SmartScape

SmartScape is a web-application in-progress that allows users to view agricultural landscapes in southern Wisconsin, select land with particular attributes, specify a hypothetical land-use change, and get a quick-and-dirty estimate of the economic and environmental outcomes of the hypothetical land use change.  Send me a note if you would like to try it out.

LeapFrag

LeapFrag is a stand-alone program written in the Python programming language that is designed to facilitate landscape analysis with ArcGIS 10.1 and the Fragstats 4.1.  It is built to (1) import a shapefile containing several polygons (i.e., zones), (2) create a separate shapefile for each zone, (3) use each zone file to clip a landcover grid of interest, (4) prepare individual landcover grids and a batch file for submission to Fragstats, and (5) process Fragstats output files – all via a simple graphical user interface.

Like the Geospatial Modeling Environment, LeapFrag can serve as a substitute for the ArcGIS Tabulate Area Tool when zones overlap one another and Tabulate Area is not reliable.  It complements Fragstats because it automates the process of creating and formatting a unique landcover grid for each zone, creates and then runs a Fragstats batch file, and changes Fragstats class output tables from long to wide format.  LeapFrag replicates some of the functionality of Patch Analyst (Fragstats automation within Patch Grid) for those who have had difficulty using Patch Analyst with recent versions of ArcGIS.

A README file for setting up and using LeapFrag is available here.  The program source code, LeapFrag004.py, can be downloaded here.  Python 2.7 (32-bit) and most of the modules required to run LeapFrag are automatically installed with ArcGIS 10.1.  A few, including ttk and pandas, need to be installed by the user (see the README file).  Note that the LeapFrag GUI will not start up without first installing ttk and pandas.  Of course, LeapFrag also requires that you install Fragstats 4.1 on your computer and know how to use it.

Aevert

Aevert is a stand-alone program written in the Python programming language for converting measurements commonly made in agroecology.  The Biomass tab can be used to convert between a variety of biomass yield estimates.  Mass to mass and area to area conversions are available for a wide variety of crops.  Bushel to mass conversions are available for grain and oilseed yields.  Standard reporting moistures are given as default values.  Users can change these values and the converter will automatically adjust for moisture content.

The Nutrients tab is designed to calculate nutrient application rates via several common types of inorganic fertilizers.  Default units indicate if fertilizers are in solid or liquid form.  Future versions of the program might incorporate nutrient application via solid and liquid manures.

The Energy tab calculates the energy content of a variety of fossil and biomass fuels.  Default units indicate if fuels are in solid, liquid, or gaseous forms.  There is a ‘generic energy’ fuel type option for converting between energy units.  The converter deals with moisture in solid fuels by first calculating the dry mass of fuels using the water content value, and then calculating the energy content of the dry fuel.  Currently, energy contents are expressed as high heating values.  Future versions may incorporate low heating values or biomass to biofuel conversions.

The Carbon tab calculates soil organic carbon storage using information on soil organic carbon concentration, bulk density, and soil depth.  The Convert tab includes other common unit conversions and can be used for translating between speeds (length per time) and flow rates (volume per time).

The Calculate tab has a simple calculator and scratch pad for ancillary calculations.  The basic calculator syntax follows that of a keypad, where ‘+’ stands for addition, ‘-‘ for subtraction, ‘*’ for multiplication, and ‘/’ for division (no quotes needed).  When conducting division, use a decimal, even for whole numbers (e.g., 9.0 / 10 instead of 9 / 10).  This will avoid confusing results due to integer division.  Powers and roots are supported.  For example, to calculate three squared, use 3**2.  To calculate the square root of nine, use 9**0.5. Order of operations follows PEMDAS, but should be made explicit using parentheses.  ‘Log’ and ‘exp’ functions are not currently available.

If you want to try out the beta version, you can download a Windows version here.  Once you download it, just double click the file and it will start up.  Your antivirus software will probably warn you that opening unknown executable files is risky, but don’t worry about the copy at the above link.   If you don’t use Windows, but have python 2.6 or higher on your computer (a Linux user), then you can download and run (double click) the python file (source code) from here.  If you use a Mac, you already have an old version of python on your machine.  If you want to run Aevert, you can try to upgrade your python to 2.7.  It might work.  Should you bother with Aevert?  Screenshots can be found here.