Digital Commons Network^™

Lake Mead National Recreation Area Monitoring And Evaluation Of Sensitive Wildlife: Quarterly Progress Report, Period Ending December 31, 2006, Margaret N. Rees

Wildlife Monitoring

• Research assistant hired for Relict Leopard Frog conservation project.
• High school minority intern hired to assist with research efforts.
• Nocturnal visual encounter surveys for Relict Leopard Frogs conducted at all established natural sites and at 6 of 7 translocation sites.
• Vegetation management conducted to decrease tamarisk cover along the stream at the Pupfish Refuge Spring – a Relict Leopard Frog translocation site.
• New draft guidelines and field count protocols developed for midwinter bald eagle count.
• Preliminary analysis and modeling of thrasher habitat selection conducted and sampling assessed
• Call-broadcast surveys for thrasher species conducted at 43 points countywide, focusing on vegetation …

Shoreland Buffer Module For Granit Data Mapper, Fay A. Rubin, David G. Justice

PREP Reports & Publications

The Complex Systems Research Center at the University of New Hampshire enhanced the GRANIT Data Mapper (http://mapper.granit.unh.edu) by incorporating data describing shoreline buffers in New Hampshire. The project supports an ongoing, comprehensive New Hampshire Estuaries Project (NHEP) outreach initiative that seeks to educate municipal decision-makers about the importance of stream buffers in preserving water quality in coastal New Hampshire. It complements these existing outreach efforts by allowing coastal managers, local land use boards, and the general public to readily visualize the spatial extent of current and/or proposed shoreline regulations in their community. The primary data source for the analysis was …

Itr/Im: Enabling The Creation And Use Of Geogrids For Next Generation Geospatial Information, Peggy Agouris, Mary-Kate Beard-Tisdale, Chaitanya Baru, Sarah Nusser

University of Maine Office of Research Administration: Grant Reports

The objective of this project is to advance science in information management, focusing in particular on geospatial information. It addresses the development of concepts, algorithms, and system architectures to enable users on a grid to query, analyze, and contribute to multivariate, quality-aware geospatial information. The approach consists of three complementary research areas: (1) establishing a statistical framework for assessing geospatial data quality; (2) developing uncertainty-based query processing capabilities; and (3) supporting the development of space- and accuracy-aware adaptive systems for geospatial datasets. The results of this project will support the extension of the concept of the computational grid to facilitate …

Collaborative Research: Matching Levels Of Detail In Descriptions And Depictions Of Geographic Space, Michael Warboys

University of Maine Office of Research Administration: Grant Reports

This collaborative research project focuses on issues related to wayfinding, and is at the interface of geographic information science and human cognition. The research addresses the questions of the relationship between verbal and pictorial representations of geographic information, and how both representation modes can be successfully integrated in systems relating geographic information to users. To address this question, a theory of content and level of geographic detail is constructed that is independent of specific mode. The research is founded upon computational and cognitive theories of geographic information. The main idea is that theories of information granularity can be imposed on …

Land Conservation Plan For New Hampshire’S Coastal Watersheds – Implementation & Outreach, Mark Zankel

PREP Reports & Publications

The Nature Conservancy was awarded funding to complete activities to promote the Land Conservation Plan for New Hampshire’s Coastal Watersheds in the fall of 2006. The Nature Conservancy and its partners, Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests, Rockingham Planning Commission, and Strafford Regional Planning Commission, conducted the following tasks to increase understanding and use of the plan by communities, land trusts and others interested in land protection.

South Dakota State University Graduation Exercises, December 9, 2006, Brookings, South Dakota, South Dakota State University

Commencement Programs

Please be advised that the names listed in the program do not constitute official confirmation of meeting the graduation requirements. The Graduation Exercises ceremony will commence with introductions by University President Peggy Gordon Miller. Honorary marshals for the occasion are Dr. David Hilderband, Dean of Graduate School, Research and Sponsored Programs, and Professor Emeritus of Chemistry, along with Mary J. Perpich, Associate Professor Emerita of Journalism and Mass Communication. Delivering the graduation address titled "Rights, Privileges, and Responsibilities Pertaining Thereto" will be Dr. Steve R. Marquardt, Dean of Libraries. Dr. Carol J. Peterson, Provost and Vice President of Academic Affairs, …

