a L5DA Soii Conservation *Service, Ftdtd Building, 100 Cent co/n, NE 68908-3866, USA “USDA So11 Conservation Service, FO Box 1396, Fort Collins, C0 80522, LISA

(Accepted 1 November 199 I )

ells, G., Rudnick, T. and iyoshi, ID., 1992. Data visualization in the Soil Conservation Service. Landscape C’rban Planri., 2 1: 333-335.

Since its inception, the Soil Conservation Service (SCS) has been responsible for leadership in the conservation. devel- opment and productive use of the Nation’s soil, water, and related resources. To provide this leadership, it has been necessary to develop robust computer appiications for naturai resource-management activities. These applications have primarily been text based. The agency is slowly moving toward graphical based systems to depict natural resources visually. This paper discusses both the present situation and the future needs of data visualization in SCS.

The Soil Conservation Service is charged with providing natural resource planning as- sistance on private lands. With two-thirds of the country in private ownership, SCS has over 3000 offices to meet this challenge. Many of these offices are limited to a single planner and computerization is vital. New techniques are needed to assist these planners in educating landowners and the public on the impacts of traditional management practices.

All SCS planning offices could utilize exist- ing software packages, but owing to the num- ber of offices and small budgets, computeriza- tion has been slow. To date, SCS has few offices equipped with geographic information sys- tems (GIS ) capable of analyzing and display- ing spatial data. These GIS platforms are being used for special projects, such as determining

Correspondence to: G. Wells, USDA Soil Conservation Serv- ice, Federal Building, 100 Centennial Mall N., Room 152, Lincoln, NE 68908-3866, USA.

wetland potentials and for watershed plan- ning. SCS is also involved with snow surveys for water forecasring, cooperative county soil surveys, and fhe National Resource Inventory (NRI ) that utilke remote sensing and GIS Research is also being carried out in GIS ap- plied conservation planning methods.

Qther SCS offices are utilizing Computer Aided Design (CAD) systems for the grapti- cal display of data. lvIodels are employed to generate point data for the hydraulic, hydrol- ogic and environmental characteristics of a re- gion. This dat a is then imported into the CAD system for final display.

Video image processing and three-dimen- sional modeling software is being used for vis- ual impact analysis, training and as a commu- nication tool to facilitate public participation. Video image processing techniques need to be developed which improve accuracy and valid- ity.

With the mandate tic, address soil erosion and water quality problems, KS is involved in the

0 1992 Elsevier Science Publishers B.V. All rights reserved 0 169-2046/92/$05.00

dcvelopmcnt

NLEAP

CREAMS

WECS

WEPP

EPIC

AGNPS

NPURG

SWRRBWQ

of several computer rnQ

cvised Universal Soil Eoss

- Groundwater fects of Agricult ment Systems - Nitrate Leaching and Eco- nomic Analysis - Chemical, Ru sion from Agri agennent Practices - Wind Erosion Continuous Simulation - Water Erosion Prediction Project - Erosion Productivity Impact Calculator - Agricultural Nonpoint Source Pollution Model - National Pesticide/Soils Data Base and User Decision Support System for Risk As- sessment for Ground and Sur- face Water Contamination - Simulation for Water Re- sources in River Basins Water Quality

Most of these modelling efforts are limited to text input-output with the nntention of ap- plying visualization techniques in the future.

The current computing environment within the SCS is made up largely of low-level com- puters with minimal graphics capabilities. Sun or Silicon Graphics class workstations are vir- tually nonexistent. IBM compatible XT, AT and Intel 386 computers are the dominant graphics platform. The latest technological ad- vances in these areas are usually not available. Advances in hardware technology are typically

G. WELLS ET :zL.

ncy-wide contracts. ip each office with basic

arena. Even with these limitations computer models

and simulations are beginning to proliferate within the SCS. There is a need for standard graphical displays. Since UNIX has been cho- sen as the default SCS operating system, X Windows and similar setups begin to look at- tractive. Presently, a Graphical Kernel System (GKS ) is being utilized for current applica- tions. This system provides display drivers for current SCS computer environments as, well as a future X Windows environment.

What does the future hold? WC: hope to see an integrated system for natural resource man- agement. To accomplish this, a modular sys- tem of natural resources, geographic and engi- neering applications must be developed. Each system needs to have the ability to communi- cate with the others via a database manager or through direct software channels. A graphical user interface also needs to be developed to provide a friendly data input-output method for the user. Data collection methods need to be automated to minimize the dependency on limited numbers of field personnel.

One scenario for such a system could be based on a GIS and modeled in much the same way as the Geosphere project produced by Tom Van Sant and Associates (Vasilopaulos, B 99 E ).

The initial display could be rendered from ex- isting aerial photographs and satellite images projected onto a three-dimensional map of the USA or a region selected by the user. This ini- tial view could have several selectable layers: surface, subsurface and &mospheric. A dy- namic update of environmental conditions

DATA VISUALIZATION (Ir: SOIL CONSERVATION SERVICE 335

alternative management practices. An analysis could then be made of each alternative to de- termine environmental impacts.

The underlying need techniques in SCS is to

for data commu

visualization nirafe t,he ef- ---d-

evaluated by how effective it is in conserving natural resources.

SCS is just beginning to utilize visualization techniques. Many of the models and applica- tions, which would benefit from graphics, are still text based. With budget limitation and the deficiency of hardware it will be E’%ult for SCS to move into the data visualiz &I arena.

Vasdopoulos, A.D., 1991. A high Graphics Wo:ld. 14 (3): 74-76.

-tech globe. CompL;t.