Season's Greetings!

We here at Spatial Data Management Corporation would like to send best wishes to you all for a wonderful holiday season and a prosperous New Year!

Field work with Peconic Land Trust

Working in the field with Peconic Land Trust on Long Island.

Working With Our Friends at Peconic Land Trust

Spatial Data Management was hired by the Peconic Land Trust to travel to their office in Southampton, NY and train their staff on how to integrate their existing AutoCad mapping environment with ESRI ArcGIS and how to maximize their land stewardship techniques with data collection and photodocumentation practices using their Trimble GeoXH GPS receiver with Trimble Pathfinder Office 4.00 and GPS Photolink 5.0. Peconic already had a vast amount of data for their properties in AutoCad, but was having trouble assimilating the field data they collected into this environment. SDM showed Peconic how to create vector and raster files that could be used seamlessly between AutoCad and ArcGIS, and help solve some spatial issues they were having with the AutoCad maps. A big part of Peconic’s land stewardship efforts is collecting accurate GPS location data on the property boundaries and taking photographs to document contentious land ownership issues. Before SDM arrived, Peconic had over $10,000 worth of GPS and other equipment that was not being used to its potential. SDM provided guidance on how to upload surveyed site maps and aerial photographs to the Trimble GeoXH to help guide their field personnel, and instructed Peconic how to use the GPSPhotolink software to collect and display accurately geo-tagged photography of site features. After spending one 8-hour day with the folks at Peconic Land Trust, SDM left with their software and equipment working in harmony much to the delight of the Trust’s friendly staff, and with a few bottles of great wine from one of the many vineyards that populate the road back to the Orient Point Ferry.

SDM Announces New MLTC Workshop

Spatial Data Management is proud to announce the acceptance of a new workshop, "Low Cost GIS for Land Trusts: Discounted and Open Source Software and Mapping Tools," by the Massachusetts Land Trust Coalition (MLTC website). SDM will partner with Mass Audubon to co-present at the MLTC conference in March of 2011. The workshop will focus on the use of low cost GIS solutions by land trusts. Check out the course description below:

Collecting, visualizing, and distributing site data efficiently is important for successful land stewardship. Advanced mapping software package such as ESRI's ArcGIS offers tremendous power, yet may be cost-prohibitive or require skills and training beyond a small land trust's capacity and needs.Many open source GIS software options exist and can often be used in conjunction with inexpensive geo-spatial location equipment to establish user friendly databases that can be easily analyzed and shared. The workshop will focus on introducing methodology for developing basemaps and site feature databases using open source GIS software and common handheld GPS transponders.

Data Logging

Just returned home after spending the day in Southern Massachusetts setting 6 water level data loggers in monitoring wells. The loggers will be used to collect water level readings during a prolonged pump test of a proposed public drinking water supply well. If all goes well, the test will kick off tomorrow and our work on a Sunday will all be worth it. In order to streamline the process we used an InSitu Virtual Hermit (see picture below), this device worked really well and probably saved us around 2 hours of set up time.  However, I'm still not convinced its worth the price of the rental, although we will see when the project is over. SDM will be helping the engineers on site access and analyze the pump test data in real throughout the week long pump testing process.  After well stability and recovery reading are collected we will provide a little data QA/QC and submit over 5,000 data points to the engineers in a way that will be easy to read and interpret.

SDM Announces New LSP Course Offering

SDM is happy to announce that our curriculum "GIS Applications for Environmental Professional" has been accepted by the LSPA for technical continuing education credit (MA, CT, pending for NY).

Matt will be instructing this initial introductory course which will be formatted to include both lecture and demonstrations, with an emphasis on case studies, and the encouragement of open discussion. Case studies will focus on site characterization studies for environmental concerns expected to be encountered by LSPs and other environmental professionals.  The course is formatted to provide students with a baseline understanding of GIS database development and capabilities. It will be a great orientation on GIS data and database development.

Visit http://www.lspa.org/mc/page.do?sitePageId=121000 for more information and to sign up for the course.

Catching Up

This is our new blog where we will share our news and highlights as well as post interesting GIS related articles and any other GIS information we come across. Since this is our first post we thought we would catch you up on what we have been up to over the past few monts. Enjoy!

NHWWA (9/7/2010)

Spatial Data Management Corporation was invited to present a talk to the New Hampshire Water Well Association on water level data collection, analysis, and presentation techniques.  The talk was developed to educate water well professionals on ways to efficiently record and organize data that may be required different regulatory agencies, the different types of equipment that can be utilized to facilitate efficient data collection, and how to process this information to allow for easy distribution to clients and regulators.  The talk was attended by several water well drilling and pump installation companies, who took away valuable tips and resources to assist them in future projects.

AEG (9/16/2010) 

Spatial Data Management Corporation was invited to present a talk to the New England Chapter of the Association of Engineering Geologist on the use of geophysical methods and 3D isopleth modeling techniques to assist in locating a site for a productive bedrock public water supply well.  The presentation summarized the geologic research and GIS development, field exploration and geophysical survey methods, and 3D model parameters and analysis.  The final bedrock well location was based in part on the results of the isopleth analysis and the well successfully produced groundwater yield that was sufficient for the project needs.  Isopleth modeling was shown to be an important tool that can be used in coordination with geophysical data collected from linear survey lines to interpolate anomalies and interpreted features across the entire site, allowing for a more robust evaluation of a site’s potential for a productive bedrock water well location.

LTA Conference (10/2 – 10/5/2010) 

Spatial Data Management Corporation was an exhibitor at the national Land Trust Alliance Rally in Hartford, CT.  SDMC is a member of the Land Trust Alliance and we are currently listed as the only GIS consultant on the LTA expert link website (http://www.landtrustalliance.org/about/partnerships/expert-link/consultants). SDMC was fortunate to make contact with many interesting members of the land trust community from across the United States, Mexico, and Argentina, provided some guidance and information (as well as some candy) and overall had a successful conference.