Review existing conditions and carry out field visits - part I.

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This exercise is included in the tutorial: GeoAgro for FMP Development

The inventory of existing conditions involve gathering a variety of information, focusing on identifying resource concerns, assessing these concerns and opportunities for treatment. The inventory will typically include forest management unit and stand boundaries, site index, basal area, species, size class, wood product potential, soil conditions, slopes, topography, aspect, natural and cultural features, roads, wildfire risk (surface and crown fires), risk of insect and disease infestation, fish and wildlife species and habitat elements, noxious and invasive species, water quality and other important features as applicable.

The guidelines for carrying out inventories and reviewing existing conditions may be reviewed in the Electronic Field Office Technical Guide (eFotg) and State recommendations.
In this learning guide we will review some features and examples that may be useful in the inventory proces:

Reviewing soil conditions
Mark locations to visit based on soils, imagery
Download points to GPS device.

Exercises

Exercise 01 – review soil conditions

Start GeoAgro GIS by double clicking on its icon at your desktop;
You may also run it by using the Windows®

Start menu.
The Project Selection window will pop up. Select the 'Sample FMP' project that you restored in the initial project setup

Let's review the available soil conditions.

Click on the “Soils_clipped” layer in the References Panel to make it active.
Select soil map units by using the Select by rectangle tool from the Navigation Toolbar, and drawing a window to include them.
Click on the Information tool icon. . When you click on each record, the corresponding soil polygon is highlighted.
Once the information table is shown, click on Export, save it to your local disk, and the excel spreadsheet will be created.

Exercise 02 – planning field visits

In this learning guide, you will learn how to define locations for a field visit, and download to your GPS

Define locations for field visit

We are going to select locations based on imagery, and soils. Make sure that the 'soils_clipped' and 'WMS 2ft Color Imagery' layers are active by clicking on the eye icon.
Zoom to the Fields by double clicking on the Fields_NRCS layer
Make the layer 'GPS Points' Active by clicking on it:
Click on theEdit layer objects panel, and select the Add New Object tool.

Enter some sample locations by double clicking on the map area for each point.
Assign an identifier to each point in the "GPS points" layer. Go to the "GPS points" layer and select all objects by using the Select by rectangle tool from the Navigation Toolbar
.
Then, in the Edit toolbar, go and click on Edit Selected Object's Data tool.
A data table will open. Complete the “Point” column with correlative numbers; and any other attribute you wish to add.

Export Points to GPS Device

Now we will import the recently created points into the GPS

Go to the upper left-hand tab and click on GPS. This will display the window for the GPS Module of Geoagro GIS.
Go to the Tools toolbar on the right, and click on the Import from GIS Module button.
Select the “GPS Points” layer in the dialog box. Click on Accept.
In the next dialog box, associate the Identifier field of the target layer with the Sampling field of the source layer. Click on Accept.
The points in the “GPS Points” layer have been imported to the GPS Screen.
Upload the points to your GPS(you may only do this step if you have a GPS connected to your computer):
Click on the ‘Connect to GPS Device' button. After connecting to the GPS, click on the Upload Objects to GPS Device button.
Thus, the georeferenced points with their corresponding identifiers are stored in the GPS device and ready to be set out on site.