| Members (Maine Only) | 2002 Fall Conference Attendees (Maine Only) |
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Again, another year passes. This year, your user group looks forward to continuing our goal of providing relaxing meetings to share insights about GIS among ourselves. This year’s winter meeting, starting at 9:00 am on January 16th at Bowdoin College, will again focus on municipal applications but may include other interesting surprises. One of the greatest aspects of our meetings is chance to check in with past GISers in Maine and to share questions and hopefully find some answers to those pesky GIS problems. The user group will watch closely, too, the progress of the Maine GeoLibrary in its quest to improve the sharing and development of GIS data for all users in Maine.
This past year and this coming year, the Board will continue to focus on membership. We have made a lot of progress as we have worked to iron-out our membership list and clarified membership fees. We would still welcome any comments as we balance the value of our professional yet somewhat informal approach with the need to provide a quality user-group for our paying members. I would like to encourage you to visit our web site www.megug.org, as some improvements are noticeable to membership information—and some will be forthcoming.
I look forward to seeing you at Bowdoin College.
The Vermont Center for Geographic Information, Inc. in Waterbury, VT is seeking exhibitors for the seventh annual Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Exposition. VT GIS EXPO 2003 will be held Thursday, April 10, 2003 at the Capitol Plaza Hotel and Conference Center in Montpelier from 9:00 am to 3:00 pm, and will be free and open to the public. The VT EXPO will allow GIS professionals in the public and private sectors to showcase GIS projects, and will also provide hardware and software vendors with the opportunity to demonstrate new products and services. Attendees will include GIS professionals from New England and New York, town officials, legislators, business people, and the general public interested in learning more about the potential of GIS.
Features of GIS EXPO 2003 include:
GIS EXPO 2003 provides exhibitors and attendees the opportunity to network and learn about activity throughout the GIS community in Vermont. In order to learn more about being an exhibitor or presenter at GIS EXPO 2003, interested parties can contact Leslie Pelch (lesliep@vcgi.org or 802-882-3002) for an application package or visit http://www.vcgi.org/expo.
During the Oct. 18 board meeting, board members and our database manager reviewed the current membership list. Board members plan to design an online capacity to update individual member profiles. We hope that this capacity will better allow members as well as the organization to keep track of membership. Mike White receives special thanks from the board for working on this project. When the service becomes available, we will notify you know via our listserv and newsletters. Please check to make sure that your membership information is currently up-to-date at http://216.220.232.237/megug/scripts/Membership.exe/list. Contact Mike White at mwhite@photoscience.com or Jim Thomas at jht@maine.rr.com if you have any questions regarding your membership profile or enrollment. Members who wish to renewal by paying the annual fee are encouraged to do so by printing out the renewal form at http://www.megug.org/MEGUG/memberform.htm, and after completing it, sending it to Jim Thomas at 45 Longwoods Road Cumberland, ME 04021.
The first of the following two maps gives an overview of current membership by Maine town, based on the current online membership list. The second map shows the origin of attendees by town, based on our attendee list at the fall conference. These maps may lack accuracy related to the manner in which members list their addresses on their profiles. For example, some members list their work addresses, whereas others list their home addresses. As a result, the maps serve as a general reference of membership and attendee origin. The maps demonstrate that some MEGUG members travel long distances to attend our meetings and conferences. We welcome more members to join us at these events.
| Members (Maine Only) | 2002 Fall Conference Attendees (Maine Only) |
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At the October 10-11th Maine GIS Users Group fall meeting, the Maine Office of Geographic Information Services (MEGIS) hosted three hands-on work sessions for educators to explain how they could use iBooks to access and use geographic and remotely sensed data. Windows laptops were also provided for those teachers unable to bring an iBook. Each participant was provided with the book, Mapping Our World: GIS Lessons for Educators, which was published and donated by Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI). In addition to nineteen complete GIS lesson plans, this book includes a one-year license of ArcView for Macintosh or Windows, geographic data for all of the lessons, a Teacher Resource CD, and a companion Web site.
The first exercise explained how to successfully load ArcView 3.0a onto an iBook or Arcview 3.2 onto a Windows machine. The second exercise covered ArcView Basics, a structured tutorial from the book of the basic functions of ArcView and GIS systems in general. For the third exercise, participants were provided by MEGIS with CDs of SPOT satellite imagery, land use/land cover imagery and GIS data for their local area. This was an unstructured exercise where skills learned with ArcView could be applied to Maine data. Three MEGIS staff were available for technical assistance in all sessions, and another session is planned in January of 2003. Questions? Contact Larry Harwood by e-mailing larry.harwood@state.me.us.
