The new LANDFIRE dataset is now available for download. Please “right-click” and “save-as”   http://www.hawaiistateassessment.info/gisdata/LANDFIRE_Hawaii.gdb

The file is an ESRI file geodatabase which includes all landfire rasters for Hawaii, reprojected to NAD83, UTM Zone 4, and resampled to snap to Hawaii GAP. The LANDFIRE Hawaii data were derived from the same Landsat scenes that were used for Hawaii GAP.

For more information on LANDFIRE, please visit their website at http://www.landfire.gov

Thanks to Molly Schmidt who works for the Hawaii Legacy Lands Conservation Commission for compiling this excellent list of Resource land acquisition plans and priorites in the of State plans, county plans, and other projects that indicate priorities or policies for the acquisition of lands for the purpose of resource protection.

Great work Mollie. This will be immensely useful for our SWARS.
-Ron

Look Ma, No Hands!

Well the balmy days of summer are over, and everyone is back to school. The Hawaii SWARS team will be working diligently to complete our project by June 2010 as required by the Farm Bill. We have some new data,  some spatial such as LANDFIRE,  and some historical such as the documents given to me by Bob Miriam when he retired. We have some new partners including Fish and Wildlife Service and The Nature Conservancy, and  we have a new full-time staff person, so please welcome Colleen Carroll.  And we have new technology too, including MacSpeech. For example this entire post has been spoken into a microphone and translated instantly into the written word. Without a spelling error.

So while we may have some catching up to do, we have the data, the plan, the people, and the enthusiasm to produce the country’s best Statewide Assessment of Forest Conditions and Resource Strategy.

All the best, Ron.

Way to go Leo! Thanks for the new website http://zliu95618.blogspot.com/ to help us islanders coordinate and share information. Great workshop. Two great days of full time GIS collaboration under our belts, and three more to go. Mahalo to Lisa Fischer, you, the good folks back at Region 5 (hi Julie and Laurie) for all your help.

Did you miss the 2009 Hawaii Conservation Conference? Have you heard the latest information on climate change, cultural practices, invasive species, the economic crisis, and where Hawai`i is heading? Do you want to hear from islanders from Hawaii and Micronesia in their own words? Would you like to hear for yourself Dr. Stephen Schneider, Nobel Peace Prize winning climatologist on what can be done to mitigate the effects of climate change and sea level rise. Do you care about these Hawaiian Islands; our people, our biodiversity, our culture, the awesome power of our oceans, volcanoes, coral reefs and traditions?

Then you should check out the HCC presentations. They’re online. And free.

The link for the conference index is http://hawaiiconservation.org/2009hcc_presentations.asp

Or you can get one or all of the podcasts on your itunes. Make sure that you are connected to the internet and that itunes can access the itunes store. In itunes, choose Advanced – then Subscribe to Podcast  and then copy and paste this URL into the dialogue box:

http://hcc09.blip.tv/rss/itunes

The podcast directory will load, and you can download one or more of the presentations complete with abstract (in the lyrics section of the podcast).

Enjoy

We are thrilled that LANDFIRE wil be coming to this year’s Hawaii Conservation Conference to present their data and to work with us here to help us intergate these rich datasets into Hawaii’s asessment (SWARS). Without exception, everyone who has worked on this project has been nice, really smart, enthusiastic, interesting and committed . Huge mahalos to everyone on the LANDFIRE and TNC teams. Oh yeah, Jim, Dawn and the rest of the gang have been great too. All good.

It was a small but significant meeting; on Friday April 17 representatives from three of the major agencies with ongoing watershed planning projects met together for the first time at the DOFAW administrative office in Honolulu. We had representatives from DOFAW, the Coastal Zone Management Non-point Source Pollution Control Program, the Hawaii Association of Watershed Partnerships, NOAA Coastal Services Center and the Coral Reef Task Force. The purpose of the meeting was to share information on each other’s project deadlines, deliverables and methodologies, and to begin to coordinate our efforts. Meeting notes will be posted shortly.