Applications

National Vegetation Classification System DB

This database was modeled after the Nature Conservancy's National Vegetation Classification System, a paper-based system used to collect vegetation species information on land plots. The database was used to collect grass species information for the US Army Corps of Engineers, on 14,000 acres of land at Ft. Campbell, Kentucky. The system used Pocket PCs equipped with onboard GPS to obtain latitude and longitude coordinates for each plot. The data collected were later exported to ArcGIS for generation of maps illustrating grass species locations. Some of the main benefits of this system included:

  • Rapid development of the database (2 days to build, tweak, debug, and deploy)
  • Development efforts were literally an order of magnitude lower than comparable time and costs when compared to other software development platforms (16 hours total development time compared to an estimated 60+ hours of programming to build something comparable in ArcPad).
  • Utilized on-board GPS to capture latitude and longitude coordinates of plots, which were later exported to ArcGIS for generating visually attractive maps of grass species locations. The export method was easy, understandable, and simple enough for the GIS draftsperson to incorporate into his routine.
  • Over 7,000 records were collected with a field team consisting of 4 two-person crews within a total time period of 4 weeks.