Census 2010 Release

The U.S. Census Bureau has begun to release state redistricting data on a rolling basis through March.  Go to http://2010.census.gov/2010census/ to check what states have been released so far.  For more information on the release of 2010 Census Tiger/Line Shapefiles, go to http://www.census.gov/geo/www/tiger/tgrshp2010/tgrshp2010.html.  The release of the American Factfinder version 2 site is also up and running. (http://factfinder2.census.gov/main.html)

Egypt Events Map

ESRI put together a social media web map service that enables users to follow and contribute real time information and updates from Egypt. You can see Tweets, You Tube videos and photos from Flicker that had occurred in Egypt since January 25, 2011 http://www.esri.com/news/maps/egyptian-unrest-map-2011/index.html

Who We’re Working With Now:

Save the Redwoods League, US Geological Survey, Hewlett Foundation, Nonprofit Housing Assoc. of N.Calif., National Wildlife Federation, Trust for Public Land, The City Project, Resources Legacy Fund, LandPeople, SAGE, Calif. Conservancy, Bay Area Open Space Council, American Rivers, Western Rivers Conservancy, and a dozen others!

GreenInfo Network’s Newest Board Member

Dick Cameron is the Senior Conservation Planner for the Nature Conservancy in the California program. For the past 15 years, he has applied his background in ecological analysis to conservation challenges throughout the western United States and northern Mexico. In his current position at the Conservancy, he leads cross-disciplinary teams to set conservation priorities in California, while developing innovative approaches to address global conservation challenges, such as tracking progress toward the Conservancy’s conservation goals, and quantifying ecosystem services.  Dick was a GIS Specialist here at GreenInfo from 2001-03.  We’re thrilled to have him on our board!

Laugh Lines

Interstellar geography....

"I'm afraid you have humans."

California State Parks Community Fact Finder – Round 2

We recently updated the California State Parks Community Fact Finder website.  GreenInfo built this interactive website that is used by grant applicants to determine their required demographic and park acreage statistics (derived from GreenInfo’s CPAD data) for any defined project location.  Applicants for grants from $368,000,000 in Statewide Park Development and Community Revitalization bond funds (Prop. 84, 2008) must first qualify using the statistics in FactFinder, then submit a report generated by the website in their application. The program is intended to spur the creation of new parks in park deficient, economically disadvantaged communities.  In the first round, over 475 applications were received and $184 million awarded to 62 grantees.


 

CPAD 1.6 release, MapCollaborator and CPAD e-Newsletter

We are excited to announce the release of Californi  a Protected Areas Database (CPAD) 1.6 - you can download it at www.calands.org.  Released concurrently is MapCollaborator, our new mapping wiki which available here http://bit.ly/hjbEwg. As we mentioned in January’s issue, Mapcollaborator is a great new web interface for crowdsourcing data review and improvement. Check it out and start providing your edits and input today!

And, we now have a CPAD e-newsletter!  If you would like to receive quarterly updates about CPAD, go to www.calands.org and click on the “Sign up for Updates” button on the right.

ESRI Food Desert Mapping

Team ESRI, publisher of ArcGIS software, has rolled out “The Food Desert Finder” a terrific interactive map which shows where there are gaps in access to supermarkets.  If access to nutritious food is limited or made difficult by factors such as cost or the distance traveled to obtain it, peoples’ health suffers – these areas that lack relatively easy access to nutritious, affordable food as popularly known as “food deserts.”  The ESRI Food Desert Finder is a searchable map that shows populations in poverty who live beyond a one mile walk to a supermarket and who lack other access to healthy fresh foods. Check out your community!      

Geek Corner

Transparent Images
Sometimes you want to make an inset map with a transparent background.  Unfortunately if you have a transparency set to in one of your layers in the inset map (usually a hillshade) the mxd will appear to be transparent on your computer screen but will export with a white background. See example below left.
  One work around for a transparent image in an mxd file is to bring it into Adobe Photoshop or other image editing program.  Create a separate .mxd that only contains what you want to show in your inset map, then export as a jpeg image file.  Bring the jpeg into Photoshop.  Select the background of the newly created jpeg with the magic want tool.  Then click on "Select" then click on "Inverse."  Make sure your "Layers" window is open (to open, click on "Window" then "Layers).  Now copy (Ctrl-c) and paste (Ctrl-v) to create a new layer.  Now click on the picture of the eye in the "Background" Layer window. (See example below with red circle around picture of the eye). This turns background off. Now save as a new jpeg image file.  You now have a jpeg with no background.  To use this newly created jpeg as an inset map, you must export your main map (.mxd file) as a jpeg.