Maine’s Census 2000 geography has been made available to local and global GIS communities through the Internet. Working in conjunction with the Maine State Planning Office (MESPO) Census Information Officer, the Maine Office of Geographic Information Systems (MEGIS) has developed three GIS datasets depicting different levels of Census geography in Maine. These are BLKS00, MCDCCD00 and VTD00 are published in the MEGIS Internet Data Catalog at http://musashi.ogis.state.me.us/catalog/catalog.asp. Each dataset is fully described by metadata in FGDC (Federal Geographic Data Committee) format which makes them also accessible to National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI) clearinghouse nodes.
The use of Census data is simplified by an understanding of the spatial relationships between the different levels of Census geography. GIS is “the” tool for viewing these relationships and GIS simplifies the task of relating Census geographic units with statistical data tabulated by the Census Bureau. The smallest geographic unit for which the Census Bureau tabulates data is a Census Block. Geographic units, whose boundaries are delineated by the U.S. Census Bureau for statistical purposes within each Maine County include, nesting in order of size from smallest to largest, BLOCKS, BLOCK GROUPS, COUNTY SUBDIVISIONS, TRACTS. There are other Census geographies that represent specific groupings of BLOCKS within counties, some of these are CENSUS DESIGNATED PLACES, VOTING DISTRICTS, ZIP CODE TABULATION AREAS, and URBAN AREAS.
Because a Census Block is the smallest geographic unit for which the Census Bureau tabulates data, all other geographies, cross tabulated in the dataset BLKS00, can be mapped from the MEGIS dataset BLKS00. These include Census TRACTS, BLOCK GROUPS, VOTING DISTRICTS, DESIGNATED PLACES and COUNTY SUBDIVISIONS, COUNTY and STATE. The unique-id for each Census Block statewide is an attribute in the dataset. This is STFIDBLK00 which has been used as a key for the creation of unique identifiers for the other Census geographic units represented in the coverage and the COUSUB number, the unique-id for Census County Subdivisions (CCDs) is also included. Mapping by the unique-ids for each geography in BLKS00 makes it easy to see their relationship. In addition, the datasets MCDCCD00 and VTD00 offer Census 2000 County Subdivisions and Census 2000 Voting Districts for Maine as single themes. All the datasets are attributed with population. VTD00 also contains Senate, House and County Commissioner District numbers. Datasets for ZIP CODE TABULATION AREAS and URBAN AREAS are not currently available, but will be published when data becomes available.
The unique-ids for each Census geographic unit can also be used to relate or join the datasets to extended Census data files, counts, tabulations, and reference tables. Two such tables MEGEO and SF1BLKS00, from the Bureau of Census, have been published at the MEGIS Data Catalog TABLES link. Likewise, Maine GIS tables that assist with the analysis of Census geographic areas in relation to Maine minor civil divisions will be published as they become available. Three tables already published, GEOMCDCCD, MEPOPS, and POPMAPS are examples of these. See the TABLES link for complete description, and documentation of these tables. Additional tables from the Census Bureau will be published as they become available.
MEGIS Census 2000 GIS datasets BLKS00, MCDCCD00, and VTD00 were provided on CD in iBook compatible shapefiles to educators who participated in “Hands on Book” work sessions hosted by MEGIS at the October Maine GIS Users Conference at Orono, Maine. If you would like to learn more about Census 2000 data products, you can find an excellent brochure on Census 2000 data products "Introduction to Census 2000 Data Products" at http://www.census.gov/prod/2001pubs/mso-01icdp.pdf. The brochure maps out Census geography and related data products clearly, and provides succinct answers to some of toughest first questions about Census data. And here’s a good link on Census history http://www.census.gov/prod/2000pubs/cff-4.pdf.
A graduate of the University of Maine Farmington in Interdisciplinary Geography and Geology, Kate King has worked as a GIS Coordinator for the Maine Office of GIS since 1996. Kate can be reached via email at kate.king@state.me.us.
Publication Title: Maine Coordinates
Issue Date: December 2002
Statement of Frequency: Occasional
Authorized Organization: Maine GIS User Group
Issue Number: Vol. 7, No. 3
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