Research Notes

Dowel failure on my Tyvek Delta kite

Adam-Griffith — Tue, 21 May 2013 15:01:56 +0000

So I was at Folly Beach on Friday the 17th in 10-12 MPH winds. I launched my 9 foot Tyvek Delta kite to watch the center spreader bar snap cleanly in half when the kite achieved maximum height and wind resistance. The broken dowel punctured the wing when the kite folded in half. The kite will be easy to fix, but I was concerned with how easily the dowel snapped.

The diameter is 7/16" or about 1 cm and is the one I am pointing to in the photo. I think bamboo might have a stronger strength to weight ratio. I might try some since I just got 500 stakes for a different project.

Folly Beach, SC - a detailed look at a $3 million beach "restoration"

Adam-Griffith — Tue, 14 May 2013 20:19:17 +0000

Sand is currently being pumped from a borrow area on the north side of Folly Beach to the shoreface on the south side of the island in an effort to stop perpetual erosion from storms and rising sea levels. The project is being funded by Charleston County Parks and Recreation and carried out by Coastal Science and Engineering (CSE), a Columbia, SC based firm. The Coastal Conservation League challenged the monitoring plan proposed by CSE, but relented prior to legal action.

PBS Idea Lab Post: Field Trips

Adam-Griffith — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 00:50:56 +0000

This blog post appeared on 15 MAR 2013 on the Media Shift Idea Lab website: http://www.pbs.org/idealab/2013/03/how-public-lab-creates-memorable-fiel...

Balloon Mapping Test Flight - Riverside Cemetary, 2.25.13

ChristenMcNamara — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 21:18:46 +0000

Date: Monday, February 25, 2013
Time: 9:00am
Location: Riverside Cemetery, Asheville, NC
Riverside Cemetery is a National Historic Site, located in downtown Asheville, NC on 73 Acres of beautiful rolling hills.
Weather: Overcast & winds at 6-11 mph
Cameras: Cannon 10 megapixel & Nikon 17 megapixel
Who: City of Asheville GIS Analysts - Scott Barnwell & Corey White; Adam Griffith from PLOTS and WCU; myself - Christen McNamara from NCSU-Student and City of Asheville.

Mission: to collect aerial images for the Riverside Cemetery Mapping Project.

Geologists take over Vienna

Adam-Griffith — Thu, 03 May 2012 19:25:14 +0000

Nearly 10,000 scientists gathered in Vienna at the end of April for the annual meeting of the European Geosciences Union and I was fortunate enough to represent the Public Laboratory. The PLOTS presentation entitled “Complete data lifecycles and citizen science integration via the Public Laboratory” generated quite a bit of interest from geomorphologists to seismologists. Some scientists asked about how they could gather their own aerial imagery, but the vast majority of interest was in the open source nature of our data sharing.

General spectrometer thoughts

Adam-Griffith — Tue, 01 May 2012 02:52:33 +0000

On an airplane in Europe, I had a great conversation with Dr. G. Tempea, a laser physicist, regarding spectral resolution.

Design ideas:
- could the resolution be increased by using a Blu-Ray DVD as the diffraction grating?
- could the resolution be increased by using a camera with a larger sensor? Higher megapixels?
- what are the CCD limitations?
- could the resolution be increased by increasing the distance between the diffraction grating and the "screen?"

Application idea:

Microsoft Research Image Composite Editor

Adam-Griffith — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 11:21:25 +0000

This free utility that runs on 32 and 64 bit machines has no size limits for image compositing. Although the site says that multiple point perspectives are not currently supported, a geographer from the French equivalent of the USGS says that he has used it to do a multiple view mosaic. The code is NOT opensource, but this could save time IF a community decides that they need the data quickly.

The tool is here: http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/redmond/groups/ivm/ice/

Students map campus of University of South Carolina - Beaufort - South

Adam-Griffith — Sat, 10 Sep 2011 17:06:57 +0000

Overview

This map was made by Robert Player and this text was written by Calle Schrader and Robert Player. Dr. Brian Canada dedicated one week of his image processing workshop to this project.

I sent the article to clippings too...

Adam-Griffith — Sun, 07 Aug 2011 15:22:35 +0000

http://www.fayerwayer.com/2011/08/mexico-adam-grifith-y-su-laboratorio-p...

Adam D. Griffith
Western Carolina University

Barataria Bay Flyover

Adam-Griffith — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 23:48:36 +0000

On Friday 25 FEB 2011, Shannon Dosemagen and Adam Griffith flew over Barataria Bay and the Grand Isle region of the Louisiana Coast. This area was heavily impacted by the DWH oil spill. Clean up crews are still on many of the islands in the region as the ephemeral oil continues to kill wetlands.

Download a 5.5 GB zipped file the images taken by Adam Griffith here:
http://shoreline.wcu.edu/ADAM/PLOTS/25_FEB_2011_Barataria_Adam.rar

Download a 297 MB GoogleEarth KMZ file to see 661 images placed on a map where they were taken: