the FY17/18 3DEP Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) cycle will be underway shortly.  To increase awareness and enable stakeholders to prepare in advance for the BAA opportunity, the National Geospatial Program is conducting a series of national public webinars.  As space is limited, registration is required and will be accepted on a first come basis.  The presentations will be recorded and made available for viewing for those unable to attend.  The USGS appreciates your interest and involvement in the 3DEP program.  Webinars will be held:

•August 10, 2017 at 1pm ET 

•August 17, 2017 at 3pm ET

Link to webinar registration:

https://cms.geoplatform.gov/elevation/3DEP/PublicMeetings

The year is over! Just the fiscal year for the HIGICC. We had our annual meeting and social. Thanks to all that participated. Here is a link to the annual report.

2016-2017 HIGICC Annual Report

June King Tides Photo Survey starts Friday!  Join the team of citizen scientists in the Hawai’i and Pacific Islands King Tides Project and help us document the impacts of King Tides (the highest high tides of the year) across the Pacific region. Visit the project website www.PacificIslandsKingTides.org for tide times at locations in the Hawaiian Islands (June 23-24), American Samoa (June 23-24), Majuro (Republic of the Marshall Islands) (June 25-26), and Guam (June 24-25). You can also find detailed instructions on how to submit photographs and observations of King Tides using the project’s free SmartPhone App and publicly accessible dataset at the links below: Step-by-step Instructions Video tutorial A special thanks to the many citizen scientists that photographed the May 2017 King Tides! Explore more than 1,300 photographs submitted by citizen scientists from across the Pacific region through the Hawai‘i and Pacific Islands King Tides Project dataset and the interactive online map. Documenting these King Tides will be especially important as the Hawaiian Islands continue to experience sea levels that are averaging six inches on top of predicted tides. For more information please visit www.HawaiiSeaLevel.org. Thank you for your participation! Questions? Contact KingTide@hawaii.edu

2017 West Hawaii Integrated Ecosystem Assessment 

The coastal ocean of West Hawai'i Island is a biologically diverse and productive ecosystem. The region is also important to fisheries and tourism. The West Hawaii'i Integrated Ecosystem Assessment (IEA) research team returns to the region and investigates this dynamic marine ecosystem and its underlying oceanography.

http://arcg.is/2nVOx4z

2017 Pacific Reef Assessment Monitoring Program Survey Mission

The Pacific Island Fisheries Science Centers’ Coral Reef Ecosystem Program (PIFSC CREP) has been surveying coral reef ecosystems in the Pacific since the early 2000s. We collect data to assess how coral reefs vary over space and through time. We do this to inform the management of these stunning and important ecosystems, which are packed full of biodiversity and that provide coastal protections, food and livelihoods to millions of people worldwide. During this 88-day expedition, we will survey the islands of Jarvis, Howland, Baker and Wake, all part of the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument. We will then traverse the Marianas Archipelago working our way up the chain from the populated islands in the south (Guam, Rota, Saipan) to the remote locations in the north.

http://arcg.is/2nfVxcA

It is time for the annual HIGICC scholarship. If you know of deserving students, please inform them of this award. While it is competitive, the annual scholarship is a great way to recognize the hard work of students in the Geospatial discipline.

The Hawaii Geographic Information Coordinating Council is interested in encouraging students to further their studies in geospatial technologies. Towards this end, HIGICC awards a $1,000 scholarship each year to reward deserving students who show appreciation for and understanding of geography and geographic information systems (GIS).

The deadline for applications is May 17, 2017. This year's criteria and application can be viewed and download in here:

Undergraduate

Graduate

Subject: announcement to share: NOAA seeks new members for HSRP Federal Advisory Committee, nominations due May 30, 2017

Please share this announcement for the NOAA Hydrographic Services Review Panel (HSRP) Federal Advisory Committee solicitation for nominations of new members for 2018 with local, regional and national partners, your members, newsletters, blogs, stakeholders, colleagues and other interested parties? The nominations are due May 30, 2017. Below please find the links to the HSRP Federal Register Notice and the press release with the process and other information. 

You can review the requirements, criteria and questions on how to submit your nomination to the Federal Register Notice, HSRP Membership Soliciation for 2018 (FRN) at: 

https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2017/03/24/2017-05639/membership-solicitation-for-hydrographic-services-review-panel.

Additional information on the HSRP nominations process is at: 

https://www.nauticalcharts.noaa.gov/ocs/hsrp/call-application.htm

Press release "NOAA  seeks new  members f or  hydrographic  advisory  panel"

http://www.noaa.gov/media-release/noaa-seeks-new-members-for-hydrographic-advisory-panel

Recent issue papers and recommendations are at:

https://www.nauticalcharts.noaa.gov/ocs/hsrp/recommendations.htm

Aloha,

if you want to hear the many great presentations from the recent HIGICC Expo,

download the agenda that now has links to the presentation.

