Day 18 – The planning process

Today was another great day. I had to fight the temptation to get back out in the field to collect points – as that iss really where I’d rather be  than at the barn all day, but I know that I needed a day to plan and get organized about how to proceed with my project. I built my empty geodatabase that will house all of my GPS points and essential information. It is always cool when something that I learned in school becomes applicable in practice. So I created about five featureclasses and added domains to make populating my attribute table much easier. Now with a clear idea of what will go on my map, I can take more effective field notes when I collect GPS points.

I also starting toying around with my imagery. Although the original plan was to use ERDAS ( which I apparently pronounce in a very east-coast way), my new favorite software, eCognition, was beckoning. I was able to tweek some of the parameters and use the OBIA to grab out the bare earth patches that I am trying to measure. So I am crossing my fingers that it continues to go well, though I may still try ERDAS in addition.

To further my belief that the cattle are exacerbating the erosion situation in the Ka’a’awa Valley, when I zoom out in the imagery, to areas that are undisturbed by humans or cattle, there appear to be no bare patches. This should help strengthen my analysis.

I will have to finish this post earlier than planned… my computer is being swarmed by bugs!

I am going to try to cover a significant portion of the valley tomorrow.