Matthew Mayo set to present at the upcoming Massachusetts Land Conservation Conference

Matt has partnered with Jeff Collins of Mass Audubon and Vin Antil of The Trustees of Reservations to teach a low cost GIS workshop at the upcoming MLTC conference on March 26th. This will mark the first time Spatial Data Management has presented at this annual conference and Matt is really looking forward to it. The course description is as follows:

GIS has proven to be a useful tool for land conservation
and land management. However, limited funding and staff
resources can often limit the ability of small land trusts
to make use of this technology. In this presentation we
will look at several options for free and discounted
mapping software. In particular, we will look at three
free mapping packages: ArcExplorer, Quantum GIS and
MapWindow. We will compare the capabilities and ease
of use among these products. We will look at how well
each performs basic GIS tasks such as importing data
collected with GPS, creating and editing geographic
datasets, and map production. We will also look at
downloading and making use of free data from
MassGIS, and discuss nonprofit software deals available
through ESRI and MassGIS. It is hoped that through this
presentation and following questions, participants will
get a better sense of what the options are and which
may be best for them.

If you are interested in land conservation in the New England area consider joining us for this great day.

Matthew Mayo named Lecturer for Advanced GIS in Geography Department at Framingham State Univiersity

SDM is proud to announce that Matt will be teaching GIS at Framingham State University for the upcoming semester. Matt will apply his over 11 years experience in the environmental consulting industry to this new curriculum and instruct students on how to properly develop a GIS to help analyze and evaluate a site in terms of its hydrogeology, hydrochemistry, history, and surrounding environmental resources. Feedback has been great from the Department faculty who are excited to have the ability to offer this course to the FSU students.

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.