Wake Forest Virtual Arboretum

The Wake Forest Virtual Arboretum is online. Here you can find photographs, natural history information, and maps showing the location of 17 species of trees planted on the Hearn and Manchester Plazas of Wake Forest University.

Real-world classification Lab

Hey guys, as you saw last week classifying features in satellite images is hard in some cases and easy in others.  Some things were easy to distinguish--say water and land--while others were more difficult, say urban areas versus wetlands.

This is where the science of remote sensing kicks in.  Different features absorb and reflect in different regions of the electromagnetic spectrum, ranging from microwaves all the way down to UV.  Today we are going to continue with landsat satellite images and do three things:

1. Download landsat images from the USGS or Brazilian Space Agency links:

http://edcsns17.cr.usgs.gov/EarthExplorer/

http://www.dgi.inpe.br/CDSR/

2. Look at different combinations of bands and what they tell us about features. 

3. Download time series of landsat data and classify them to answer real-world conservation/science questions.

Line-Drawing Made Easy

Here's a useful tool for connecting points to make a line. In Hawth's Tools (see the entry below), under 'Animal Movement' use 'Convert locations to Paths'. It's much quicker than playing connect-the-dots with the sketch tool!

Landscape ecology article

Here is  a link to a GIS project where they go through the steps of their model for landscape connectivity.  

Add-ons for ArcGIS

Hey guys, 

Here is a link to Hawth's Tools--add-on tools to ArcGIS that do things that we do a lot and that is difficult or not straightforward in Arc.  It might be worth adding them.

Spatial Analyst Trouble

Hey guys --

If you have a problem with Spatial Analyst appearing as a toolbar, but not in the ArcToolbox, try this solution (from the ESRI tech support):

Enable them for use in both ArcMap and ArcCatalog via the Tools menu > Extensions option.

Once you have enabled the extensions, please try the following to add the Spatial Analyst Tools to your ArcToolbox:
1. Launch either ArcMap or ArcCatalog
2. Right-click any area within ArcToolbox and select "Add Toolbox"
3. In the Add Toolbox dialog, select the "Look in" drop down and choose "Toolboxes"
4. Double click the "System Toolboxes" and add the "Spatial Analyst Tools" toolbox.

Hope this helps!

Unpacking ISO files

There are several programs you can download to unpack ISO files. I used one called "MagicISO" to unpack the ISO file directly to my hard drive. Opening the program after downloading, it looks like they want you to buy the program, but I clicked the "Try it" button and it worked.

Here's the link to the file:

Magic ISO