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Notes:
1) All external links when clicked will open in a new browser window.
2) News release links are fairly stable but news media links are often temporary, so grab any pages now that might be useful to you later.
3) This page is not intended to be as comprehensive a GIS news listing as the previous 2004-05 start (see archive), and it especially includes links of personal interest to the editor about cartography and the specialized fields of marine GIS, temporal GIS, archaeological GIS, and paleo-GIS with paleogeography.
4) You may view this page with keyword listings hidden (default) or visible (requires modern browser, JavaScript enabled, content unblocked).


News links posted during December 2006

[ August | September | October | November | December | about | top | keywords on / off ]

31 December 2006, Sunday
  • Editor's note: I haven't had time to work on posting GIS news links here and I don't know when I will be able to get back to it, but it may be awhile. So, until then, I will just clear out these few links now that happened to catch my eye in passing during the month. As usual, the reports that caught my notice are mainly those that deal with temporal GIS. After all our work to nail down the most accurate GIS data, it's still all eventually going to just move around some more, anyway! Here's wishing you a happy, safe, and successful New Year with very little ground movement.

  • "Giant Ice Shelf Breaks Off in Canadian Arctic," National Geographic 29 Dec. - Quote: "And the ice shelf breakup wasn't the only geologic disturbance on [Ellesmere Island] that summer... a week of strong sun at the end of July set off massive numbers of landslides."     KEYWORDS: coastal change
  • "Turning back the clock 10,000 years," South Bend Tribune 21 Dec. - Quote: "Lake Michigan was much higher than Lake Huron, and the two did not join as they do today at the straits."
     KEYWORDS: coastal change
  • "NASA Data Helps Pinpoint Wildfire Threats," NASA/Goddard 20 Dec. - Quote: "While live fuel moisture values are critical in the development of wildfires, it's clearly not the last word. Even if vegetation is extremely dry, there are a number of other factors that influence whether a fire will develop and how quickly it spreads, including the ratio of live to dead foliage, plant type, seasonal precipitation, and weather conditions"
     KEYWORDS: satellite remote sensing, wildfire GIS
  • "3D Images Give New Life to Old Shipwrecks," LiveScience.com 19 Dec. - Quote: "Unlike the traditional two-dimensional method of slicing the seabed vertically from the top down, Chirp produces a cube of information... a true 3-D 'volume.'"
     KEYWORDS: underwater archaeology remote sensing
  • "Touring space with Google, NASA," Mercury News 18 Dec.     KEYWORDS:
  • "Solar Physicist Says Weak Sun Produces Record Solar Outburst," New Jersey Institute of Technology 15 Dec. - Quote: "[The Dec. 6, 2006 at 3:45 p.m. EST event reading was] more than 10 times the previous record, and calls into question scientists’ assumptions of the extent to which the Sun can interfere with GPS and wireless communications."
     KEYWORDS: GPS dependability
  • "Survey targets 'ghost' mountains," BBC 13 Dec. - Quote: "Antarctica's Gamburtsev mountain range - one of the Earth's most enigmatic mountain groups ... extends for more than 1,200km and rises to about 3,400m, but is totally buried under more than 600m of ice."
     KEYWORDS: South Pole of Inaccessibility
  • "Drop in Acid Rain Altering Appalachian Stream Water," Penn State Univ. at NASA Earth Observatory 12 Dec. - Quote: "You would not normally expect weathering rates to increase with reduced acid rain."
     KEYWORDS: carbon cycle
  • "Recent Changes in Earth's Freshwater Distribution," NASA 12 Dec. - Quote: "The mission's abilities to detect water are particularly vital for the emerging field of groundwater remote sensing."
     KEYWORDS: central U.S., Grace satellite remote sensing
  • "Mapmaker puts tiny towns on road to oblivion," AP at CNN 8 Dec. - Quote: "A total of 488 communities have been erased from the latest version of Georgia's official map, victims of too few people and too many letters of type."
     KEYWORDS: cartography, cartographic generalization
  • "Ice Images Aid Study Of Pacific Walrus Arctic Habitats," NASA/Ames 30 Nov.
     KEYWORDS: airborne satellite remote sensing, SAR radar, wildlife GIS
3 December 2006, Sunday

News links posted during November 2006

[ August | September | October | November | December | about | top ]

