Please make note of the following items:

• The area code for Huntsville, Alabama has changed from 205 to 256.  Be sure to update your records.  Not only does this affect Alabama State Coordinator Greg Cox, but Technical Consultant Burgess Howell as well.
• There was no April newsletter published.  We had fallen a month behind on our publication dates and weren’t likely to catch up.  So March’s newsletter is issue #5 and the May newsletter becomes issue #6.
• Remember, you can reach all SE MAPS Development Team members and state coordinators by sending a message to the entire SE MAPS listserv (SEMAPS-L@clemson.edu).
• We have sent information to about two dozen potential publishers who are interested in bidding for the SE MAPS contract.  If anyone has a suggestion they have not yet relayed to us, please contact Norma Adams at the SE MAPS Project Office.

In South Carolina, we already had a repository of state topographic maps, plus statewide sets of aerial photographic transparencies.  To enable the team to write questions, we purchased several copies of the relevant topographic maps, made high quality color photocopies of the aerial transparencies, and distributed these items to the writing teams.  We then sent the original transparencies and map info to Burgess Howell so he could begin the requisite scanning, digitizing, and editing.  I assumed that the coordinators who had been complaining the most about not having images were referring to these fully mosaiced and digitized images.

It has finally dawned on me that some of you have never seen the basic image or map you are supposed to be working with - ever.  I know that you told me this, it just didn’t register.  I expected that someone would have tracked down each image/map before sending the specifications to Burgess.  I was obviously wrong.

Norma Adams will start calling state coordinators next week to find out which images they have never seen.  We will get raw color photocopies of almost all of these products into the hands of the state coordinators within a very short period of time.

The dates have been officially set for the July SE MAPS conference - July 8-10.  We are asking all participants to arrive by Tuesday evening (July 7) so we can begin promptly on Wednesday morning.

Each state is asked to send the following persons to Clemson that week:

• The State Coordinator
• Three Master Teachers - one each from the three pilot schools which should have been selected by now
• One or two members of each State Development Team (if one state does not claim all of its allotted spaces, additional team members from other states can be accommodated).

• Annotated outline of all narrative material
• Latest drafts of all written materials and activity questions
• Graphic layout of each cartographic product (see March newsletter for sample study area and blank forms)
• Maps and images of study areas (no matter how imperfect)

• Reimbursement of all travel expenses
• Room and board while at the Clemson conference
• A small stipend ($40 per day)

STATE COORDINATORS NOTE - Norma Adams will be calling you over the next couple weeks to gather information on participants from your state.  Please have a list ready for her so she can start sending out specific information.

People,

John has asked me to give a succinct and straightforward explanation of what is going on with the images and maps, why we are where we are, and what we can expect in the way of future progress.  He asked me to aim for 200 words or less, but I overshot the mark.  Reports on current status and future progress come first.  The "why" part comes last.

Where I stand:

The majority of the digital data (60% aerial, 100% satellite, 100% DEMs, 0% topos, 0% SLAR, perhaps 60% of everything else) has been ingested and placed into a common file format.  As such, products can be plotted just as fast as I can find time to set up print jobs and pump them through the plotter.  These are raw data and would be plotted that way.  Perhaps 50% of the aerial photos have been mosaicked into roughly final form.  Some plots have been shipped.

Future progress:

Pre-conference [best case scenario]: 
1) rescan (digitize) approximately 40% of the aerial photos lost due to the equipment failure noted below.*
2) digitally preprocess those scans.
3) mosaic images (both survivors from the equipment failure and re-scanned pieces) to comprise coverage of the study areas.
4) mosaic pertinent parts of topo sheets where necessary.
5) extract subsets of topos where necessary.
6) plot the scanned images in 2 scales.
7) plot the topo sheets.
8) plot the SLAR data.
9) plot the regional pieces.
10) ship the images to the state coordinators for use by the writing teams.

[I see numbers 1, 2, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10 as critical -- step 6 could be reduced to plotting at a single scale (I was only doing 2 scales for convenience of the writing teams).  The other steps could logically be done after the conference when everyone has had a chance to provide refining input.]

Post-conference:
1) complete whatever pieces remain from the list above.
2) receive from each team
  a) formatted sketch of each final piece, drawn to scale, representing exactly how that piece should appear when printed, and
  b) an accurately and completely marked-up set of draft plot products showing exactly what areas should appear in final pieces.
3) produce final images to scale.
4) produce final maps to scale.
5) compile all maps, images, and annotation into digital files to be utilized by the printer.

Why we are back here when we should be way up there:

There have been 3 major factors contributing to the delay we are all now enduring.  First, because I did not communicate well enough with John at the outset, I grossly underestimated the sheer volume** of products required for this project.  I believe I miscalculated by at least a factor of 4 the number of component pieces involved.  Assuming no other mitigating factors, this would suggest that my time estimate should have been closer to 1400 man-hours than my figure of 350.  That works out to about 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, for 35 weeks.  Regardless of where the miscommunication occurred, it led me to give an erroneous estimate of my time required for this project.