Development Of A Health Management Information System For The Mountain Gorilla (Gorilla Beringei), Richard Brian Minnis

Theses and Dissertations

The Mountain Gorillas of Central Africa are one of the most highly endangered species in the world, with only 740 individuals surviving. One of the greatest threats to this species is disease. Health of wildlife is continually garnering more attention in the public arena due to recent outbreaks of diseases such as West Nile and High Pathogenic Avian Influenza. However, no system currently exists to facilitate the management and analysis of wildlife health data. The research conducted herein was the development and testing of a health information monitoring system for the mountain gorillas entitled Internet-supported Management Program to Assist Conservation …

Semantics-Enabled Framework For Knowledge Discovery From Earth Observation Data, Surya Srinivas Durbha

Theses and Dissertations

Earth observation data has increased significantly over the last decades with satellites collecting and transmitting to Earth receiving stations in excess of three terabytes of data a day. This data acquisition rate is a major challenge to the existing data exploitation and dissemination approaches. The lack of content and semantics based interactive information searching and retrieval capabilities from the image archives is an impediment to the use of the data. The proposed framework (Intelligent Interactive Image Knowledge retrieval-I3KR) is built around a concept-based model using domain dependant ontologies. An unsupervised segmentation algorithm is employed to extract homogeneous regions and calculate …

International Trade In The San Bernardino Region: Transportation, Trends, And Employment, Mirya R. Holman, Travis Coan

Mirya R Holman

International trade presents significant employment, growth, and revenue opportunities for the San Bernardino region, which encompasses San Bernardino County and several cities in Riverside County and is located to the immediate east of Los Angeles County. Proximity to the San Pedro Bay Port complex (which includes the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach) and access to a transportation and logistics network expanding out across the U.S., makes the San Bernardino region a prime location for companies participating in international trade activity. The purpose of this report is to quantify trade activity in the region, while also estimating the employment …

Volume 26, Number 4, December 2006 Olac Newsletter, Jain Fletcher, Jan Mayo, Barbara Vaughan, Jay Weitz

OLAC Newsletters

Digitized December 2006 issue of the OLAC Newsletter.

Derivation Of Change From Sequences Of Snapshots, Dominik Wilmsen

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Current research in the domain of geographic information science considers possibilities of including another dimension, time, which is generally missing to this point. Users interested in changes have few functions available to compare datasets of spatial configurations at different points in time. Such a comparison of spatial configurations requires large amounts of manual labor. An automatic derivation of changes would decrease amounts of manual labor. The thesis introduces a set of methods that allows for an automatic derivation of changes. These methods analyze identity and topological states of objects in snapshots and derive types of change for the specific configuration …

Yellow Tree: A Distributed Main-Memory Spatial Index Structure For Moving Objects, Hariharan Gowrisankar

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Mobile devices equipped with wireless technologies to communicate and positioning systems to locate objects of interest are common place today, providing the impetus to develop location-aware applications. At the heart of location-aware applications are moving objects or objects that continuously change location over time, such as cars in transportation networks or pedestrians or postal packages. Location-aware applications tend to support the tracking of very large numbers of such moving objects as well as many users that are interested in finding out about the locations of other moving objects. Such location-aware applications rely on support from database management systems to model, …

Use Of Remote Sensing Applications And Its Implications To The Society, Stefan Robila

Department of Computer Science Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Remote sensing, i.e. the technology that allows measuring object's properties from a distance, is currently undergoing tremendous advances in both precision and areas of applicability. Our study provides an overview of the recent developments in RS applications and their implications to the society. This was approached from three distinct directions, all with significant influence on the human's perception of the technology. First, we discuss how disaster prevention, reaction, and recovery can be supported by remote sensing. Next, we look at the popular view of remote sensing, as illustrated by media and commercial applications. Finally, we discuss legal implication of sensing …

The Threat Of Public Data Availability On Critical Infrastructure Protection (Cip), And The Level Of Awareness Amongst Security Experts In Australila, Roba Abbas