11 November 2006, Saturday 9 November 2006, Thursday
  • "How to keep New York afloat," Christian Science Monitor 9 Nov. - Quote: "Much of this city of 8 million ... is only 10 feet above sea level."     KEYWORDS: coastal change
  • "New Research Reveals Hidden Earthquake Trouble Spots," Univ. of Leicester 8 Nov.
     KEYWORDS: airborne remote sensing, InfoTerra, LIDAR, Slovenia
  • "Reef warns of sea level rise," James Cook Univ. at EurekAlert 8 Nov. - Quote: "A fossil coral reef, lying several metres above today's high tide mark [has been dated] 'to about 128-125,000 years ago, right in the middle of the last interglacial.'"
     KEYWORDS: coastal change, Foul Bay, Western Australia
  • "Google Earth, Satellite Maps Boost Armchair Archaeology," National Geographic 7 Nov.
     KEYWORDS: microtopography, multispectral imaging, space-based remote sensing
  • "NASA Supports UAS Fire Mapping Efforts," NASA/Ames 6 Nov. - Quote: "From an altitude of 43,000 feet, the wildfire sensor collected and sent 100 images and more than 20 data files containing the location of the fire perimeter ... delivered in real time."
     KEYWORDS: Esperanza Fire, southern California, UAV remote sensing
  • "Scientists Establish Connection Between Life Today and Ancient Changes in Ocean Chemistry," Univ. of Calif. at San Diego 6 Nov. - Quote: "Researchers in computational biology and marine science have ... found that trace-metal usage by present-day organisms probably derives from major changes in ocean chemistry occurring over geological time scales. [Studying protein structures] the group established that [Archaea, Bacteria and Eukarya] all use metals differently. The differences reflect the availability of such metals in the ocean as the respective superkingdoms evolved."
     KEYWORDS: biological dating
  • "'Supermountain range' the source of life," News.com.au 23 Oct. - Quote: "Australian researchers believe they have discovered evidence that an 8000km-long 'supermountain range' as high as the Himalayas was the source of life on Earth... [It] formed when the eastern and western halves of Gondwana collided 500 million to 650 million years ago."
     KEYWORDS: Gondwanaland, Zircon dating
3 November 2006, Friday
  • "Explorer to search depth of the Gulf," Norwich Bulletin 3 Nov. - Quote: "The expedition will allow scientists to identify now-underwater land that was once the shoreline of North America during the Neolithic period." Note: Robert Ballard's Hudson Shelf 1998 expedition had similar aims and found "the delineation of an ancient shoreline characterized by thick deposits of broken sea shells."
     KEYWORDS: coastal change, Flower Garden Banks, Gulf of Mexico
2 November 2006, Thursday

News links posted during October 2006

[ August | September | October | November | December | about | top ]

27 October 2006, Friday 26 October 2006,Thursday 19 October 2006, Thursday 18 October 2006, Wednesday
  • "Satellite tracks prickly pest," The Courier Mail 18 Oct.
     KEYWORDS: Australia, prickly acacia, remote sensing
  • "In a lonely forest," The Star 17 Oct. - Quote: "I also want to develop a biomap (a map of biological features related to the animal’s ranging patterns)."
     KEYWORDS: Malaysia, slow loris, wildlife tracking
17 October 2006, Tuesday 16 October 2006, Monday 15 October 2006, Sunday 14 October 2006, Saturday 13 October 2006, Friday 12 October 2006, Thursday 11 October 2006, Wednesday 10 October 2006, Tuesday 6 October 2006, Thursday
  • "Wausau start up secures $560K for GPS maps," Wisconsin Technology Network 5 Oct.
     KEYWORDS: trail GIS
  • "UQ Centre to host wise water workshop," Univ. of Queensland 4 Oct. - Quote: "[Professor Roger Kjelgren] is particularly interested in 'quantifying water use of shade trees and the production of drought-adapted plants for low water urban landscapes'. He collaborates with colleagues specialising in remote sensing and social aspects of natural resource allocation ... to quantify irrigated landscape water demand ... at a city-wide scale."
     KEYWORDS: water conservation
  • "Report Challenges Common Ecological Assumption About Species Abundance," Duke Univ. 3 Oct.
     KEYWORDS: remote sensing
  • "Researchers plumb the depths of foul deeds," Globe & Mail 2 Oct. - Quote: "[We] were trying to detect mass graves [with satellite hyperspectral remote sensing]... We predicted that a grave would increase vegetative cover. In temperate areas, that is indeed the case. But in equatorial areas, it was reversed: Mass graves inhibit plant growth rather than support it."
     KEYWORDS: forensic GIS
  • "The land down under going under," Sydney Morning Herald at Stuff.co.nz 29 Sept. - Quote: "It is Australia as we have never seen it before -- a dry brown land transformed into an archipelago of disparate islands."
     KEYWORDS: temporal GIS
  • "Cantonment turns to GIS for its development plan," The Hindu 25 Sept.
     KEYWORDS: Andhra Pradesh community GIS
5 October 2006, Wednesday

News links posted during September 2006

[ August | September | October | November | December | about | top ]

