News
Ice House museum
Posted Sept. 18, 2019, 12:22 p.m.
In summer of 2019 GeoTREE student research assistant Nathan Huffman worked with the Ice House Museum in Cedar Falls to capture 360° imagery and publish that imagery to Google Street View (example) and to build a virtual tour.
IDALS project
Posted Sept. 18, 2019, 12:18 p.m.
The GeoTREE Center, the UNI Tall Grass Prairie Center and the Iowa Low Altitude Remote Sensing Lab were awarded a grant from the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship (IDALS) to capture Unmanned Aerial Vehicle and ground-based (360°) imagery and video and build into a variety of interactive and visually appealing multi-media products that will be built to raise awareness and provide educational materials for both the Prairie on Farms and Integrated Roadside Vegetation Management Programs. The products will help tell the story of the ecological, pollution control, and other benefits of tallgrass prairie.
ITAG Conference
Posted Sept. 18, 2019, 12:17 p.m.
John DeGroote and GeoTREE student research assistants Nathan Huffman, Grant Burke, and Matt Wagner attended the Iowa Technology and Geospatial Conference in West Des Moines in June 2019. Nathan presented on work developing a Virtual Tour for the Ice House Museum in Cedar Falls, Matt on the Cedar Trails Partnership 360° project (link and link), Grant presented on work on the project with Iowa DNR to update the National Hydrography Dataset for Iowa, and John gave a small workshop on web mapping techniques.
IGIC Geomentor Project
Posted Sept. 18, 2019, 12:15 p.m.
In summer 2019 GeoTREE student research assistants Greg Klocke, Nathan Huffman, and Matt Wagner presented an experiential environmental education lesson at the Wapsi River Environmental Education Center in conjunction with the Americorps 4H Environmental Education Program. They presented a short lesson GIS, GPS, Google Maps, and other subjects and took the group of kids and chaperones out to capture 360° imagery for publishing to Street View (example). The GeoTREE Center will also travel to Calmar, IA on September 23, 2019 to present a program for a local Winneshiek County 4H group in conjunction with the local Americorps 4H Environmental Education member working with Winneshiek Conservation.
Complete Cedar Valley trail project
Posted Sept. 18, 2019, 12:13 p.m.
The GeoTREE Center completed a project funded by the Cedar Trails in which they captured 360° imagery from approximately 20 miles of the local hard-surface recreational trail system in the Cedar Falls-Waterloo area. All 360° imagery were published to Google Street View. Over 1700 photos were published to Google Street View and as of September 2019 Google reported >150,000 views of those images. Below is a map of locations of photos displayed by number of views on Google around Big Woods Lake in Cedar Falls. A story about the project appeared in the Waterloo Courier. The GeoTREE Center built two web virtual tour or story map apps to increase visibility of the local trail system. See the story map and virtual tour.
Helping CAPS students
Posted Sept. 18, 2019, 12:11 p.m.
UNI GeoTREE student research assistants Nathan Huffman and Greg Klocke assisted Cedar Falls High School students (Yaellie Betancourt, Megan Pezley, Andre Bryan) in the CAPS program to develop a story mapping application for the Dry Run Creek Watershed in collaboration with Josh Balk (DRC Watershed Coordinator). The story map can be seen here and illustrated nice areas in the DRC watershed.
Completed UNI Impact map
Posted Sept. 18, 2019, 12:09 p.m.
GeoTREE Programmer Jonathan Voss updated the UNI Impact Map in Feburary 2019 with the most up to date data on students, student teachers, alumni, alumni educators, and locations of UNI impact across the state of Iowa. See https://panthercaucus.uni.edu/uni-impact/
Finish Iowa DNR water bodies
Posted Sept. 18, 2019, 12:05 p.m.
The UNI GeoTREE Center completed the first stage in December 2018 of a multiple year project with Iowa Department of Natural Resources began in 2015 to digitize every water body in the state of Iowa. More than 15 GeoTREE student research assistants participated in the project over the last several years. The project is continuing with the GeoTREE Center and Iowa DNR and will result in the eventual update for all of Iowa to the National Hydrography Dataset.
John DeGroote attends Google workshop
Posted Sept. 18, 2019, 12:04 p.m.
In October 2018, John DeGroote attended the Google Geo For Good Workshop in California. Attendees had to apply for the workshop and only a limited number (~200) of people from non-profits and academic institutions around the world were invited. The GeoTREE Center makes use of a wide range of geospatial technologies including Google technologies such as the Google Maps, Street View, and other APIs. John was able to attend a variety of technical sessions on these and other subjects and is incorporating lessons learned into GeoTREE work and teaching in the UNI Geography Department.
MAGIC Survey 123 app
Posted Sept. 18, 2019, 12:01 p.m.
The GeoTREE Center developed a citizen science water quality app with funding from the MidAmerican GIS Consortium. This app is a freely available app that is meant to help local stakeholders record water quality data as part of the continuation of the successful IOWATER program. See this link for more info.
Clear Creek Watershed project
Posted Sept. 18, 2019, 11:55 a.m.
The GeoTREE Center developed a comprehensive geodatabase for urban areas in the Clear Creek Watershed (parts of Coralville and Iowa City) and used their ArcSLAMM package to carry out urban runoff modeling for the watershed. Students Isaac Ubben, Greg Klocke, and Mason Barnhart worked on the project.
GeoTREE Center completes addressing project for the City of Waterloo
Posted Sept. 18, 2019, 11:48 a.m.
The GeoTREE Center completed the development of a comprehensive address database for the City of Waterloo in which several students (Athila Montebeller, Dillon Constant, Peterson Wambuu) compiled the 29,000 feature address geodatabase using a variety of sources such as their hard-copy maps, Google Street View, and other sources. In addition, the GeoTREE Center scanned more than 5000 hard-copy address forms and hyperlinked these to the address points.
