Myself along with a co-worker from Spain are tasked with designing and creating a geodatabase that will allow data to be uploaded, manipulated, and served to the research community. The data we are working with ranges from vegetation zones to geological features and contains errors in everything from projections to accuracy. We first siphoned through this information and determined what could first be used, updated, or become labeled as junk.
Our workflow then shifted towards physically setting up a geodatabase that can be accessed on the server here. The resources available to a non-profit organization such as the CDRS are quite limited which puts a bind on what our capabilities are. However, this is also a great way to investigate and utilize freeware from the growing opensource GIS community.
We are currently still working on sewing together the nessesary parts to a whole but at the moment we have set up a database using postGIS on our server. This can then be accessed and added to by using a program called pgAdminIII. We are also currently trying to use the postGIS Raster extension to allow us to upload our raster information to the database as well. To manipulate our spatial information we are using another free software called QuantumGIS as well as wxGIScatalog to view/organize our spatially enabled information. We have overcame and continue to run into hiccups along the way in this process because our combined abilities don't reach as far into the programming world as we would like. Despite those hiccups we are building a new workflow and system for the CDRS and with new systems come minor bumps in the road.
On top of our major task, we are also a resource for many of the researchers that are employed here. I am fortunate enough to have been working with Henri Herrera an Entomologist here at the station. He is currently putting together his PhD on an invasive specie of large headed ants. I have been producing a series of maps for his paper. Although, compared to some of my past work may seem quite simple the processes behind them are definitly not. These maps were created using all free software including QuantumGIS, our postGIS database, Inkscape, as well as the catalog viewer wxGIScatalog. This work is leading to more maps that are going to be published in his papers towards the end of the year.
