CAST Fiscal Year 2004-2005 Annual Report - Center for Advanced ...

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orthoimagery, Cadastral data, Geodetic control, Elevation, Hydrography, Transportation, and Government units). Digitization of the Arkansas Soil Survey 12/15/04 – 4/15/05 ASWCC $63,113. Traditionally, the results of a soil survey have been presented in hard copy publications that include maps and associated information in tables and narratives. More efficiently, the digital soil databases can serve all the purposes of the traditional soil surveys and much more. Some of the advantages of completing a state-wide digital soil database include: a) they provide county, city, state and federal governments, and other decision makers a digital soils layer that can be used with other data layers such as land use and land cover, aerial photographic imagery, topographic base maps and socioeconomic data using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) in order to facilitate analysis and decision making; b) provide a more efficient and economical method for keeping soils information updated and available to users; c) offer cost savings by reducing the number of traditional hard copy soil surveys that need to be republished, as original supplies are exhausted; d) take advantage of computer technology to store and manage large quantities of soils data, which will result in savings of time and additional expenses for county and state agencies; e) provide easy access to soils information that can be downloaded and captured for any area via the Internet; f) facilitate policy makers easy access to a critical, state-wide natural resource database to help the development and implementation of local and state policies related to environment and natural resources issues; g) assist County Conservation Districts, the Cooperative Extension Service, consultants and others to provide more efficient and timely assistance to farmers and other land managers when developing plans for animal manure management, soil and water conservation, pasture management, forest and site specific soil and crop management. The soil digitization project started in 1995 when the Arkansas Legislature allocated funds to the Arkansas Soil and Water Conservation Commission (ASWCC) to digitize the soil surveys of the Mississippi River Delta of the 26 counties in eastern Arkansas. This project was a cooperative venture between the Department of Agronomy at the University of Arkansas, the Natural Resources and Conservation Service (NRCS) in Little Rock and the Arkansas Soil and Water Conservation Commission (ASWCC). By the end of the fiscal year 2003 soil surveys of 68 counties in Arkansas were completed with the support of previous legislatures and the cooperation of the above mentioned agencies. The present soil digitization project is a continuation of the soil database development project in which soil surveys of the 75 Arkansas counties are being digitized. This project is intended to cover the completion of the digitization of the remaining seven counties in Arkansas. The final products provided are the digitized county soil survey maps, which will be associated to relational databases and digital maps of each county reflecting selected soil surface properties. These digital data constitute the first step in the completion of the Soil Survey Geographic Database (SSURGO), which is part of the National Soil Information System (NASIS). The project is completed at the Center for Advanced Spatial Technologies (CAST) with the financial support of the Arkansas Soil and Water Conservation Commission and in cooperation with the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS). The overall goal of this year’s Soil Surveys Digitization project was to complete the digitization of the following counties: Bradley, Calhoun, Cleveland, Dallas, Ouachita, Pike and Grant. Some of these counties, which are strategically situated into the West Gulf Coastal Plain area, have no published soil surveys. As a consequence, the soil information for these counties is of great importance for a wide variety of professionals and public users. The soil surveys are developed on mylars by NRCS personnel and the digitization is performed at the Center for Advanced Spatial Technologies. The quality of the digitization process is in accordance with the national cartographic standards. Digitizing the soil boundaries consist of three major stages. The first stage consists of the creation and processing the soil maps, and also raster and vector editing of each individual map on a 7.5minute quadrangle map. Stage two involves the joining of the quadrangle maps to provide seamless county survey coverage. Stage three includes error-checking for each individual map and a seamless patch of the maps. NRCS is the CENTER FOR ADVANCED SPATIAL TECHNOLOGIES 35
