Branner Blog

Welcome to the 2009-2010 school year.  Information about new materials, changes in access and interfaces, and budget cuts appears in the

Fall 2009 Newsletter

We got an interesting new book in just the other day. It’s called “Geographic Visualization: Concepts, Tools and Applications.” The book has contributed chapters by people doing very creative things with spatial information. For example, there is a discussion about Google Earth and its use in social science research - problems found with georectification of imagery, differences in resolution in the tiling, and oddities in mapping census information. Other chapters deal with map animation, a discussion of the WorldMapper project’s innovative use of cartograms, and a critical evaluation of 3-D geographical visualization. The book includes plenty of good illustrations and references. Well worth looking at if you’re embarking on a mapping project and want to use new technology.

Welcome to the 2008/2009 school year! We’ve been busy at the library over the summer working on access to new digital content, loading digital book content into Socrates, and expanding the map and GIS collections. You can find out more about these changes by reading the fall newsletter.

Stanford affiliates now have access to the California Sanborn Fire Insurance maps from 1867-1970. These maps provide a unique view of the history of California’s cities and towns show urban growth, changes in ownership, building use, and materials.

In honor of the International Polar Year, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), with funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF), created LIMA, the Landsat Image Mosaic of Antarctica.

From the site: “As the first major scientific outcome of the IPY, LIMA truly fulfills the IPY goals. LIMA is an international effort, supports current scientific polar research, encourages new projects, and helps the general public visualize Antarctica and changes happening to this southernmost environment. Researchers and the general public can download LIMA and all of the component Landsat scenes at no charge.”

Take a look.

[via] Climate Feedback.

Are you going to be in or around Chicago between now and March 2008? If you love cartography, you will not want to miss the Festival of Maps. Over 30 organizations are joining in this city-wide celebration by hosting exhibits, talks, and meetings devoted to cartography. The Field Museum has mounted an exhibit entitled “Maps: Finding Our Place in the World” featuring a stone Inca map, a landscape vessel from Peru, a eucalyptus bark map from Australia, as well as more conventional maps from the 1200s to the present. The University of Chicago is hosting an exhibit featuring the spectacular Roman “Speculum Romanae Magnificentiae dating from the mid-1570’s. The Art Institute of Chicago has mounted an exhibit of historical maps of Paris. Other events can be found at the Festival of Maps Web site.

Satellite imagery and digital mapping has changed the way we interact with and know about large-scale disasters. A case in point are the Southern California wildfires.

The San Diego Office Of Emergency Services is releasing maps each day of the burn areas, the perimeters of the fires, and the evacuation areas.

NASA has a series of satellite images showing the spread of the fires over the past few days over all of Southern California, one taken from the Space Shuttle Discovery as it rose into orbit on Tuesday.

Google is offering content from KPBS, which can be loaded into Google Earth.

The US Forest Service has released infrared imagery showing the locations and intensity of the fires in San Diego. I have yet to be able to access this imagery. My guess is the traffic has been so heavy that the site is down. Keep trying to get in over the next few days.

Wondering about why the air is so thick? Yesterday we speculated that the smoke and haze were coming from the wildfire down in Henry Coe State Park, but the image above tells the true tale. You can see the smoke emanating from the northeastern part of the state in Plumas National Forest. To really appreciate why a fire so far away is making our eyes itch in Palo Alto, check out the movement of the smoke in the 1km animation for the Western US [via NOAA].

More information from the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection here. Another site called Inciweb describes the situation as follows:

The Moonlight Fire has grown to 18,500 acres. The fire is located in the Northeastern Sierra Nevada, along the boundary between Plumas and Lassen counties, predominately on the Plumas National Forest. Containment is 5%.

Fueled by winds from the north, the fire moved south today triggering mandatory and voluntary evacuations.

You can subscribe to feeds from either of the sites above to get the latest news about this fire and California wildfires in general.

As the people of central Peru continue to struggle with the after effects (and aftershocks) of this week’s 8.0 earthquake, information is being posted online to keep up with events.

The US Geological Survey has created a number of maps showing the location, intensity, density, and historical quakes in the area. The shake map shown above locates the epicenter of the quake off the coast of Chincha Alta.

The Perry-Castenada Map Collections has posted a number of maps of Peru that are helpful in locating place names mentioned in the news.

CNN.com has created a Hot Topics page on earthquakes. Included are news accounts, videos, and pictures of the Peruvian earthquake as well as others. This page allows you to set up an RSS feed in order to remain current about recent events.

A map librarian colleague from the University of Buffalo has kindly allowed me to post this timely and informative message.

Subject: Western US Forest Fires Maps and Imagery

Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2007 10:23:44 -0400

From: David J. Bertuca <dbertuca@buffalo.edu>

To: Maps List <MAPS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>

The Western US is burning in many states. Dryness, winds, and other factors are making 2007 a bad year for fire detection and prevention. We have had questions on this and the following may be helpful for locating maps, satellite imagery, and data. (this is a selected list only). Some of the sites listed include maps for Canada and Mexico as well. Note too, that these sites provide useful map tools for non-fire related topics.

National Interagency Fire Center

<http://www.nifc.gov/fire_info/nfn.htm>
The following USDA Forest Service site provides a lot of data on the fires:
MODIS Active Fire Mapping Program

<http://activefiremaps.fs.fed.us/>
Select “Imagery” from top menu tab. You can view the latest (usually 1 day behind at most) images of particular states/regions, or you can select other dates and see the progress of fires/fire control. To the right of the thumbnail, select image type (true color are “real” color views).
ALSO on this page are maps and a GIS providing current status of fires.

Select tab “ArcIMS Maps” and you can use the GIS to see fires in relation to the surrounding terrain and infrastructure. This uses ESRI software and for those who have worked with the interface before, it is easy to navigate and find specific locations. For those wishing to just see a map of an area with the latest fire activity, select “Regional Maps”

<http://activefiremaps.fs.fed.us/activefiremaps.php>
and select an area. A map will be displayed and you can further select to see that area for current fire detections/activity. Additional maps and data are available at the home site to this page:
Remote Sensing Applications Center

<http://www.fs.fed.us/eng/rsac/index.html>
Also take a look at the NIFC links page:
National Fire Maps

<http://www.nifc.gov/fire_info/maps.htm>
News and other Gov sites with images/maps:
<http://abcnews.go.com/US/popup?id=3358368>
MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) NASA imagery page:

<http://modis.gsfc.nasa.gov/gallery/individual.php?db_date=2007-06-29>
choose images from right column (various res)
NOAA National Fire Weather Page for current reports:

<http://fire.boi.noaa.gov/>
and Natural Resources Canada has a site that provides current situations from its National Forest Fire Situation Report

<http://fire.cfs.nrcan.gc.ca/report/firereport_e.php>
see also their Forest Fire Hotspots 2007 page:

<http://atlas.nrcan.gc.ca/site/english/maps/environment/forestfires/hotspots2007/1>
These include fire, drought, and related weather data and maps. I hope this will prove useful to you in assisting others to find what they are looking for.

David J. Bertuca, Map Librarian

225 Capen Hall

University at Buffalo

Buffalo, NY 14260-1672
716-645-2947 x229

dbertuca@buffalo.edu