Engineering & Information Sciences - Honours Theses

Critical infrastructure protection (CIP) refers to safeguarding essential services from harm. CIP has gained recognition as a priority area on the national security agendas of many countries in recent years, most notably Australia, due to events that have compromised the critical infrastructure (CI) of other nations. The importance of the CIP process is evidenced extensively in the related literature, where the major phases of the process are discussed. Traditionally, the CIP focus is on the three major stages of vulnerability identification, risk assessment and risk management. A study conducted by Breeding in 2003 introduced the risk of ‘sensitive but unclassified’ …

An Interpolation Method For Stream Habitat Assessments With Reference To The Crystal Darter, Kenneth Richard Sheehan

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

Crystallaria asprella spp. (Elk River crystal darter) is documented only in Elk River, West Virginia. Little life history detail is known about this lotic, benthic-dependent species. Previous studies have led to a very basic understanding of the use of depth, flow and substrate of the crystal darter (Crystallaria asprella), and less is known about the Elk River crystal darter. Due to substrate-specificity in crystal darters (which reportedly bury in sand), a study concerning benthic stream habitat modeling was undertaken. Substrate and depth modeling using >5% of an area sampled at a resolution of 0.093 m2 square spatial data in a …

Inside Umaine, Vol. 2, No. 12, Department Of Public Affairs And Marketing

General University of Maine Publications

Inside UMaine was the employee newsletter issued starting in 2005. The newsletter was published once each month during the academic year. The intent was to "complement the university's other communication vehicles, including the UMaine Today magazine, UMaine Today Online and various other online Information Services, such as the university's Web-based calendar." The newsletter took over where the Maine Perspective left off to promote professional achievement and stories about campus events and advancements.

State Funded Research Annual Report Fy06, University Of Maine System

General University of Maine Publications

The University of Maine System is required to submit in January of each year an annual report on the utilization of state research appropriations for operations and state research capital bonds. The report is to cover the most recently completed fiscal year.

Small Business, Rising Giant: Policies And Costs Of Section 8(A) Contracting Preferences For Alaska Native Corporations, Jenny J. Yang

Alaska Law Review

No abstract provided.

Information Infrastructure For Integrated Ecohydraulic And Water Resources Modeling And Assessment, R. Wallace, K. Pathak, M. Fife, Norman L. Jones, J. P. Holland, D. Stuart, J. Harris, C. Butler, D. R. Richards

Faculty Publications

Watershed management increasingly requires ecohydraulic modeling and assessment within a regional context, rather than on a project-by-project basis. Such holistic modeling and assessment require evaluation capabilities across multiple temporal and spatial scales. Thus, modeling and assessment tools must be integrated in a scientifically and computationally effective infrastructure. The US Army Engineer Research and Development Center, in concert with the Hydrologic Engineering Center and its academic partners, including Brigham Young University, is establishing a comprehensive set of hydroinformatics modeling and assessment tools for ecohydraulic and water resources management applications, all linked based on a common data and information infrastructure. This paper …

Unh Research Uses Satellite Observation To Track Avian Flu, David Sims

Media Relations

No abstract provided.

Development Of A Gis-Based, Real-Time Internet Mapping Tool For Rabies Surveillance, Jesse D. Blanton, Arie Manangan, Jamie Manangan, Cathleen A. Hanlon, Dennis Slate, Charles E. Rupprecht

Other Publications in Zoonotics and Wildlife Disease

Background: Oral rabies vaccination programs have been implemented to control the spread of wildlife rabies in the United States. However, current surveillance systems are inadequate for the efficient management and evaluation of these large scale vaccine baiting programs. With this in mind, a GIS-based rabies surveillance database and Internet mapping application was created. This surveillance system, RabID, provides a new resource for the rapid mapping and dissemination of data on animal rabies cases in relation to unaffected, enzootic, and baited areas where current interventions are underway.

