Iowa-NASA Environmental Data Integration Challenge

Wednesday, April 20, 2005, 8 am to 4 pm
Scheman Conference Center
Ames, Iowa
Rooms 250-252


For Information/Registration Contact:

Jim Giglierano, Iowa DNR
Workshop Coordinator
319-335-1594
jgiglierano@igsb.uiowa.edu

Alan Jensen, IGIC, Iowa GIS Coordinator
641-782-8426
adjensen@iastate.edu

Schedule
LUNCH provided to registered participants

The National States Geographic Information Council (NSGIC) has awarded Iowa a grant (funded by NASA) to host a state and local remote sensing and geographic information system workshop. The objective of this workshop is to discuss the use and integration of remote sensing data with geographic information systems in the context of state, local, regional, federal and tribal organizations in Iowa. The Iowa Geographic Information Council and the Iowa Department of Natural Resources are sponsoring this event.  Registered participants will be provided a wonderful lunch!


Workshop Agenda: This workshop will explore the creation of new partnerships between environmental data producers/users in Iowa and NASA. Types of environmental data to be considered include anything related to the hydrological cycle: precipitation, groundwater, surface water, atmosphere, climate, weather, soils, geology, wetlands, land cover, streams, lakes, sediment, nutrients, pollutants, etc. from all state, local, and federal data sources. To get the NASA view, Tim Haithcoat, the NASA/NSGIC Liaison, will give an overview of NASA’s data products, and activities in the 12 National Application Areas. We will discuss the availability of specific environmental data sources important to Iowa, and the integration of these data sources by the application of four key areas of geospatial technology. Each of the four areas has an associated challenge for progressing from a current, limited capability to a future usage with greater integration. Successfully completing the challenges and building an operational, integrated, environmental data infrastructure will enable development of user applications and decision support systems to solve problems and make better environmental and natural resource decisions.

The four geospatial technology areas are:

1. automated data collection (especially NASA remote sensing products) from multiple sources on the Internet
2. data storage and distribution on the Internet through OGC compliant servers
3. near or real-time modeling of the water cycle and associated constituents such as sediments, nutrients, and pollutants, using integrated environmental (atmospheric, surface and groundwater) models and data sets
4. visualization of NASA and state environmental data sets by GIS end users, especially data sets that have temporal and/or 3D components.

Who should attend: Any Iowa or Midwest physical scientist, remote sensing or GIS professional interested in discussing the integration and use of environmental data. We are inviting at least 4 NASA participants from various NASA centers and branches who are involved in creating large hydrological/environmental data sets. We hope the results will be the creation of new partnerships to develop data needed by Iowa, and develop new Internet data services and tools to integrate data. No one can do it alone – it has to be a group effort.