DPR's Permit Mapping Developers Group Meeting, April 16, 1997, Meeting Summary

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Meeting Attendance:

The first meeting of DPR's Permit Mapping Developers Group was held on April 16, 1997, at DPR headquarters in Sacramento. The meeting was led by Rosemary Neal who was assisted by AdaAnn Scott, and was attended by the following:

Hugo Abaurre (Napa), Patrick Akers (CDFA), Sanh Banh (DPR), Marlene Bartsch (San Luis Obispo), Steve Burton (El Dorado), Joseph Gray (Sonoma), Dave Greenwood (DPR), Miu Golladay (San Diego),Tom Hawkins (DWR), Louie Mendoza (Butte), Randy Moory (TDC), Charlotte Murray (Imperial), Don Muse (Inyo/Mono), Mark Sabin (Kern), Marsha Palmer (San Luis Obispo), Mert Price (Santa Clara), Muffet Wilkerson (DPR), and Gerry Willey (Monterey).

Meeting Assignments:

After the initial introductions, members of the group were assigned certain responsibilities. AdaAnn Scott volunteered to be the meeting Scribe, Charlotte Murray the timekeeper, and Patrick Akers, Mark Sabin and Marsha Palmer divided up the note taking. In order to maintain an open flow of communication, representatives from each of the area user groups was assigned the task of reporting the proceedings of the Developers Group to the user groups.

In addition, one representative from each of the ITAG regional area groups was assigned the task of keeping the commissioners up to date with the any information arising from the Developers Group.

Current Status of Permit Mapping:

There followed a 30-minute presentation from Rosemary Neal on the current status of Permit Mapping. In an overview of the technical developments that had been made in developing the Permit Mapping Prototype, Rosemary outlined four primary areas which had been addressed and demonstrated satisfactorily.

• The Permit Mapping Prototype provides a combination of spatial and visual information to allow the user to locate permit sites with some degree of accuracy, using vector data such as road networks, a township/range/section grid, and DWR land use information together with SPOT satellite imagery.
• The Permit Mapping Prototype integrates a GIS tool, ArcView, with a Permit database using open database connectivity (ODBC).
• The Permit Mapping Prototype allows a user to use a mouse click on a spatial data view to capture geographic coordinates and store them in a Permit database.
• The Permit Mapping Prototype can be integrated with CDFA programs.

  Rosemary discussed the information she had gathered during the past two months during her visits to ten of the twelve counties who are participating in the Developers Group. The counties that Rosemary visited were El Dorado, Fresno, Imperial, Kern, Monterey, Napa, San Diego, San Luis Obispo, Santa Clara, and Sonoma. In her discussion, Rosemary pointed out the her intention of illustrating the wide variation in mapping techniques, GIS technical expertise, spatial data availability, computer resources, the projection/coordinate systems used by county agencies, agricultural practices, and the opinion of current RMPP/PUR system, that she had observed in just these ten counties.

• Mapping techniques - a wide range of paper maps are being used to locate permit sites. Most CACs use a large wall map with a section grid overlay. Some CACs supplement this information with assessor parcel, ranch, or Platt maps. USGS 7.5' quad maps are also being used by some CACs.
• GIS technical expertise - ranges from CACs who have been using desktop GIS for over three years to those who are just getting started.
• Spatial data availability - the availability of spatial data at a local level is dependent on the extent of county and regional involvement. Some CACs are already part of a county/regional network, or are negotiating access to one, and have access to GIS data layers. In some instances, neither county nor regional spatial data exists at the local level, and these CACs must either purchase commercially available data and/or use data available from federal and state sources.
• Computer resources - the availability of computer resources varied considerably. However, each CAC has, or will have, the ability to run a desktop GIS.
• Projection/coordinate systems used by county agencies - Most counties are using the State Plane coordinate system. Some CACs are using coordinates in latitude and longitude. DPR uses the Albers projection coordinate system.
• Agricultural practices - the CACs participating in the Developers Group represent most agricultural situations found in California. Permanent crops such as wine grapes and orchards dominate in Napa, Sonoma, and El Dorado counties, while San Luis Obispo and Monterey represent a varying mixture of both permanent and rotational crops. Field sizes and shapes vary from quarter-section sized rectangles found in Kern and Fresno counties to 10 acres along a stream channel in the coastal regions. Imperial county provides a unique example of a system where field boundaries seldom change. Ag/Urban interface issues are important in San Diego and Santa Clara counties where glasshouse and nursery crops are prevalent.
• CAC staff opinion of current RMPP/PUR system - concerns varied from wishing to avoid change because of the investment of personnel training in the existing system, to wishing to be compatible with today's technology and using a database system that is more widely supported and compatible.

  Teale Data Center:

  Randy Moory gave a 30 minute presentation on GIS solutions at the Teale Data Center (TDC). The GIS Technology Center maintains a Geographic Data Library of over 35 types of geography. Library coverages are in Arc/Info format, and are maintained in a common coordinate projection (the Albers projection) to enable overlay and integration of functions. These layers are available as statewide coverages or by individual county, and for $1000/year a county can have access to all the data, which can be transferred using FTP. A complete listing of all library layers together with their metadata can be found at the TDC web site www.gislab.teale.ca.gov.

  In addition to the Geographic Data Library, the GIS Technology Center is involved in a number of other endeavors, including the formation of a partnership to produce digital ortho quarter quads for the State of California, which will be a public domain data set once completed. The digital raster graphic quad scanning project is also underway. All USGS 7.5 X 7.5 minute quad sheets for California will be scanned, and the final product will be .tif files between 5 and 20 megabyte in size, in Albers projection. Completed scanned images are currently available on CD for cost of reproduction, and pricing information is available on TDC's web site.

  Randy also told the group about the California Geographic Information Association (CGIA), whose mission is to improve and foster coordinated use, creation, and maintenance of geographic information in California. The association is an official partner with the Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC), and has responsibilities to coordinate spatial data activities throughout California and to help develop, define, and design our portion of the National Spatial Data Infrastructure. The CGIA web site is the place to look for information about metadata from around the state, information about spatial data projects planned, in operation, or completed around the state, and links to other sites within California (local, regional, state, federal, private).

  Department of Water Resources:

  Tom Hawkins, from DWR's Division of Planning Land and Water Use Section gave a 30 minute presentation on the Land Use Survey Program for which he is responsible. This program began in the 1950s and focuses on the agricultural land use for the purpose of estimating water usage. The surveys are generally conducted on a countywide basis with an average return time of seven years.

  Tom outlined the steps involved in the recently improved surveying procedure. Surveys are flown at about 18,000 ft, generating 9"x9" colored aerial photographs, and which cover an area equivalent to a quarter 7.5' quad. The images are mosaiced together, and AutoCAD used to digitize the land use boundaries which have been verified on the ground by district staff. GRASS, a raster based GIS, is used to make statistical evaluations and overlay the vector line work on the images.

  Tom indicated that the data (in UTM projection coordinates) including the aerial imagery (5m resolution), would be made available in a variety of formats on CD, at a distribution cost of about $50/survey. In addition, there are plans for a web site from which the data could be obtained directly.

  At the conclusion of Tom's presentation, AdaAnn Scott made the observation that coordination of effort between DWR and the CACs would provide enormous benefit to both organizations, providing DWR with annual land use information and the CACs with enhanced field boundary information.

  Demonstration of the Projection Tool:

  Spatial data that may be used by CACs is available in a variety of projection/coordinate formats, (e.g. Teale Data Center (Albers), DWR's Land Use data (UTM), DPR's PLSNet data (Albers or Lat/Long), and local agency data (State Plane)). To be able to overlay data in a meaningful manner, the spatial data layers need to be maintained in a common coordinate projection. Rosemary demonstrated the Projection Extension tool that is available as part of the ArcView 3.0 software package which can be used to project data from one coordinate system to another. The Projector Extension (PRJCTR.AUX) is not automatically available when ArcView is loaded, and the user must move it from to the ArcView's Samples folder to either the EXT32 (Win95) or EXT16 (Windows 3.1) folder. The projector extension is then activated from the File-Extensions menu. In a view, the spatial data theme (data layer) the user wants to project is activated, and the map units in View-Properties dialog box are checked to ensure that they are set correctly (e.g. Albers - meters, State Plane - feet, UTM - meters, etc). When the projector button on the view GUI is clicked, the user is guided through a series of dialog boxes which ask for the input projection, the output units, and output projection. The newly projected theme is saved to disk and may be placed in a view of the user's choice.

  Where do we go from here....?:

  • Evaluating DPR's Requirements:

    Rosemary briefly discussed that other branches in DPR were being asked to consider what type of spatial data should be included in the RMPP/PUR. At a minimum, DPR would like to have geographic information about parcel centroids associated with each site, but would like to continue to develop the method for capturing coordinate information delineating the site boundaries.

  • Product Development:

    AdaAnn reviewed some of the processes that DPR has implemented during the last eighteen months, including electronic transfer, increased county support, enhancing networks, and CDFA e-mail. She also outlined some of the long-term issues that DPR is addressing which will take into account communications, networks, the permit system, GIS, and database issues. The goal is to generate a product that will satisfy the needs of the CACs, DPR, CDFA, and industry, and the role of the Permit Mapping Developers Group is to answer questions such as "What do users want the product to be?", "What tools need to be developed?", "What database changes or other enhancements would be desirable?"

    To get some input from the group on what the participants considered important, a round-the-table discussion of the issues that the Developers Group would like to address was initiated.

