Edu Data Package North Carolina

This page is an ideas collection for a new educational/training data set. We want to create a new data set similar to the GRASS Spearfish dataset. This page is being worked on by Helena Mitasova and Markus Neteler.

NC related Data Sources

 * Most data can be obtained through the USGS National map: http://nationalmap.gov/ (click on viewer)
 * The above viewer links to USGS seamless data server: http://seamless.usgs.gov/
 * as well as to the NC One map http://gisdata.usgs.net/website/NC_OneMap/viewer.asp
 * General list: Geodata Packaging Working_Group


 * Additional, specialized data can be obtained here:
 * Coastal lidar: http://www.csc.noaa.gov/crs/tcm/about_ldart.html
 * Flood maps:http://www.ncfloodmaps.com/default_swf.asp
 * Real-time streamflow data (these should be available through the national map too): http://water.usgs.gov/waterwatch/
 * Climate data: http://www.nc-climate.ncsu.edu/cronos/map.php
 * USDA should have the soil data or http://www.ncgc.nrcs.usda.gov/products/datasets/ssurgo/
 * Very detailed county data (parcels, building footprints, etc.) can be viewed here: http://imaps.co.wake.nc.us/imaps/main.htm?msize=525 (no downloading - that should be handled by the National map)
 * Additional links are here: http://skagit.meas.ncsu.edu/~helena/classwork/hon297webgis.html (sorry some are obsolete)

Proposed new data set North Carolina
Area in and around Wake county (eastern section of the Triangle) has public data for all basic data layers that were in Spearfish and there is an easy access to USGS data, local county data, EPA, State Climate Office, NCFlood maps and others through the above listed web sites. There is a big enough city, but also some rural areas that still have some agriculture with rolling topography. SE of it is Johnston county that has FOSS-based county GIS, running mapserver and PostGIS on-line.

Suggested region (should be slightly more than Spearfish, around 20x20miles):
 * LL(SW) corner: -78.7854 (78:47:06), 35.5897 (35:35:23)
 * UR(NE) corner: -78.4466 (78:26:46), 35.8689 (35:52:08)

We should have a latlong location and a location in state plane coordinate system in meters - that is official for NC, but many organizations (counties, NC Flood) use feet...

We suggest to package the data set in thematic sets (aka GRASS Mapsets concept).

The below list needs to be organized into thematic sets, such as baseline data, imagery, census, terrain, ... it is too messy now

RASTER
Original data: Derived data (from vector maps, maybe not needed?):
 * elevation (NC One map USGS NED, lidar based)
 * landuse/landcover (NC One map EPA 1998, check for newer)
 * aerial images (raw stereo pair + orthophotos)
 * raw geocoded satellite data, derived vegetation indices and land surface temperatures
 * raw SRTM V2
 * DRG topo sheets
 * Historical maps, e.g. Schools situation North Carolina 1871 to 1876
 * HydroSHEDS data (check if resolution is high enough) URL, but only non-commercial use
 * DEM from Lidar vector points
 * streams from DEM
 * derived satellite indices
 * hydrologically (kinematic wave) conditioned SRTM V2

VECTOR

 * point data:
 * Lidar point clouds for DSM/DEM
 * climate stations: temp., precip., frost, wind, cloud cover, ... (from State Climatology Office)
 * Air quality data (EPA EMPACT)
 * human and animal diseases incident data
 * wildlife data
 * hydrology:
 * Real-time water data (streams and lakes) (WaterWatch)
 * groundwater data (NC Division of Water Resources)
 * water quality per watershed (EPA Surf Your Watershed)
 * flood data (NC digital flood maps)
 * placenames (gazetteer data) (US Gazetteer)
 * pollution and contamination data
 * results of elections
 * soils (Wake County Soil data)
 * line data:
 * railroads
 * roads (TIGER and simplified)
 * streams
 * area data:
 * countyboundaries
 * geology
 * landowners (should cover owners, fields)
 * landuse/landcover
 * parcels (land owners, fields)
 * quadrangles
 * soils
 * urban areas
 * US Census 2000 maps
 * ZIP codes

Packaging issues

 * convert feet to meters if needed
 * File Naming convention
 * Metadata management (most data include standard FGDC metadata)
 * provide in common GIS formats as well as GRASS location

... see Geodata Packaging Working_Group.

Additional proposed themes for data sets

 * 1) Coast
 * 2) Urban
 * 3) Atmospheric 3D
 * 4) Hydrology and earth surface processes
 * 5) Vegetation, land use (image processing, multitemporal)
 * 6) Note, for example, the NCOne hydrography, has the old USGS streams but also the high resolution streams derived from the lidar data using the methodology developed for EDNA, so one can nicely demonstrate how the small scale (in cartographic sense) national data are inaccurate when one would try to use it a local scale (also how you would damage your DEM if you would have tried to use them for stream enforcement).