Field Methods

INTRODUCTION A custom project was assigned to address a geographic question of the students' choosing. The objective chosen was to track beavers and their associated ecological impacts on a property in Ogema, WI to determine whether beaver genocide is justified. Beavers have frequented this property (see Figure 1) for the past couple years and through generations have migrated northwest, reshaping the landscape along the way. Figure 1: Area of Interest Although beavers can bring positives to the environment, their actions can often cause unwanted side-effects and diminishing value of the landscape. Many poplar, birch, and occasionally oak and maple trees are chewed down. Often times these fallen trees cause additional damage and prevent future growth to the nearby trees. Damming of ponds and digging trenches to transport wood causes directed flooding to otherwise dry property. This causes already established trees to die from being submerged in the new waterline.  ...

INTRODUCTION For this exercise, navigation of the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire's Priory and Children's Nature Center was achieved using a GPS device and coordinates and then using a UTM map and compass. The purpose was to simulate accurate navigation in challenging conditions and terrain during field work. The priory is a wooded, hilly lot owned by the UW-Eau Claire on the Southwest side of Eau Claire, Wisconsin (see Figure 1). The fieldwork was performed on November 4th, 2007 on a rainy morning. Figure 1: The area of interest for the Field Navigation Exercise METHODS GPS and Coordinate Navigation The first round of navigation used a Bad Elf GPS unit and specified coordinates to find marked trees located in the Priory. The class was split into five groups, each with separate UTM coordinates. The coordinates listed below are for Group 1: 1. 617713, 4958075 2. 617767, 4958224 3. 617640, 4958159 4. 617553, 4958074 5. 617579, 4957938 Each group track...

INTRODUCTION Smart phones and tablets have become extremely useful in the field of GIS because they have stronger computing power than most GPS units and can easily access online data for instant-upload capability all with a smooth, familiar user interface. This project involves a collective data gathering method among multiple users to produce micro-climate information for the UW-Eau Claire campus. METHODS The University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire's campus was split into seven zones (Figure 1). Each student was then assigned a zone, randomly sampling points throughout using ArcCollector.  Figure 1: Micro-climate point data and zones collected in a project in ArcCollector ArcCollector was downloaded to all students' phones and a group was created to access a common project and view the interactive map while collecting data points. Attributes collected were temperature, dew point, wind speed, wind chill, wind direction, and time. Using the group feature on ArcGIS Onlin...

INTRODUCTION For this ESRI online tutorial, Survey 123 was used to create a survey that would help the Homeowner Assoociation assess members' disaster preparedness for earthquakes and home fires. This demonstrates the usefulness of an intuitive data gathering software for creating and analyzing surveys. The created survey consists of three sections: general participant information, the 9 Fix-it prevention safety checks, and emergency asset inventory. SURVEY CREATION General Participant Information Setting parameters for each question is essential in maintaining data integrity.  Default values and required questions can be assigned. For example, requiring the date the survey was taken and assigning an automatic answer as the current date can ensure there is an accurate response. For short answer questions such as participant name, a minimum and maximum character value can be assigned. For more open-ended short answer responses, a hint field can be used to provide the partic...

Introduction Hands-on field work with various UAS craft and GPS devices for ground control points were conducted at the Litchfield Mine located in Eau Claire, WI (see Figure 1). Figure 1: The Litchfield Mine located on the Southwest side of Eau Claire, WI Methods Survey Ground Control Points Ground control points (GCPs) are used to geo-reference the data collected by UAS technology to improve accuracy and be represented on a GIS. They connect data collection to real-world coordinates. The method we used was to fully cover the area of interest with variability in elevation, avoiding clustering GCPs, and placing them in a triangular pattern to best record accuracy. We used  markers to demarcate our GCPs shown in Figure 2.  Figure 2: an AeroPoint GPS marker used as the 6/16 GCPs taken After all GCPs were placed, a variety of equipment was used to record the coordinates of these markers including the Trimble R2, Septentrio, Altus NR2, Topcon HiPer, Bad Elf GPS...