Parcel Mapping

           On Tuesday there was a whole day (9 am- 4 pm) dedicated to PLSS and parcel mapping. PLSS stands for Public Land Survey System. We have discussed the PLSS in a few of my classes, GIS and conservation biology but only briefly. The main topic I sat in on was parcel mapping. Parcel mapping takes place at the county level and it is messy business. This is where monuments and “corners” are marked, coordinates recorded and then uploaded to some type of geospatial technology. The first speakers I listened to, Jason Poser and Frank Conkling discussed all the issues they experienced in Buffalo County with parcel mapping, some of which relate to our class.

First it’s important to have people educated in the system they are using. Parcel mappers in Buffalo County were not trained in CAD. This was probably the first thing that we learned in GIS I, not only do you need the software and data but you also need people and processes. There is no way to learn all of GIS on your own. Buffalo County switched over from CAD to parcel fabric. Jason Poser said it took 8 years to complete 40% of the county but only 3 years to complete 30% of the county once they switched over to parcel fabric.

The second important topic they talked about was accuracy. We are learning about this right now in GIS II. The county had no idea how accurate their data was! Accuracy is how close the observed value is to the actual value. Without accuracy the data no longer has integrity and at that point it has no use.

The third point they brought up was money. Counties need money for workers, technology and to obtain GIS licenses. Sometimes I think we students forget this because our university is fortunate enough to have the technology and professors needed for this field of study.

This was just one of many speakers I listened to on Tuesday, but they all had very similar points. Parcel mapping is messy business, people must be educated in this field, and it costs a lot of money. Organization and communication is a large aspect that could possibly improve the struggles of parcel mapping.

Microclimate

Introduction

• For this lab we went out on the UW-Eau Claire campus and took GPS points and recorded various aspects of the weather including group number, temperature, wind speed, wind direction, dew point, wind chill and any notes we cared to take for that particular point. From these points I have created a series of maps showing the microclimate of UW-Eau Claire campus. The goal of this lab was for us to become familiar with a new way of collecting gps points and their attributes while out in the field.

Study Area

• This study took place in Eau Claire Wisconsin, on the UW-Eau Claire campus on March 8th 2016. There were around 6-7 groups of two that took different sections of campus. Each group covered a specific part of campus. These areas include the parking lot across from the Haas Fine Arts center, the parking lot next to Haas Fine Arts Center, the area surrounding the Human Sciences and Services building, the walking bridge, along the shores of the river on either side, all over lower campus (around Putnam Hall, Thomas Hall, the old library, Schofield Hall, Centenniel Hall, Hibbard Humanities Hall, Davies Center, McIntyre Library, Nursing Building, Phillips Science Hall, and the parking lot behind Davies/Phillips Science Hall) and Putnam trail. 

Equipment Used

• Arc Collector App
• Ipad
• Bad Elf app
• Bad Elf Bluetooth reciever
• Kestrel weather meter

Figure 1: Bad Elf GPS reciever.

Figure 2: Arc Collector App


Figure 3: Kestrel Weather Meter

Figure 4: Tablet (very similar to Ipad with Arc Collector open on the screen

Methods

• Before we started collecting points our professor, Dr. Joseph Hupy set up a microclimate geodatabase with domains and feature classes that we would then upload to an app called Arc Collector. 
• We downloaded the free app Arc Collector on our smart phones. I have the iphone 4 and the app was not compatible with my phone because it did not have IOS 8 on it. Thankfully I brought my ipad with me as I was sure my phone would have some problems. I successfully downloaded Arc Collector on my ipad. 
• At this point we needed to go on ArcMap and sign into our enterprise account (UWEC) and then sign in with our school username and password. Once we were signed in on ArcMap we also needed to sign in on the Esri website the same way. This brought up a nice interactive map where we zoomed in on our location of Eau Claire campus. Now this map was ready to open on our Arc Collector app, where we would use our smart phones (in my case my ipad) to collect our microclimate points. 
• We went out to collect points from our assigned area from last week. My partner Ethan and I were assigned to the area stretching from the on campus church, along the river down to Putnam trail. I quickly realized my ipad was unable to collect points without wifi, because it could not pick up my position. 
• We used Ethan's phone for the time being and recorded the points with the specified attributes of temperature, wind speed, wind direction, dew point and wind chill, using a kestrel device that has a small fan to measure wind speed and other components. 
• When we collected around 20 points we came back inside and I explained to Dr. Hupy the technical difficulty I had experienced. He gave me a device called "bad elf" that was blutooth enabled to track my position fairly accurately. All I had to do for this was download the bad elf app and connect to the device via blutooth. 
• With the last remaining hour of class I went back out to campus and took a sample point to see if the technology was working. It appeared it was so I continued taking points around the campus mall by myself. Below is a map of the points I took (Figure 5)

Results/Discussion

Figure 5: The points I collected myself with my ipad using the arc collector app and bad elf device. 

