The objective of the study was to develop a system for collecting geo-referenced data on distribution of plant species along roadsides. The system was proposed for species easily recognisable at convenient distance and had to satisfy the following requirements: (1) allowing data collection by car driving at a speed not interfering with traffic, (2) continuous tracking of the travel during which the monitoring is performed, and (3) to use low-cost materials and, possibly, software released under GPL (General Public License). The system hardware is very simple and composed by a laptop and a cheap GPS receiver that sends position data to the first through a bluetooth connection. GPS data are managed using GpsDrive (www.gpsdrive.de), a navigation system written under the GPL license that displays on the laptop the actual lat-long positions and permits tracking and data point collection. This application can be easily installed in Linux environment. An older version is also available for Mac OSX. While tracking is carried out automatically, data points (called waypoints in GpsDrive and similar navigation software) recording needs few keyboard inputs that can be reduced to a single key event (eg. space bar pressing) by creating shortcuts (e.g. using Xmacro or AutoKey in Linux, QuicKeys in Mac OSX). GpsDrive stores track and waypoint data in simple text files that can be easily handled with common text-editors. With few elaborations, data can be made suitable to viewers, such as GoogleTM Earth, or GIS software. This system has been tested both on Linux Ubuntu 8.04 and Mac OSX 10.5.8 during a survey of common ragweed (Ambrosia artemisiifolia) presence along a part of the road network of Piemonte region (NW Italy). A team formed by two persons monitored, in two different trips, a total of about 500 km roadsides, driving at traffic speed and collecting about 2500 data point of A. artemisiifolia presence. The species was mostly distributed as dense populations growing along segments of the monitored roadsides. The infested segments had a length varying, on average, between 250 and 2500 m. Only in few cases A. artemisiifolia was observed as smaller populations or as single individuals. According to the first results, it seems that the ecotones represented by roadsides force the species to spread mainly along a narrow strip close to the road edge. The activity of looking at the roadside for presence of the plant to be monitored requires a certain visual effort that is intensified by the car movement and that can lead to motion sickness, especially in susceptible people. The problem can be strongly reduced by frequent alternations between driving and monitoring activity, in particular in the case of intensive monitoring programs. This system proved to be relatively cheap and suitable for programs of monitoring at various scales.
Computer-assisted collection of GPS data for monitoring of plant species distribution along roadsides
VIDOTTO, Francesco;FERRERO, Aldo
2010-01-01
Abstract
The objective of the study was to develop a system for collecting geo-referenced data on distribution of plant species along roadsides. The system was proposed for species easily recognisable at convenient distance and had to satisfy the following requirements: (1) allowing data collection by car driving at a speed not interfering with traffic, (2) continuous tracking of the travel during which the monitoring is performed, and (3) to use low-cost materials and, possibly, software released under GPL (General Public License). The system hardware is very simple and composed by a laptop and a cheap GPS receiver that sends position data to the first through a bluetooth connection. GPS data are managed using GpsDrive (www.gpsdrive.de), a navigation system written under the GPL license that displays on the laptop the actual lat-long positions and permits tracking and data point collection. This application can be easily installed in Linux environment. An older version is also available for Mac OSX. While tracking is carried out automatically, data points (called waypoints in GpsDrive and similar navigation software) recording needs few keyboard inputs that can be reduced to a single key event (eg. space bar pressing) by creating shortcuts (e.g. using Xmacro or AutoKey in Linux, QuicKeys in Mac OSX). GpsDrive stores track and waypoint data in simple text files that can be easily handled with common text-editors. With few elaborations, data can be made suitable to viewers, such as GoogleTM Earth, or GIS software. This system has been tested both on Linux Ubuntu 8.04 and Mac OSX 10.5.8 during a survey of common ragweed (Ambrosia artemisiifolia) presence along a part of the road network of Piemonte region (NW Italy). A team formed by two persons monitored, in two different trips, a total of about 500 km roadsides, driving at traffic speed and collecting about 2500 data point of A. artemisiifolia presence. The species was mostly distributed as dense populations growing along segments of the monitored roadsides. The infested segments had a length varying, on average, between 250 and 2500 m. Only in few cases A. artemisiifolia was observed as smaller populations or as single individuals. According to the first results, it seems that the ecotones represented by roadsides force the species to spread mainly along a narrow strip close to the road edge. The activity of looking at the roadside for presence of the plant to be monitored requires a certain visual effort that is intensified by the car movement and that can lead to motion sickness, especially in susceptible people. The problem can be strongly reduced by frequent alternations between driving and monitoring activity, in particular in the case of intensive monitoring programs. This system proved to be relatively cheap and suitable for programs of monitoring at various scales.
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