5-11-11

I specifically came in today to work on my senior project. Because my office only has two computers, one for Rich and one for Angie, I had to find a day where one of them would be out of the office. The missing parts of my project included mostly maps, so I needed help from Angie. Rich was out on field visits all day so this was the perfect opportunity. I think working on these maps are the most rewarding aspect of working on these folders because you get a finished product when you are done and they look so official. It’s the fact that I solely created them, and they are going to be used in the client’s application. So today I made a location and soil map. I also worked on the CNDDB map, which ended up being a nightmare. The property is mostly forestland and has a huge amount of endangered species on the property. Then on top of having a lot of endangered/threatened/species of concern, they had multiple one occupying the same habitat. It turned into how to make various patterns on top of each other just to see that there were 4 species in this one place. But after I accomplished that, it was time to work on the conservation map. This was the part I was most concerned/most eager to do. I had done one before, but this had been without needing to make it generate a conservation plan. Normally Rich will make a conservation plan and then after, have someone make the map. According to Angie, the easier and best way to make a conservation plan is to have it generated from when you make the conservation map. This is the meat of the application since it shows what practices they are doing, where on their property it is going, and when they are scheduled to do the practices. I got to the point of drawing shapefiles in to represent the various practices but hit some problems as soon as it was time to attribute them as particular practices and make them generate the conservation plan. After a while, I needed a break because its frustrating working for an extended time in GIS. I have joked with Angie that we need stress relieving techniques to deal with GIS. Instead we got coffee and called it a day. I’m planning on setting aside another day to complete that next week.