ForestPal.com Updates

Hi all

It has been forever since I posted any information here. First off traffic has been steady but growth has been limited. That is ok as the site is paying for itself meaning it is zero cost, other than my time.

Speaking of time, with me that is in short supply. In my day-to-day life I am a forest technologist, computer programmer, and gis/gps technician. With all of those hats I have been neglecting this site...but that is going to change.

In an effort to boost traffic and help spread the word, I will be changing the entire format of this site to a blog. That way people can communicate to other users on the site, while I will still provide the existing content.

I hope to be able to derive some sort of income from this site, through sponsors, donations, advertisements etc. I will be removing the Google Ads and trying to find direct sponsorship from equipment and software suppliers.

Look for big big changes in the coming weeks.

ForestPal

GPS TrackerMaker - Review of Free Utilty

I use GPS TrackMaker on a regular basis for loading waypoints to my Rhino GPS. It works great and best of all it was a freebie. It has the ability to read shapefiles and offers various interfaces for a host of GPS devices.

This product rates a 10 out of 10 in my books and you can look forward to a complete review of the utility in the GPS Section of ForestPal.com

To get TrackMaker please visit http://www.gpstm.com/index.php.

ForestPal

GRASS

I am looking for 10 votes from 10 different bloggers to determine if I should dedicate a section of ForestPal to GRASS gis. It is a freebie after all. I have never used it but have heard it is a powerful and robust Geographic Information System.

When giving your nod to this please let me know what your background is with respect to GRASS.

Thanks

ForestPal

======================
FROM THE GRASS WEBSITE
======================
What's GRASS?
General Information | Features | GRASS Programming | Supported Platforms | Import/Export | Data Management capabilities

General Information
Geographic Resources Analysis Support System, commonly referred to as GRASS GIS, is a Geographic Information System (GIS) used for data management, image processing, graphics production, spatial modelling, and visualization of many types of data. It is Free (Libre) Software/Open Source released under GNU General Public License (GPL).

Originally developed by the U.S. Army Construction Engineering Research Laboratories (USA-CERL, 1982-1995), a branch of the US Army Corp of Engineers, as a tool for land management and environmental planning by the military, GRASS has evolved into a powerful utility with a wide range of applications in many different areas of scientific research. GRASS is currently used in academic and commercial settings around the world, as well as many governmental agencies including NASA, NOAA, USDA, DLR, CSIRO, the National Park Service, the U.S. Census Bureau, USGS, and many environmental consulting companies.

The new GRASS 6 release introduces a new topological 2D/3D vector engine and support for vector network analysis. Attributes are now managed in a SQL-based DBMS. A new display manager has been implemented. The NVIZ visualization tool was enhanced to display 3D vector data and voxel volumes. Messages are partially translated (i18N) with support for FreeType fonts, including multibyte Asian characters. New LOCATIONs can be auto-generated by EPSG code number. GRASS is integrated with GDAL/OGR libraries to support an extensive range of raster and vector formats, including OGC-conformal Simple Features.

The GRASS Development Team has grown into a multi-national team consisting of developers at numerous locations.

[see also: | Freshmeat.net entry | Wikipedia entry]
GRASS Features
GRASS (Geographic Resources Analysis Support System) is a raster/vector GIS, image processing system, and graphics production system. GRASS contains over 350 programs and tools to render maps and images on monitor and paper; manipulate raster, vector, and sites data; process multi spectral image data; and create, manage, and store spatial data. GRASS uses both an intuitive windows interface as well as command line syntax for ease of operations. GRASS can interface with commercial printers, plotters, digitizers, and databases to develop new data as well as manage existing data.

GRASS and network support for teams
GRASS supports workgroups through its LOCATION/MAPSET concept which can be set up to share data over NFS (Network File System). Keeping LOCATIONs with their underlying MAPSETs on a central server, a team can simultaneously work in the same project database.

[see also: GRASS capabilities]
GRASS Programming
GRASS is released under GNU GPL, the source code (5.x: more than 1 million lines of C; 6.x 500k SLOC) is completely available. GRASS provides a sophisticated GIS library which can be used for own developments. A GRASS Programmer's Manual is available for download.

[see also: GRASS Development]
Supported platforms

* GRASS is written in ANSI-C and is POSIX compliant : C-API
* A preliminary C++ interface is available
* Architectures: Intel x86, Motorola PPC, SGI MIPS, Sun SPARC, Alpha AXP, HP PA-RISC, CRAY, others.
* Operating systems: GNU/Linux (Intel, PowerPC, Sun, ...) Solaris (SPARC, i86), SGI IRIX, HP UX, Mac OS X (Darwin), IBM AIX, BSD-Unix variants, FreeBSD, CRAY Unicos, iPAQ/Linux handhelds and other UNIX compliant platforms (32/64bit), additionally MS-Windows native or Cygnus.

Source code and selected binaries can be downloaded.
Import/Export: Data formats supported by GRASS

* 2D raster data,
* 3D raster data (voxels),
* topological vector data (2D and 3D)

In detail:

RASTER: The GDAL library (r.in.gdal) is used, see the GDAL project format list for full capabilities. Examples include:

* Raster: ASCII, ARC/GRID, E00, GIF, GMT, TIF, PNG, ERDAS LAN, Vis5D, SURFER (.grd) ...
* Images: CEOS (SAR, SRTM, LANDSAT7 etc.), ERDAS LAN, HDF, LANDSAT TM/MSS, NHAP aerial photos, SAR, SPOT, ... can be read

VECTOR: The OGR library (v.in.ogr) is used, see the OGR project format list. Examples include:

* Vector: ASCII, ARC/INFO ungenerate, ARC/INFO E00, ArcView SHAPE (with topology correction), BIL, DLG (U.S.), DXF, DXF3D, GMT, GPS-ASCII, USGS-DEM, IDRISI, MOSS, MapInfo MIF, TIGER, VRML, ...
* Sites (vector point data lists): XYZ ASCII, CSV, dBase, ...

* List of GRASS raster import and export modules
* List of GRASS vector import and export modules
* List of GRASS volume import and export modules

Data Management capabilities of GRASS

* Spatial analysis
* Map generation
* Data visualization (2D, 2.5D and 3D)



* Data generation through modelling (list of simulation models)
* Link to DBMS (PostgreSQL, mySQL, SQLite, ODBC, ...)

Happy New Year to All

May 2007 bring you prosperity and good health. We at ForestPal will strive to provide you more services and products to aid in your respective field of endeavor.

Peace

ForestPal

So what is ForestPal all about?

ForestPal.com was created to continue the free online resource center for land managers within the GIS/GPS community.

Our most popular download continue to be fGIS because it is a FREE and very robust GIS program. It allows the user to, among other things, manage and edit ESRI shapefiles. Further, it has built in transparency - something the very expensive ArcView 3.X series does not.

This service is run for and paid for by volunteers who feel that there should be an avenue for students, teachers, small landowners, and consultants to have access to the tools they need when finances are an issue.

We are always looking for submissions...so if you have a product that you wish to showcase to our user base please submit your request to ForestPal@gmail.com

Thanks

Team ForestPal

ForestPal.com Relaunched

This overhaul took a lot longer that expected but now it is back up and running. Please report any bugs, dead links, or erroneous/dated information. This site is completely free and will remain that way...but your help in keeping things current is welcomed.

Feel free to post comments - good or bad - on this blog and someone will respond.

ForestPal