• I thought it was interesting to map the attribute of temperature for these few points and it created an interesting pattern. When I started collected points it was around 5:00 pm, the first point I collected is the orange dot, indicating 74 degrees fareinheit. I continued my walk across Little Niagra where I took a slight right and collected my next three points indicated by yellow dots meaning the temperature was 71 degrees fareinheit. From there I headed towards Schofield Hall where I collected my fifth point indicated by a light green dot meaning it was 70 degrees there. My next four points are indicated by the darker green dots meaning it was 69 degrees fareinheit. And my last five points are indicated by blue dots indicating the temperature was 68 degrees fareinheit. Essentially I made a large circle around the campus mall but the temperature gradually decreased as I continued collecting points. Collecting these points took around 30-40 minutes and sunset was at 6:03 pm. The setting sun may give us some reason as to why the temperature was decreasing as I collected points in the campus mall. 
• There is one point I want to note and that is the point depicted as "practice point." This point I collected for the sole purpose to see if my ipad was working with the bad elf blutooth capability, so I did not record any attributes at this point as I just wanted to see that the location was working. 
• After collecting my own data I added this to arc map along with other group's data and created two more maps below (Figure 6 and Figure 7). 

Figure 6: All data points collected by all groups. Mapped here according to temperature. 

• This map reveals microclimate temperatures on the UW-Eau Claire campus and while I can not explain why the map turned out this way I can explain trends and give theories as to why it is this way. I noticed that temperatures seem to stay fairly warm in parking lots and the campus mall area. My thought as to why this is is because the sun was out on this clear afternoon warming the surface of concrete and creating warmer temperatures over these blacktop/concrete areas. 
• I then noticed that the cooler temperatures (indicated by light and dark green dots) of 65-67 degrees farienhiet tend to be along Putnam trail which is heavily forested. My theory of why these temperatures were cooler is that the trees blocked out much up the light, therefor these shadier regions would have been slightly cooler. 
• Then there is one point of 54 degrees fareinheit. This point seems to very off according to the rest of the temperatures. This could have been from a faulty kestrel weather meter or possibly the person collecting that point recorded the wrong number for temperature. 
• There is a small point and it indicates the temperature is zero. Again this was the point I recorded as a practice to see if my Ipad and bad elf receiver were picking up my location so I did not record any of the weather attributes at this particular point.

Figure 7: Map showing wind speed according to the size of the circle, indicated by 1-10 miles per hour. 

• There are only a few things I would like to point out about this microclimate wind speed map of UW-Eau Claire. 
• It seems that wind speed is slightly higher on the walkway bridge. This may be because this is an open suspended area above water. 
• The other aspect of this map that I want to point out is the higher wind speed on the northern side of the river. This may be because the winds were coming from the west and this particular part of campus does not have as many buildings to block the wind. 

Conclusions

• The purpose of this lab was to get outside, collect GPS points with weather attributes in a new way, and become familiar with the kestrel weather meter. We were also told to create microclimate maps that mapped a particular attribute or two. With these series of maps I hope to portray some data indicating different aspects of microclimate on the UW-Eau Claire campus.
• Attempting various ways to collect data 

Sources

• http://www.trulygadgets.com/files/2014/02/Bad-Elf-Gps-Pro-Bluetooth-Gps-Data-Logger.jpg (image)
• http://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0084/9012/products/Kestrel-Meter-3000-Red_large.jpg?v=1440600760 (Kestrel image)
• https://lh5.ggpht.com/8gcCe1rUyHdDE_sVjN2X7XMITyvAr7v_dd9skKweQ546qirYBBSxYV_UoqQ3ri81zK3j=w300 (Arc Collector App)
• http://webmapsolutions.com/assets/blog/suamobile.png (Ipad image)