“Hey you’ve been on a NDVI kick as of late!”. Technically I’ve been on a learning kick as of late. When I get burned out I tend to float back to the thing that gives me some comfort and that’s numbers and mapping etc. This morning (being a Holiday weekend) I decided to tackle NDVI in GRASS. I don’t know if you’ve fired up GRASS lately but it’s different. Different in a good way. One interface and not a series of menus. Processing tools on the right. Map layers on the left. So – how do I get an NDVI map out of this? I have the USGS NAIP with it’s four bands. So lets use r.in.gdal to import my ..read more

Yesterday was wild. Flash back to 6 years ago and I transferred a ESRI Process over to QGIS/PostGIS and it happened to be a 911 addressing database. As I was walking out the door, the client said “So how do we deliver the data to the state” and through a bunch of conversations we ended up producing a geopackage. The ESRI Enterprise system consumed it. Life was good. Mostly. Occasionally the Quality Check process would change on the receiving end and there was a problem. I switch back and forth from “ESRI can’t read this consistently” to “Geopackage isn’t quite working like I need”. Regardless ..read more

June 25th Location: Virtual Cost: $150 Time: 12pm to 4pm EST Link: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/qgis-model-designer-tickets-906763111877 The Model Designer Class makes a re-appearance after a tuneup. What is it? This 4 hour class will cover building Processing Models using the Model Designer. Students will build custom tools to make repeatable tasks easier. Students will build models during class and will modify those models to make them more functional. Topics Covered: Introduction Processing Tools Model Designer Building a Model Command Line Students will need to use the Current Long Ter ..read more

Coming back from Yellowstone has left me slightly adrift. I missed a meeting yesterday as I keep forgetting to add things to my calendar. So the last time I mentioned Conda was like 2018 and the whole point to the Article was “I can now have two versions of QGIS running on my workstation”. My Linux workstation to be exact. Still in 6 years I haven’t fallen back to Windows because I don’t need to. Technically 10 years but who is counting. For the last year I’ve been running Fedora. Why? Why not. My first Linux experience was redhat way back when and it’s been interesting to jump back on that pl ..read more

Titling these articles is getting more difficult. I almost called this my “Getting my Junior Forestry Badge” because that’s what I told one client the other day as I confidently misidentified another tree on a walk. A forestry person I am not – but I’ve gotten pretty decent with INaturalist. For all my weird QGIS tricks – I can’t remember the last time I looked at NDVI. What is NDVI? It’s the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index. How often do I use it? Not often. Actually – hardly in the last bit as all my info comes from field work but in a push to “work smarter” I’m attempting to drag one ..read more

I just came off two conferences with one being in Montana and one being in Tennessee. Both Geo related. It was my first time attending the MAGIP conference. Not that you need a long overly drawn out review of both – here are some of the highlights: TNGIC was fun. It was a different approach this year focused on people more than “the usual conference thing”. There was a service project. A hike involving GPS. We had an open source session which was standing room only. A nerf gun fight broke out. Most fun I’ve had in a good bit. MAGIP was a fun. It was a different conference setup than I expecte ..read more

At the TNGIC conference I did a workshop on LIDAR and QGIS. I was completely blasted out by ESRI’s Avenue for the Web class but I had a few souls come in and take a look at it. I finished it off with “I don’t use LIDAR that much”. Well…..I’m finally using it. It took a lot of convincing but the last two forestry jobs have involved LIDAR. Yesterday’s job was interesting enough to warrant me scribbling something down. In the following pic you’ll see a boundary and NAIP imagery…and a few red polygons. The red are recent tree planting areas. The question is “How tall are the trees?”. Using my fore ..read more

So – if you’re coming to the 2024 TNGIC (TN Geographic Information Council) meeting (April 9-11 2024) to talk about how no one understands what you do……I’m doing a workshop. What workshop? It’s a new workshop. QGIS and LIDAR data. As to what I do with the class after I run this workshop I have no clue. This was a “last minute” idea because I hardly ever use LIDAR for anything in my day to day life but people do and TN has a massive collection of this data. QGIS (thanks to PDAL) has done some pretty amazing things with LIDAR in the last few releases so I’m going to walk you through the TN LIDAR ..read more

I am probably the worst for being able to properly name “things”. There are big trees and little trees. There are the annoying bugs and the not so annoying bugs. There are ducks, birds, bigger birds, and the birds that hang out at my bird feeder. As much time as I have spent on the earth and out in the woods, I should be able to name more things or at least be able to tell more about my surroundings. A while back I volunteered for half a day to help a “bio blitz”……and what was I doing there besides “Oh look a big Tree?”. I was attempting to get everyone using INaturalist. What is Inaturalist ..read more

I don’t know if I would label this exercise as fun but I’ve learned alot. I don’t do a ton of data collection these days. At one time a few years ago I was out in the field with Fulcrum, a laptop, and sketchy internet for days at a time. These days I’m hardly ever without internet for long. I’ve been using Mergin Maps (hint I’m a BP) and I’ve been learning the ins and outs of data collection with QGIS. My general thoughts on data collection is collect everything you need to collect as quickly as possible. Don’t lose anything. Don’t over collect. Come back in and integrate that data with your i ..read more