There have been numerous reports coming out of California about problems the state is facing in dealing with wildfires. An article on CNN mentioned that hundreds have been evacuated from their homes because of threats from the fires . Unfortunately, officials are unsure as to what has caused the fire, but high winds have contributed to the fire's growth. Reading this article sparked my interest in trying to find out where wildfires are currently burning in the United States. I searched out data about fires and came across latitude and longitude data for fires that are currently burning in the United States.

I recently completed a paper on the relationship between a governmental program known as HOPE VI and changing crime patterns in Lexington, Kentucky. I discovered some very interesting patterns that occurred as large numbers of public housing residents were relocated throughout the city. The methodology for this study was somewhat more complex than simply comparing a few maps over several years. I employed various statistical techniques to determine if the presence of HOPE VI residents could significantly predict higher rates of crime and social disorganization. For this post I am including the maps that show a significant growth away from the center of Lexington out toward areas where HOPE VI residents relocated.

Recently a friend of mine received information in the mail about becoming a Naval Officer. In the packet of information was a brochure that included information about locations of U.S. Naval bases and ports throughout the world. The location information was simply a list of cities around the world where the bases and ports are located. I thought it would be both interesting and informative to talk about how to turn a list of cities into a map.

Due to lack of use and the amount of time required to peruse the forums to keep them free of spam, we've turned them off.

Last week's House hearing on the state of Federal geospatial data management encouraged me to search out good places for both free and inexpensive GIS data. Basically, I wanted to create a brief overview about good places to find GIS data. I will mostly likely post several blog postings on this issue as I discover new places to find data.

Yesterday (July 23) the House of Representatives Committee on Natural Resources held a hearing about the future of federal geospatial data management. The purpose of the meeting was to cover various issues related to geospatial data, and to talk about the need to promote better geospatial data management and a national geospatial data infrastructure. The hearing was published on the House Committee on Natural Resources website for public viewing. The hearing included a panel of mapping professionals that were at the hearing to testify about the value of geospatial data and the importance of creating a national database of federal data. This panel also testified about the current state of federal geospatial data management, and the progress that has been made toward a national geospatial database. Below is a review of the hearing with a few comments about the issues mentioned.

I was attempting to find some Climate Change data when I came across GeoData.gov ,which is a really excellent website for free GIS data. When I was attempting to find climate data I came across some very interesting data regarding tornados in the United States. The data included an entire log of tornados from 1950 through 2006 which includes nearly 50,000 data entries.

I found a really interesting website earlier this week that is used for tracking marine vessels around the world. The website, MarineTraffic.com provides a look at most (but not all) costal areas around the world that have large ports and heavy sea traffic. The website gives the location of a ship on a map by providing a symbol that corresponds to the type of ship that is being represented. The user can click on the symbol and learn a lot of information about the ship, like where it is from, where it is going, what its job is (i.e. towing), how fast it is moving, and in many cases can even see a photo of the ship. Additionally, the user can search for specific vessels that are currently docked or underway, and can look up specific ports that they might be interested in.

The recent news of the earthquake in China inspired me to find websites that provide spatial information about earthquakes. Basically, I wanted to find out if there are websites out there that describe where earthquakes are occurring, and at what magnitude. Naturally, the first organization I found that provides such a service is the United States Geological Survey, which has a number of maps that provide not only the location of earthquakes, but also other important information like magnitude and coordinates. The USGS provides global maps as well as more regionalized maps that provide a more detailed look at Earthquakes around the world. An interesting aspect of the website is that it provides up to date information about earthquakes, and it is amazing to see how many earthquakes occur on a very regular basis. For example at the time of this writing there are 165 earthquakes reported on the website that have occurred within the past seven days. Many of these earthquakes are small, but several are in the 5.0-6.0 range, which is pretty large. Another interesting website that I found covering this subject was the IRIS Seismic Monitor, which provides the location of seismic activity throughout the world. It provides the location, time, and magnitude of the seismic events and also provides coordinate information. A final couple of websites that I found on this subject actually provided GIS data to download so that you can explore earthquakes in Cartographica. You can find earthquake data from 2000 at GeoComm and you can find a shapefile of the earth at APRS . I have provided a few images of the downloaded data being used in Cartographica.

I have a couple of things to write about this morning regarding Apple products and news...There has been a lot of talk around the internet about what is going on with the new iPhone and its battery problems. I have a few updates on that and a few comments about another iPhone 3G problem that has occurred with the new 3.0 update. Additionally, there was an interesting article this morning that mentions Apples place in China's roll out of a new internet filtering software that is designed to limit access to pornography and to sensitive political websites.