Results: RabID is a centralized database for diagnostic and demographic information collected by local, …

Enacting Technology In Networked Governance: Developmental Processes Of Cross-Agency Arrangements, Jane E. Fountain

National Center for Digital Government

This paper discusses the technology enactment framework, an analytical framework to guide exploration and examination of information-based change in governments.1 The original technology enactment framework is extended in this paper to delineate the distinctive roles played by key actors in technology enactment. I then examine institutional change in government by drawing from current initiatives in the U.S. federal government to build cross-agency relationships and systems. The U.S. government is one of the first central states to undertake not only back office integration within the government but also integration of systems and processes across agencies. For this reason its experience during …

Coastal Survey Maps: From Historical Documents To Digital Databases, Martyn J. Smith, Robert G. Cromley

UCCGIA PAPERS AND PROCEEDINGS

This paper describes the spatial data handling procedures used to create a vector database of the Connecticut shoreline from Coastal Survey Maps. The appendix contains detailed information on how the procedures were implemented using Geographic Transformer Software 5 and ArcGIS 8.3. The project was a joint project of the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection and the University of Connecticut Center for Geographic Information and Analysis.

California State Information Technology Strategic Plan 2006, Office Of The State Chief Information Officer

California Agencies

No abstract provided.

The Queen City Brew, Library Newsletter, Vol. 3, Issue 3, November 2006, Johnson & Wales University - Charlotte

JWU Library Newsletter - Charlotte Campus

No abstract provided.

Cambodia, Country Profile

The Journal of Conventional Weapons Destruction

Cambodia is one of the countries most heavily contaminated with mines and unexploded ordnance, a result of nearly three decades of conflict. The nation was occupied by the Japanese during World War II, and through the 1960s and 1970s Cambodia was involved in the Indochina Wars, seeing significant bombing. In 1975, the Khmer Rouge occupied Phnom Penh, taking over every town and city; they were not entirely removed from Cambodia until 1999. Vietnam's invasion of Cambodia in 1978 displaced the Khmer Rouge; the Vietnamese occupied Cambodia for 10 years, which invoked almost 13 years of civil war. Pol Pot, leader …

Understanding User Perceptions On Usefulness And Usability Of An Integrated Wiki-G-Portal, Yin-Leng Theng, Yuanyuan Li, Ee Peng Lim, Zhe Wang, Dion Hoe-Lian Goh, Chew-Hung Chang, Kalyani Chatterjea, Jun Zhang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This paper describes a pilot study on Wiki-G-Portal, a project integrating Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia, into G-Portal, a Web-based digital library, of geography resources. Initial findings from the pilot study seemed to suggest positive perceptions on usefulness and usability of Wiki-G-Portal, as well as subjects' attitude and intention to use.

Integration Of Wikipedia And A Geography Digital Library, Ee Peng Lim, Zhe Wang, Darwin Sadeli, Yuanyuan Li, Chew-Hung Chang, Kalyani Chatterjea, Dion Hoe-Lian Goh, Yin-Leng Theng, Jun Zhang, Aixin Sun

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In this paper, we address the problem of integrating Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia, and G-Portal, a web-based digital library, in the geography domain. The integration facilitates the sharing of data and services between the two web applications that are of great value in learning. We first present an overall system architecture for supporting such an integration and address the metadata extraction problem associated with it. In metadata extraction, we focus on extracting and constructing metadata for geo-political regions namely cities and countries. Some empirical performance results will be presented. The paper will also describe the adaptations of G-Portal and Wikipedia …

Extension: A New Opportunity For On-Line, Issue-Based Programming, Paul D. Curtis, Robert H. Schmidt, Greg K. Yarrow, Raj Smith, Stephen Vantassel

11th Triennial National Wildlife and Fisheries Extension Specialists Conference (2006)

Individuals and groups interested in educating the public about human-wildlife interactions should consider joining one of the various working groups (Communities of Practice) involved with eXtension. eXtension is a national Extension program designed to unify Extension’s presence on the Internet. eXtension provides collaborative tools for the development and management of content that can be published on the world wide web. Experts can participate in several ways, including answering visitor questions, submitting content (including text, images, and video), and reviewing content. Currently, of the 21 identified Communities of Practice, only one, Wildlife Damage Management, is focused on fisheries and wildlife programming.

Um Lands $1.3 Million To Help Eastern Montana Teachers, Students Study Fossils, University Of Montana--Missoula. Office Of University Relations

University of Montana News Releases, 1928, 1956-present

No abstract provided.