GeoWeed 3.3.6 with Google Earth and Polygon Visualization

We have a new version of GeoWeed to be released on this website!

Along with various bug fixes and improvements, it has two new features which have excited some of our early users.

• Google Earth Export
• Assessment Polygon Visualization

The Google Earth Export feature does more than convert shapefiles to KML, which can already be done with external tools. It creates map placemarks (icons) for each selected occurrence which are coded by shape and color and size to represent active/inactive, species, and infested size, and these are linked to popup balloons with more data on the history of a given occurrence. You can specify the occurrences to be exported by selecting a "stack" or set of occurrence or assessment records in any of the ways that already exist in GeoWeed. This feature is useful for getting a good overview of your weed infestations using Google Earth or Arc Explorer.

The Assessment Polygon Visualization feature displays an auto-scaled graphic image of the infested area of each Assessment. This shows the shape of the polygon if size was recorded as a polygone, or uses a rectangle if size was recorded as Length by Width, or a regular polygon if just recorded in square meters (or another unit). We find this very useful for quality control, and much more convenient than switching back and forth between viewing records GeoWeed in Access, and viewing polygons from an exported shapefile in ArcMap or another application - though that option is still available and is needed for editing a polygon. This is particularly useful for quality control.

There are a number of smaller enhancements and fixes based on our testing or the feedback from users.