Second, USGS has been our major source of cartographic and image data for this project and they have been much less than efficient in fulfilling our orders.  Perhaps it was because of the quantity of materials we order, or the type, or perhaps it was perhaps simply the fact that we had the misfortune of trying to acquire all our data while they were in the (ongoing) process of moving their archives to a new site with new computers and other ancillary hardware.  Regardless, the process of getting data has taken about 6 months longer than anticipated, and is _still_ not complete.

Third, my situation as a contractor with NASA has changed drastically. When I joined this project, I was lacking full-time funding and full-time tasks at NASA.  This meant I could devote as much as a third of my regular work week to SEMAPS.  Now my position is overfunded and overtasked by 38%.  This means my regular tasks account for about 55 hours each week, and I am being pressed to do more as project deadlines approach.  This situation looks to be the norm for the next 15 months.  Between NASA and SEMAPS, my average work week since late November has been roughly 70 hours.  I expect that figure to remain accurate through September or October.

* And, of course, there have been the missteps, accidents, and pure bad luck that have dogged us at every step.  Critical data have taken excessive amounts of time to locate.  Data sets have arrived in arcane and proprietary formats which require inordinate amounts of time to decipher and implement.  Mechanical failure, lightning strikes, and providential caprice have killed 2 critical data archive disks containing the product of perhaps 100 hours of image manipulation, much of it unrecoverable.  I lost almost all of January due to a freak injury to a lumbar disk, then nearly a week more when a winter storm damaged my roof and I fell through my ceiling while trying to repair the damage.

Here's the bottom line -- there is no one involved in this project who more dearly wants it completed than I.  I am doing everything in my power to give you the products which you obviously need to fulfill your role in the process.  Everything will eventually be completed and delivered to you by the most expedient means available.

Sincerely,

Burgess

** The list of pieces I so grossly underestimated:  138 cartographic and digital data components consisting of 122 digitized aerial photos (most geometrically modified and mosaicked into multi-frame scenes), 6 side-looking airborne radar scenes, 35 common (USGS) topographic products, 6 anaglyphic topographic products, 13 Landsat TM or MSS products derived from 22 Landsat scenes, 13 terrestrial photos, 2 geologic maps (1 regional, 1 local), 4 sketches and line drawings, 2 digital elevation maps (1 regional, 1 local), 1 regional political map, 1 regional cultural map, 1 regional physiographic map, 1 land use / land cover map, and 1 bathymetric map (thanks Scott and Arla).  The number of individual pieces does not equal the total of 138 because every product has multiple components.  Please note that this does not take into account the work that I (please, God) won't have to do to integrate Louisiana's products into the rest of the SEMAPS fold.  Nor does this list begin to consider the hundreds of text blocks, north arrows, credit lines, copyright statements, lon/lat hash marks and labels, legends, tables, neatlines, and scales which will have to be created to complete the requisite 26 finished printed pieces.

 There has always been a great deal of confusion over Burgess Howell’s role in the SE MAPS Project (most of which is my fault).  Hopefully the following guidelines will be helpful, even though belated.

1.  It is NOT Burgess Howell’s responsibility to select maps, photos, or anything else for any study area.  Although it is reasonable to ask his help in ordering, or otherwise acquiring such products, it is the duty of the state coordinator and/or state development team members to actually decide on the map and imagery coverage needed for a particular study area.

2.  When maps/images are ordered through Burgess Howell, they usually come directly to him and he begins work on scanning, digitizing, etc.  He has not generally forwarded copies of products to state teams at this point, since both he and I had assumed that most state teams already knew what these products looked like - unless they informed us otherwise.  Burgess was to send printed copies when the editing work had progressed to a semi-final stage.  Our policy will now be:

 - every state should provide their own access to topographic maps to any person on the development team for any of their sites.  Please don’t ask Burgess to send you copies of topographic maps.  If any state coordinator has trouble locating the topographic maps they need, contact me at Clemson - I can provide some information on map acquisition in your state.

 - satellite images and aerial photographs are another story.  In many cases these were ordered sight unseen - and are still unseen.  We will call each state coordinator within the next week to ascertain which products the state team has never seen.  That list will be sent to Burgess Howell and a graduate student, Sholto Bevis (resident in Alabama until the end of June), will make high-quality color photocopies of images and ship them out to state coordinators immediately.

 - regarding special products (SLAR imagery, anaglyph maps, etc) that were ordered.  If Sholto can make a suitable photocopy, we will go that route.  If not, I will ask Burgess to ship the originals to the state coordinator with the understanding that when he needs them, they will be returned.  For data received in a digital format, I will ask Burgess to print out the quickest, simplest draft copy possible (no editing whatsoever) and send these to state coordinators as soon as possible.

 - finally, there are some special products that Burgess is still waiting to receive from the state development teams - for example some ground-based photos.  He has no possible way of acquiring these products himself, the state coordinators must be sure to get such products to him - as soon as possible.

  Please do NOT wait until you have received customized images from Burgess to work on the narrative and activity portions of your study areas.  Your state teams should be able to work reasonably well with only raw images, photocopies, and standard topo maps.  If you need information on what will be contained on the regional products, ask me, not Burgess.
 
   John Wagner