Day 9 – R.I.P. Snail

On the second day of data collection, my partner and I were much more comfortable with the GPS unit and didn’t repeat our mistakes from yesterday. We covered a good amount of ground, but were unable to find much that we haven’t already collected. We were able to cover the entire stretch of beach which, by the way, was gorgeous! Tomorrow, we will likely assist with another group who has a more complicated data to collect. It is nice to see everyone’s data piling up and by the end-of-day tomorrow, we should have a sufficient amount to begin compiling into ArcGIS and use for classification of our remotely sensed images. It will be interesting to see the culmination of the data layers.  Everyone seems to be putting forth a solid effort, so the finished product should be something to be proud of.

Julianna is collecting a rock point

Back at the farmhouse, we learned how to upload and convert our GPS data into a form that ArcGIS can read. This then allows us to make any necessary additions, edits or deletes to our features and attributes in order to begin working on our common product map. We drop our points into Arc and created a quick map of where we went so that we can determine what ground we still need to cover.

A "rough" version of our data collection

The funniest part of the day was when vegetation team member Thomas put a snail in his back pocket (he thought it was empty) and then sat on it. 

Snail goo

Williams Aerospace will finally join us tomorrow to fly a few of our cameras which will be incredible to watch.  We will also collect more data and begin correction and processing when we get home.

Our days out in the sun have everybody winding down by 8 p.m. and it is still difficult to eloquently elaborate all the events of the day into a blog post. But things are going really well. We all love our team of professors and grad students. Everyone has been so helpful and we continue to learn everyday.

Today’s pictures are linked here.  They are good today! And if you have a Photosynth account (you can make one you know!) then click here to view the valley.

Beautiful rock