Link to the recordings:

GIS Courses through the Maui College.

EdVenture offers continuing education, career training and professional development courses in a wide range of topics including Food Innovation, Computers and Technology, Business, Languages, Hawaiian Culture, Art, College for Kids, Agriculture and Energy through the Sustainable Living Institute of Maui. No matter where you are in life, EdVenture is your source for lifelong learning on Maui.

Thanks to the continued hard work of Ross Winans and NOAA, the Hawaii Island is on the map for a 2017 data collection effort.

https://www.usgs.gov/news/2017-lidar-partnership-awards-announced

This effort is not finalized yet and there is need for more funding in order to get a 100% data set. Please contact Ross if you want to join in and partner on this major effort.

There has been a thread on the Society for Conservation GIS (SCGIS) list serve about the possibility of losing access to federally archived geospatial data.   Here is a consolidation of the thread and what you can do to help….

People have been hoping for the best and planning for the worst: 

• ·         https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2016/12/13/scientists-are-frantically-copying-u-s-climate-data-fearing-it-might-vanish-under-trump/?utm_term=.a96b5a6b3b29
• ·         https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/12/13/why-im-trying-to-preserve-federal-climate-data-before-trump-takes-office/
• ·         Gizmodo’s take at : http://gizmodo.com/meet-the-people-racing-to-stop-trump-from-purging-feder-1791317464
• ·         NOAA: https://www.ecomagazine.com/news/science/trump-s-noaa-pick-says-he-won-t-censor-global-warming-data

A number are preparing for loss of the data. There are a few parallel movements, but we do work together. The people taking the lead are the PPEH Lab at UPenn - they're doing amazing work and have professional archivists and librarians involved to make sure data integrity is maintained. On the other side of it, I run a team of volunteers over at http://climatemirror.org where we are tracking and storing datasets to make sure they don't disappear, and working to capture data portals.

More normal backups were taken by the Internet Archive and the California Digital Library (as part of their "End of Term Harvest" that they run at each presidential transition) - these capture web pages and linked small datasets, and can be searched publicly at http://archive.org.  More information on any of this Nick http://nicksantos.com (Nick Santos [nrsantos@UCDAVIS.EDU]

DATA RESCUE SERIES: Perhaps you read last week’s Wired article about scientists archiving US gov climate change data and websites leading up to and continuing through the administration change? This is the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative, and since the election, @EnviroDGI has been hosting #DataRescue events for at-risk government datasets. The first was held in Canada, where people were already organized due to the anti-science Harper administration destroying libraries of un-digitized science research in 2013 (https://envirodatagov.org/building-an-archive-of-vulnerability-guerrillaarchiving-at-uoft/)

The next event in the Data Rescue series is happening right here in New York City & your participation will make a difference! Join us on Saturday, February 4.  Register here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/data-rescue-nyc-tickets-31332874471

Data Rescue NYC works to secure federal environmental data in the face of the Trump administration’s large-scale efforts to dismantle environmental regulation. This work is urgent since the Trump administration has immediately begun to scrub environmental data from federal websites.

Data Rescue NYC brings together concerned citizens with experts in information technology, archiving and environmental science and policy. We need capable web-savvy and technical members of the public, librarians, and people with environmental expertise. Building on experience from similar events, everyone’s skills will be put to work in organized cooperation.

Join us for a day of preserving valuable environmental data from attempts to undermine science in the public service. Bring your laptop, water bottle, and snacks.

Hosted by New York University, Data Rescue NYC is run by the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative (EDGI) in collaboration with the PPEHlab’s DataRefuge project. Here are links to background and news coverage. It is part of a decentralized effort including previous events in Toronto, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and elsewhere.

Register here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/data-rescue-nyc-tickets-31332874471

More information can be found here: https://www.facebook.com/events/704371486406298/

How you can prepare in advance:
- Download and install our web browser extension, which works with the Chrome browser. http://tinyurl.com/zyuqx7l
- Coders can review our tools, including web crawlers and scrapers, in the EDGI Github: https://github.com/edgi-govdata-archiving - experience using web APIs, and cloudweb services like Amazon S3 is a plus!

Special lead-up event on FOIA Rights and Responsibilities: Friday February 3 hosted by CUNY and broadcast by Public Lab: https://publiclab.org/notes/liz/01-20-2017/edgi-foia-event-at-cuny-in-new-york-city-online