float and Divide to get the Canopy density layer for my final map.

It's been a while since I used 3D Analyst tools since I mostly ran my watershed delineation datasets using just the 2D model. This is a good exercise for me to make use of LiDAR data in some of my work but hopefully we can get better LiDAR data not just in the US but also in African countries wherein there's usually low resolution LiDAR data. Having this data in countries I work in will help us strengthen our agricultural projects on our targeted areas. Below is my final map for this module.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

M1 S4 - Suitability Analysis / Least Cost Path

-
Image
Scenario 4 lets you pretend to be a park ranger in the Coronado National Forest and is assigned to create a corridor between two protected areas for black bear movement. This will help us keep the area protected on different factors especially urbanization keeping away people and noise away from our black bears yet giving them the best suitable area to live. Below is the ArcGIS model I created for the said scenario. We are given 3 factors to consider (1) roads, (2) elevation and (3) land cover. I realized that besides these if we have data of rivers, and if lucky GPS tracks of black bears (if that's even possible) so we can get a glimpse of their movement as well. First, I applied Euclidean distance tool with the roads layer to transition it to raster and then reclassified all of them according to the suitability criteria given. The reclassified layer were then combined using Weighted overlay tool with the following weights: land cover (60%), elevation (20%) and roads (20%).  Moreo...
Read more

GIS Portfolio

-
For the last few weeks of my certification in UWF, I have been working on my GIS portfolio on WIX website. This GIS portfolio showcases an in-depth about myself and some of my GIS projects that I've worked as a student and as a GIS profession in our organization. I had a hard time digging up some of my works on the past years when I was just starting as a consultant. I realized that I have improved a lot in my skills and this is actually a good avenue to showcase some of it. Here's the link to my GIS portfolio . In addition, I also am preparing myself to apply for the Master's degree program in GIS Administration in UWF and continue my study. I hope that this portfolio will be helpful if needed be as a requirement in my application. I'm also sharing my LinkedIn here that contains some of my works and some of the articles I've written with some of my colleagues:  How to Protect Refugee Camps from Floods and Cyclones Using Geographic Information Systems Digitization ...
Read more

Module 4 - Geoprocessing

-
Image
Geoprocessing is a an importent component in GIS. Whether you're a new or advanced user it is an essential set of tools you will use for processing geographic and related data. It offers to perform simple spatial analysis to complex ones. It can also be modeled into a sequence of spatial relationship that will help the user to automatize tasks from one tool to the other and produces a whole new dataset you can use for decision making. Another component related to geogprocessing is the Model Builder, which I recently have used quite frequently this year. In one of the projects that I'm working on we had to run multiple tools from the input until the end result. And we need to do that everyday, instead of running 10+ tools daily, why not create a model wherein all you need to do is add the input parameters (daily) and run it. It will then publish the end result in my ArcGIS Online profile and there you go I now have an updated dataset I can publish daily. Model Builder is lik...
Read more