27 September 2006, Wednesday 26 September 2006, Tuesday 24 September 2006, Sunday 22 September 2006, Friday 21 September 2006, Thursday 20 September 2006, Wednesday 19 September 2006, Tuesday 18 September 2006, Monday 17 September 2006, Sunday 16 September 2006, Saturday
  • "Tech studies remote sensing techniques," El Defensor Chieftain 16 Sept. - Quote: "[Remote] sensing-based algorithms have encountered significant difficulties when used ... to estimate evapotranspiration in mountainous regions."
     KEYWORDS: hydrology, mountain evapotranspiration, New Mexico, remote sensing
  • "Specialists fan out to help assess fire-ravaged land," Billings Gazette 16 Sept. - Quote: "Using satellite images, GIS specialists will delineate areas of high, medium and low fire impact. Professionals in soil science, hydrology, fisheries, noxious weeds, range, wildlife and other resources will follow up with field verification and risk analysis."
     KEYWORDS: Idaho wildfire recovery
  • "GIS valuable for a variety of purposes," The Villages Daily Sun 16 Sept. - Quote: "Lake County's GIS apparently is one of the most technologically advanced in the state [of Florida]."
     KEYWORDS: community GIS
  • "Flood maps available for public review," Roanoke Rapids Daily Herald 16 Sept. - Quote: "[FEMA] afterward began producing the new maps utilizing LIDAR ... and other methods." See also the NCFMP Web site.
     KEYWORDS: North Carolina disaster management
  • "Space views are magic," Daily Mirror 16 Sept.
     KEYWORDS: satellite remote sensing
  • "IOI-Malta Operational Centre participates in the SeaDataNet Project," di-ve.com 15 Sept. - Quote: "SeaDataNet is [a project to develop] an efficient pan-European infrastructure for ocean and marine data management [with] seamless search, viewing and retrieval of information." See also Sea-Search and the Malta ODM site.
     KEYWORDS: Mediterranean, Sea-Search project
  • "Bringing hi-tech to hunting," The News & Advance 15 Sept. - Quote: "Find Game, [launched] last November, spotlights the best places to find deer, bear and other animals roaming the [Virginia's] 2.5 million acres of public hunting ground. GIS maps can show a variety of data, from natural land features to roads to what species inhabit an area."
     KEYWORDS: game management
  • "The Glacier Whisperers," The College Hill Independent 15 Sept.
     KEYWORDS: geospatial art
14 September 2006, Thursday 13 September 2006, Wednesday
  • "Ducktrap Coalition to celebrate success," Village Soup 13 Sept. - Quote: "Ducktrap Coalition member organizations have performed a variety of natural resource inventories of the watershed, including a GIS inventory database."
     KEYWORDS: Maine ecological stewardship, NGO GIS
  • "A survey of the past," Seward Independent 13 Sept. - Quote: "The group was looking for a '+' chiseled into a rock by the 1859 surveyors that was to mark the southwest corner of the Nebraska Territory."
     KEYWORDS: historical surveys, Rocky Mountains
  • "Arctic Ice Meltdown Continues With Significantly Reduced Winter Ice Cover," NASA GSFC 13 Sept.
     KEYWORDS: arctic satellite remote sensing
  • "New interactive Electronic Map of Dubai," AME Info 13 Sept. - See also Map of Dubai.
     KEYWORDS: Belhane
  • "India's coastline getting eroded," Zee News 12 Sept. - Quote: "Oscillation of the shoreline along the country's coast was seasonal... But about 50 percent of the beaches that did not regain their original shape over an annual cycle underwent net erosion."
     KEYWORDS: coastal change
  • "Reconstructed Archaeologies" - art inspired by cartography at the Atrium Gallery in St. Louis, Missouri, 31 Aug.
     KEYWORDS: geospatial art, Leila Daw
12 September 2006, Tuesday 8 September 2006, Friday 7 September 2006, Thursday 5 September 2006, Tuesday 4 September 2006, Monday 3 September 2006, Sunday 1 September 2006, Friday

News links posted during August 2006

[ August | September | October | November | December | about | top ]

31 August 2006, Thursday 30 August 2006, Wednesday 29 August 2006, Tuesday 28 August 2006, Monday
  • "Crop Cops Take to the Sky," NPR Morning Edition 28 Aug.
     KEYWORDS: agriculture, aerial remote sensing imagery, U.S. midwest
27 August 2006, Sunday
  • "Water Signs" (Sierra Nevada rock glacier search), San Francisco Chronicle 27 Aug. See also map.
     KEYWORDS: hydrology
25 August 2006, Friday And a collection of earlier items
2 0 0 6 2 0 0 5

[ August | September | October | November | about | top ]

About the news link editor

These news links are compiled by Wm. A. "Bill" Allen, a GIS technician/programmer and map maker with long experience in technical editing, science writing, and print production who is based in Santa Fe, New Mexico and is available for freelance assignment or temporary or part-time work. Resume and references on request.

More science news "stacks"

These sites take a similar approach to stacking publicly-available science news links hand-selected by knowledgeable individuals, sometimes with annotation:


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Revised: 31 Dec. 06 rev 0
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