agency that conducts the final checks on the overall quality of the work and has the final approval authority before submitting the soil survey for SSURGO certification. As of June 2005 the following counties have been digitized and submitted to NRCS for quality control and certification: Pike, Ouachita, Calhoun, Bradley, Dallas and Cleaveland. The project also focuses on developing communication tools for the soil data for professionals and general public interested in the soil information. Once the soil surveys become SSURGO certified, compiled datasets of selected soil attributes are manipulated in an appropriate GIS format and published within the on-line data delivery system GeoStor (http://www.cast.uark. edu/cast/geostor/) hosted at CAST. Presently, there are more than 30 counties available for download with information including general soil information, crops suitability, soil surface layer properties and soil use interpretation (representing more than 200 soil attributes). Soils series within Fayetteville and surrounding cities. Another tool for communicating soil information at CAST is the Arkansas Soils Information System (ARK-SIS), which can be accessed at http://soils.cast.uark.edu. This is an on line interactive mapping application built to provide information on soil properties and soil related characteristics on a county, as well as state basis. The goal of this application is to provide a useful and easy to use interactive tool for visualizing, analyzing and interactively building soil maps for each county, as well as for the entire state. In addition to simple on-line mapping, the user is offered the possibility to identify, query and build maps at his/her choice using the available soil databases. GIS-Based Natural Resource Analyses for the Ozark Wetland Planning Region 01/03/05 – 12/31/05 Arkansas Soil & Water Conservation Commission $58,697. GIS-Based Natural Resource Analyses for Arkansas River Valley Wetland Planning 07/01/04 – 06/30/05 Arkansas Soil & Water Conservation Commission $45,687. For over ten years, CAST has continued its collaborative research efforts to identify, quantify, and analyze wetland resources across Arkansas. As digital data of natural resources have become more available, and computers have become vastly more powerful, it has become feasible to undertake the detailed study of much larger areas in a much shorter time period. The study area for these tow projects are the Ozark wetland planning region, encompassing the Illinois River, Upper White River, Spring/Strawberry Rivers, and Southern Boston watersheds, and the Arkansas River Valley wetland planning area from Ft. Smith to Little Rock. Much of the project encompassed the gathering and translation of data to be compatible with the geographic information systems (GIS) of the Soil and Water Conservation Commission (ASWCC). Analyses of this data focused on the methodology codeveloped by CAST and the Multi-Agency Wetland Planning Team (MAWPT), as already applied to all the watersheds of the Arkansas delta and the Coastal Plain. Compatibility with these previous analyses was of primary consideration, in order to maintain the value of the earlier research. The project consisted of four principle steps: • Gathering, development, and conversion of ecosystem component data. • Creation of base component overlays and hardcopy maps. 36 CENTER FOR ADVANCED SPATIAL TECHNOLOGIES
Page 1 and 2: 2004-2005 Annual Report Center for
Page 3 and 4: Highlights of FY 2004-2005 ........
Page 5 and 6: Highlights of the 2004 - 2005 repor
Page 7 and 8: THE ENVIRONMENTAL AND SPATIAL TECHN
Page 9 and 10: LOCAL SERVICE. BOARD MEMBERSHIP. Ca
Page 11 and 12: • Dell PowerEdge 2850, 2 x 2.8 GH
Page 13 and 14: PUBLIC SERVICE. CAST is involved in
Page 15 and 16: includes multiple IKONOS and QuickB
Page 17 and 18: graduate students. There are seven
Page 19 and 20: company's geospatial imaging tools
Page 21 and 22: 16 CENTER FOR ADVANCED SPATIAL TECH
Page 23 and 24: paralleled by workstation-based lab
Page 25 and 26: The focus of this summer's CADIS pr
Page 27 and 28: comprehensive web-based training fo
Page 29 and 30: In the 2-day training, the Educatio
Page 31 and 32: distributing appropriate data and p
Page 33 and 34: county, state and regional governme
Page 35 and 36: GeoStor Operations & Maintenance 07
Page 37 and 38: data. Historically, these efforts h
Page 39: transmitter only becomes active for
Page 43 and 44: the underlying GIS coverages, which
Page 45 and 46: and topographic relief. The satelli
Page 47 and 48: and tabular data for sanitary manho
Page 49 and 50: the imagery, say just North Little
Page 51 and 52: Environmental Research, Universitei
Page 53 and 54: TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE. Under the goa
Page 55 and 56: 50 CENTER FOR ADVANCED SPATIAL TECH
Page 57 and 58: Cothren, J. 2005 Lizard Tech GeoExp
Page 59 and 60: Symposium & Workshop “Meeting DoD
Page 61 and 62: Tullis, J. 2004 “CAST and Forestr
Page 63 and 64: for him and generated a report to h
Page 65 and 66: 2004 Leesia Marshall-Rosenberger (U
Page 67 and 68: 2005 Conducted presentations at the
Page 69 and 70: 2004 Conducted Introductory Geospat
Page 71 and 72: technology via EAST Support Forums:
Page 73 and 74: Peter Smith - Technical Assistant I
Page 75: 70 CENTER FOR ADVANCED SPATIAL TECH

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