The Iowa Environmental
Mesonet: Year 2

Daryl Herzmann

Dr Ray Arritt

Department of Agronomy

IEM: Shock & Awe

Baseball Modeling with MM5

Confuser.user settings

ATBAT=21

FASTBALL=85

BALLS=3

STRIKES=0

ICORK=1

Outline:

Component network status

Data archive / website stats

IEM Evangelism

IEM Applications

Iowa Soil Erosion Project

Conclusions/ No Questions

ASOS - Automated Surface
Observing System

Sites

15 +2 (CWI+FOD)

Location

Primary Airports

Purpose

Support aviation

AWOS – Automated Weather Observing System

Sites

35 +2 (CWI+FOD)

Location

Smaller Airports

Purpose

Support aviation

RWIS – Roadway Weather Information System

Sites

49 Online

Location

Along major roads near bridges

Purpose

Road maintenance support in winter

DCP – Data Collection Platforms

Sites

161

Location

Along rivers

Purpose

Monitor river stages

SchoolNet
(KCCI-TV & KELO-TV)

Sites in Iowa

55 (84 total)

Locations

Roofs of schools

Purpose

Support local science curriculum

NWS COOP – Cooperative Observing Program

Sites

145

Locations

Backyards, fields, about anywhere

Purpose

Climate and hydro monitoring

ISU Ag Climate Network

Sites

12

Location

Open areas near research farms

Purpose

Support Ag activities at the farms

SCAN – Soil Climate
Analysis Network

Sites in Iowa

2

Location

Fields

Purpose

Monitor soil conditions

Data Processed Daily

Website Access Stats

Website stats are misleading!

What does Google say?

“Iowa Weather Data” (Top10)

“Iowa ASOS” (Top10)

“Iowa Historical Data” (Top10)

“GIS RADAR” (Top10, only .edu site)

“GIS RADAR WMS” (Number 1)

IEM Evangelism

21 Oct 02: NWA Conference

Dallas, TX

IEM/KCCI/NWS partnership presented the Larry R. Johnson Award

20 Nov 02: ISU GIS Day

Ames, IA

Keynote address

IEM Poster won best-of-class

Talked about data sharing, web services, and partnerships

11 Feb 03: AMS Conference

Long Beach, CA

Presented at the first GIS session of the IIPS

Very successful session of IIPS and will have another in '04

18 Feb 03: CIPCO Training

Des Moines, IA

Presented at a training conference for teachers at schools in the KCCI SchoolNet8

14 May 03: EPA Region 7

Kansas City

Presented about the IEM at a regional air quality monitoring conference

6 Jun 03: Mapserver Users

Minneapolis, MN

First Users Meeting

Presented poster on GIS RADAR

Good delegation from Iowa State

24 Jun 03: UNIDATA

Boulder, CO

Expanding Horizons Conference

Presented about GIS & IEM

1 Jul 03: Iowa GIS Conference

Ames, IA

Presented about IEM & GIS

Introduce the IEM-RadView effort to get RADAR data into GIS systems

17 Sept 03: Nevada School

Nevada, IA

Tips and tricks for utilizing the IEM – KCCI SchoolNet data.

Good interaction for what the schools need.

27 Sept 03: Baron Services

Huntsville, AL

'Supercharging' your school network

Helped with RADAR case study for 23 Aug 2002.

Everyday communications

IEM Daily Feature

Highlight something going with the IEM

Heavily QC'd by Dave Flory

IEM Daily Bulletin

Daily email with network stats

News updates synced from the website

IEM Applications

IEM SchoolNet Website

Provides IEM visibility to 84
K-12 Schools

Integrate obs + RADAR + camera

Interaction with science teachers

About the IEM + SchoolNet

“Mesonet has allowed for the creation of partnerships between the local school districts, KCCI, CIPCO, and the local government to provide instant weather data for each of the name entities as they need. In return, the local community benefits from data provided and pride in seeing their local weather station on the news. As one person told me, 'This is the best advertisement this town has ever had.'”

-Kelly Simpson, Science Teacher at Jefferson-Scranton

IEM RadView

Effort to provide real-time RADAR data into GIS

First publicly accessible NEXRAD WMS

Mapserver HOWTO

Iowa RADAR comparison

Compare base reflectivity from the 8 RADARs we collect data from

More GISish App

Click interface

Distance calculation

KCCI reprojected

NWS Warnings + NEXRAD

Loop GIS layers to produce an interesting animation of warnings and NEXRAD product

Works nationwide!

IEM Access, overview

A relational spatial database storing obs from the IEM. Why a database?

NetCDF lacks concurrent IO (is coming)

Flat ASCII files are plain evil

Shapefiles aren't the right tool

Database supports many frontends

PostGIS, spatial blade, supports Open GIS Consortium (OGC) functions

IEM Access, data flow

IEM Access, applications

Current Sortables

OGC Web Map Service

OGC SFSQL Service

Unified data structure leads to rapid application development

More to come, stay tuned...

IEM Tracker

7,700 trouble tickets have been generated since June 2002.

All data outages documented.

Very helpful for the SchoolNets

Need to make tickets more visible on the website.

© Image by: Dave Flory

Iowa Soil Erosion Project

PI: Dr Rick Cruse

Agronomy Endowment Project

IEM infrastructure makes this project possible

Erosion Project Ingredients

National Resources Inventory (NRI)

Provides detailed information on soils, crops, and management practices

Rainfall data from IIHR @ U of Iowa

15 minute ~4km resolution

IEM provides climate summary data

WEPP Soil Erosion Model

Outputs

Introducing, IEM Runway

Pre-compiled datasets ready for modeling.

Integrate multiple data sources to produce the best analysis for modeling.

© Image by: Dave Flory

Okay, the Shock & Awe Part

I'm done, questions?

Daryl Herzmann

3010 Agronomy

294-5978

akrherz@iastate.edu

2003-10-08T11:19:31