ES 551 announcements

ES 551 Announcements

May 9: The final exam is now available. Please follow instructions for turning in your results by the deadline.
May 7: GSA program reminder. Small-format aerial photography will be taught this summer in June--see ES 555. This is a required course for the graduate GSA certificate and an elective course for the GSA undergrad minor. The course is taught every other year, so now is the time to enroll!
May 3: The semester is near at hand! Individual project reports are due this coming week by Thursday, the 8th. On-campus students should be prepared to give brief overviews of your projects in class on Wednesday. The final exam will be placed online Friday, May 9th.
Note: your instructor will be out of town and away from email May 4-5th.
April 28: Continue working on your individual projects. Our last reading assignment includes NCGIA public access to GIS and textbook chap. 10.
Final project reports are due next week--see requirements for details about report formats. On-campus students should be prepared to present your projects informally in class next week.
April 21: Our reading this week includes NCGIA process modeling and textbook chap. 9. Continue working on individual projects. Did you hear about the earthquake? See USGS quake map.
Note: your instructor will be out of town and away from email later this week, April 25-27.
April 14: Reading this week deals with cartographic design, a subject of particular interest to your instructor. See also textbook chap. 7. Continue working on individual projects. Kary Reznicek will be available to assist students in the GSA lab.
Note: your instructor will be out of town and away from email later this week, April 16-19.
April 9: Your instructor recently received an institutional grant to purchase a digital color-infrared camera--see Tetracam ADC. The camera records green, red, and near-infrared bands for color-infrared imagery and vegetation indices. The intention is to acquire the camera and build a radio-controlled rig for kite aerial photography in time for ES 555 field trips in June.
April 7: Concentrate on developing your personal mapping project this week. Most students have completed all lab exercises; if you have not, do so as soon as possible. Reading includes textbook chap. 8 and NCGIA web-based GIS.
Note: ESU's annual research and creativity forum will be held on Thursday, April 10th, 1:00-4:00 pm in the Colonial Ballroom of the Union. Faculty and students will have various poster presentations on their research projects. Students are welcome to stop by and have a look. Your instructor will have a poster about high-altitude kite aerial photography.
April 2: GSA course available on campus and for distance-learning in the fall semester--see GIS applications (pdf file).
April 1: Students should complete the map projection exercise this week; this is the last exercise of the course. Your attention should focus now on individual mapping projects--send in your project topic and short proposal this week.
March 26: The Kansas Academy of Science will hold its 140th annual meeting at ESU this week, Mar. 28-29--see KAS meeting. This is a major event for us; KAS meets here about once a decade. All students are encouraged to participate in this special opportunity.
Note: Your instructor will be out of town and away from email Mar. 30-31. Please do not send any messages or assignments Mar. 29-31.
March 24: Welcome back from spring break! Our reading this week is about digital orthophotos, and the lab exercise is on map projections. The DEM lab is due this week.
Note: Students should start thinking about possible project topics. Your project proposal is due next week. Prepare a short summary that describes the project subject, type of data, means of image processing, and expected results.
March 14: Your instructor will be out of town and away from email Mar. 19-22. Please do not send any messages or assignments during this period. Have a great spring break!
March 9: Students should complete Idrisi tutorial 2-3 this week, before spring break. Our subject this week is digital elevation data with a DEM exercise (due after spring break). See also textbook chap. 6.

Note: All assigned Idrisi tutorial exercises are due prior to spring break! None will be accepted after spring break.

Updated student roster (ver. 2.0).

March 3: Well, March certainly roared in like a lion here in Kansas with a late winter storm. The mid-term exam is underway and due tomorrow. Reading this week includes NCGIA data quality and textbook chap. 5. Begin working on Idrisi 2-3.
Feb. 29: The mid-term exam is now available. Please follow instructions for turning in your answers by the deadline.
Feb. 22: Students should complete tutorial 1-8 next week and begin Idrisi 2-2. Reading includes NCGIA data storage and GCraft error in GIS, as well as textbook chap. 4.
Note: Your instructor will be out of town and away from email Feb. 23-25 and Feb. 29-Mar. 1st. Please do not send messages or assignments during these times.
Feb. 17: For the coming week, read textbook chap. 4 and GCraft data sources. Tutorial 1-7 is due at this time; begin working on Idrisi 1-8.
Note 1: The mid-term exam is coming up soon, Feb. 29-Mar. 4. Prepare with all readings and lab exercises.
Note 2: The environmental field methods session has been rescheduled for Thursday, Feb. 21st (see below).
Feb. 11: Lots of reading this week with GCraft GIS databases, NCGIA raster data structure, NCGIA GIS networks, and textbook chap. 3. Lab exercise 1-6 is due at this time, and we begin working on Idrisi 1-7. This will be a "new" exercise for most students. The focus is on visual display elements to create an effective map presentation. Your instructor particularly likes the photo-layer capability (part w).
Note for GSA students: the first session for Environmental Field Methods will take place on Friday, Feb. 15th. The focus of the session is field acquisition of elevation data, and will feature a demonstration of GPS, total station, and automatic level survey methods by Steve Brosmer of Geotech Inc.
The introduction will take place at 8:30 am and last about an hour in the Memorial Union's Hornet's Nest. The remainder of the day will be spent using the three approaches to obtain measurements at ESU's on-campus hydrogeology teaching and research station as part of a class exercise. All students in the geospatial analysis program are welcome to participate in any aspect for all or part of the day.
Feb. 4: Our subject this week is global positioning system--see GPS overview. Use FTP to download gps.pdf & chicken.pdf readings. This week's lab exercise is Idrisi 1-6; exercise 1-5 is due at this time.

ES 551 student roster (ver. 1.0).

Jan. 28: Idrisi tutorials 1-3 and 1-4 are due this week; begin working on Idrisi 1-5. Reading includes textbook chapter 2 plus GC map projections and coordinate systems.
Jan. 21: Reading this week deals with the nature of maps--see history of maps and NCGIA maps as representations, as well as textbook chap. 1. Note: the bookstore now has the correct textbook in stock. Lab exercises are Idrisi 1-3 and 1-4; these are due next week.
Jan. 14: The spring semester begins this week! On-campus students meet Wednesday at 1 o'clock in the GSA lab (SH 16). We will review course organization, procedures, and expectations--see syllabus. All distance-learning students should provide your street mailing address to your instructor at this time. For those students not familiar with our software, work through Idrisi tutorials 1-1 and 1-2.
Welcome to ES 551 Computer Mapping Systems! This course will be taught for on-campus and distance-learning students during the spring semester, beginning in January 2008. The course preliminary schedule is now available.
Distance-learning students must have access to Idrisi Andes software, which is the primary GIS utilized for this course. Distance-learning students can obtain the "student-starter license" for $95, upon proof of student status. Note: Idrisi is for PC computers; it does not run on "Mac" computers.
The course begins officially on Jan. 16. All distance-learning students should contact the instructor. Please provide your street mailing address, so you can receive paper handouts. For more information, contact J.S. Aber (jaber@emporia.edu).