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pcplantdb - Re: [pcplantdb] Re: openGIS / locales

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  • From: Bear Kaufmann <bear@ursine-design.com>
  • To: Permaculture Plant Database <pcplantdb@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [pcplantdb] Re: openGIS / locales
  • Date: Sat, 26 Mar 2005 22:50:25 -0800

One of the things I'd like to add to the mix about locales is that
physical proximity may not always be what we want. Being similar in
certain ways (climate, soil type, exposure) may actually be more
important than physical proximity in finding/filtering relevant
information. I'd rather look for information based on experiences
from people that lived in an area with 35 inches of rainfall a year
(+/- 5 inches), -20F maximum winter temp, and heavy clay soil than a
1-200 mile diameter circle. In fact conditions vary enough 200 miles
south of here to be a significantly different locale but one could
continue 1000 miles north and east and find similar conditions as
here. Think also how elevation changes things as well.

Yes GIS stuff is neat, but is it really the information we want?
This brings up a question rolling around in my head for a bit...
It's probably out of current scope of the project right now, but I'd be interested if there's any input...

Given the currently available satellite (GIS) data on precipitation, temperature (average, range, chill hours), elevation, etc...could one form a function that takes the values from 2 points and determines how related they are in terms of conditions...find the degree of correlation between the 2 points (I imagine finding the best function for this would be rather hard)....this may be a more complex route to finding relatedness instead of just using something like USDA zones (though hopefully better)...ie testing what (shapefile) polygon a point is in (I believe newer versions of mySQL can handle geometry, WITHIN, etc, right?).

Sean, you've been working and looking at some of this too. Zip codes would also work...
Any news on the ecosystem data set?

Cheers,
Bear





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