  • Issues:

    Standards - conformity throughout the counties.

    Training - help for counties with limited computer skills.

    Support - hardware/software.

    Awareness - the goals of DPR and the individual counties.

    Maximize the resources/utility/functionality so that other programs can take advantage of the technology.

    Define the project goals.

    Share information - experienced counties share hints, tips, etc with others.

    Establish goals and time lines - the minimum achievement, short and long term goals.

    Coordination between agencies - ensure DPR and CDFA requirements are not conflicting.

    Consider county standards - for those CACs who will work with other county agencies ensure that the product is supportable, meets county standards, etc.

    Continuity and Standards - complementing other programs.

    Address the issue of multi-year, multi-site, multi-crop information - provide a way to archive historical data.

    Define Goals and Product - establish a robust data model.

    Flexibility - so that can still be useful even if there is a lack of hi-tech equipment, limited data resources, etc.

    The Group decided by consensus that the remainder of the discussion time would be spent defining the project goals, and so a round-the-table format was used again to refine these ideas.

  • Goals:

    Rosemary Neal discussed the fact that the original goal for the design of the prototype was so that permits could be issued using GIS, thus removing the necessity for entering permit data through two applications (geographic coordinates through GIS and permit information through a database). Feedback from the group indicated that this was not an issue that needed to be addressed until changes to the Permit Program and Pesticide Use Reporting system were made. The group felt that there were other uses for GIS that would have a greater short-term impact.

    A number of participants want to be able to use GIS to develop maps of permit sites for growers, so that each map would be consistent and have greater accuracy than the current maps provided by individual growers. Charlotte Murray of Imperial County told us that her county would not use this feature because of liability issues. Imperial CAC will only accept maps drawn by growers which meet the CAC's requirements. Marlene Bartsch of San Luis Obispo County commented that she would like to see all counties conform to a standard requirement for grower maps, and told us that San Luis Obispo requires growers to draw their field boundaries on photocopies of portions of USGS 7.5' quad maps.

    Another goal identified by the group would be to use GIS to evaluate permitting conditions. The group wanted to develop tools to use spatial data such as the extents of endangered species, the positions of hydrologic features, locations of schools, etc., relative to the proposed permit site to help in the determination of permit issuance.

    Some members of the group were concerned about how to deal with changes to field boundaries and cropping practices, and would like the group to develop a methodology developed to deal with these issues in both the Permit Program and Pesticide Use Reporting.

    At the conclusion of the discussion, the following Developers Group goals were identified:

  • Short-Term:
    • Learn to use GIS as a tool to create maps, perform spatial queries, and assist staff with permit issuance by evaluating environmental conditions.
    • Use GIS to develop "Permit Site" spatial data using preestablished spatial data whenever possible as a starting point.
    • Develop a methodology to deal with changing "Permit Site" boundary conditions and establish historical tracking.
  • Long-Term:
    • Integrate GIS as a component of permit issuance.
    • Develop "teaching modules" to provide help to other counties as they begin to get going with GIS.
    • Look for ways to use GIS in other CAC programs.
  • Working Groups: Counties were asked to participate in two working groups. Working Group I would consist of counties who have already begun, or are about begin to create spatial data for "crop" parcels. These counties are El Dorado, Kern, Monterey, Napa, San Diego, and San Luis Obispo. Working Group II counties include Butte, Fresno, Imperial, Inyo/Mono, Santa Clara, and Sonoma.

    Working Group I will begin to address the second and third of the short-term goals. The Group's first task will be to discuss the methods by which each county means to develop "Permit Site" spatial data. Rosemary briefly outlined the agenda for a meeting for mid-June at which the participants would discuss ideas for creating the data, and bring metadata for any external data sources they might use. Rosemary noted that she would be sending Working Group I a memo discussing the meeting in more detail within the next week.

    Working Group II will compile information about the availability of spatial data at a local level, with the intent of creating a "Beginners Fact Sheet" for other counties who are considering setting up a GIS.

    All members of the Developers Group will address the first short-term goal and provide feedback through Rosemary of any progress that they make.

  • PLSNet spatial data distribution:

    PLSNet spatial data is an Arc/Info coverage of surveyed and extrapolated Public Land Survey sections that has been developed by ISB staff, and covers the entire state of California. DPR will make this data available for distribution to the Developers Group participants on a per county basis. A Data Request form was handed out to the county representatives, allowing each individual county to specify a distribution format. Upon receipt, ISB staff will process the data requests.

  • Set dates and agendas for next Developers Group/Working Groups meetings:

    Working Group I will meet in mid-June to discuss issues of standards and the development of "crop" parcel layers.

    No meeting date was set for Working Group II.

    No date was set for the next meeting of the Developers Group, although a time line of six months was suggested by Rosemary.