Mapping land

Posted Thu, 05/11/2009 - 21:12 by Lindiloux

Hi all

I've just started a new job co-ordinating a project called Somerset Land and Food. One of the first tasks is to map land currently in community production and then to help negotiate access to new land where there is demand - ie if you've been on an allotment waiting list forever and can;t get a garden share or similar, for whatever reason, or you want something bigger or, or, or - this new project is aimed at trying to get land owners to release new land for community based production.

My question is: does anyone have experience of ways to do this kind of mapping or top tips on who else might have these kind of maps or might have the kit, data etc that we might be able to piggy back on.

Hoping to hear!

cheers
Linda

‹ Bristol food projects early edible perennials ›
Di_laughing's picture

Mapping- some ideas

by Di_laughing - 6 Nov 2009 - 2:59am

Hi LInda, I am very keen to start mapping for our new local food group in Llandrindod. We've started a Green Llandrindod map online with Open Green Map
http://www.opengreenmap.org/greenmap/green-llandrindod

This is only points, but they say they are developing lines and areas .

If you have a Green Map license you can use their lovely icons on any map media - so I was thinking of asking them if I could combine the icons with my Google maps, like this test one here
http://tinyurl.com/yzxsc4l
which would then let me make a map on Google earth

Or perhaps combine with The People's Map,
http://peoplesmap.com/Map.aspx
(look at the unverified map, and Zoom in on LD1 5LU)

thats all for now, but will post more when we've tried it out in earnest

happy mapping

Di Llandrindod Transition www.transitionllandrindod.org.uk

edmitchell's picture

Mapping - another google map

by edmitchell - 9 Nov 2009 - 4:25pm

Jon Walker just pointed me towards this map too:

Wild and free fruit map on google

edmitchell's picture

Mapping Land

by edmitchell - 6 Nov 2009 - 8:55am

Hi Linda,

good question - I'm aware that something RobH and Geofutures are up to might overlap with this so I've forwarded the question to them too...

Using open data to catalog local food resources

by pmackay - 8 Nov 2009 - 5:49am

Hi,

I'm exploring ways to use open data to record and map information about local food resources. Freebase is a website that allows anyone to create and edit structured data. This Freebase site http://localfood.freebase.com/ is a collection focussed on local food. The aim is to create structured types for the kinds of resources that relate to local food, e.g.

Community gardens
Allotment gardens
Farmers markets
Local food shops
Local food restaurants
Produce that can be grown in the local region
Food cooperatives
CSA schemes
Etc

It is possible to add new entries for any of these and fill out various fields, such as location information. Also more specific properties such as the number of plots and waiting time for allotments, for example.

With this data it could then be possible to build a wide variety of tools that use it, for example:

* How close are people to these resources.
* The total number of plots and acreage of community land.
* Length of waiting lists - how high is demand in different places.
* Resilience indicators - how much community land compared to local population.
* Bullseye diet - what percentages of food sources are within what distance.

One simple example that is already supported by the Map view in Freebase is a map of community gardens: http://www.freebase.com/view/base/localfood/views/map_of_community_gardens.

Any comments or further questions on this are most welcome.

paul

Mapping - links

by Anonymous - 9 Nov 2009 - 9:56pm

just experimental and very local so far

http://theirwork.org/home.php

Open Street Map

http://www.openstreetmap.org/

and to get info onto OSM without tech tools

Walking Papers

http://walking-papers.org/

possibly working on useful software ??? OpenKollab

http://wiki.openkollab.com/Home

ianlawton's picture

Mapping more

by ianlawton - 9 Nov 2009 - 1:23pm

Hi Linda

I think this is really important stuff to be working on. I hope to get something similar sorted for Brighton area.

Transition Brighton and Hove Food Group has spun off a seperate project aimed at starting a Community Supported Agriculture scheme. We have managed to get information and maps (with some effort) about allotments, potentially available council owned land, not in production, as well as council owned tenanted farmland (of which there is a remarkable amount here - 10,500 acres.) We are currently in dialogue with the Access Manager of the council (who deals with parks etc) and hoping to make inroads with the person responsible for the farm estate.

So local authorities are a good place to start once you've figured out who does what. You could try speaking to Brighton and Hove Food Partnership for more suggestions http://www.bhfood.org.uk/

Yep, Geofutures who be good to speak to, they worked on the 'Can Totnes Feed itself' report http://transitionculture.org/wp-content/uploads/cantotnesfeeditself1.pdf

They've got data in their about agricultural land classification (from Natural England)

Found this about Land Usage data on the web by a chap at Uni of West England http://www.bne.uwe.ac.uk/pac/lmrg/pdf/AGI02.pdf worth a call?

If anyone has got any briliantly simple strategy for figuring out what land is being used for growing what where etc, short of calling up all the farmers and land owners (which might be my next step)then let me know!! i'm working on it

Ian Lawton
lawtonian*AT*btinternet.com
TBH

Ian Lawton
Transition Brighton and Hove
07815 906502
lawtonian*AT*btinternet.com

Mapping Land

by Anonymous - 18 Nov 2009 - 12:43pm

Dear all

Thank you very much for all your recommendations

I am meeting with Geofutures team in Bath tomorrow and will report back anything useful

cheers
Linda

Mapping Land

by Anonymous - 18 Nov 2009 - 10:10pm

Dear all

Off to see Geofutures in Bath tomorrow - will report back

Thanks for all the recommendations and top tips!

best
Linda

Agricultural census

by Anonymous - 20 Nov 2009 - 5:30pm

Hi linda - forgot to mention this on the phone .... here's something else that may well be worth looking at ... The Agricultural Census, which allows you to view different mapped food production data (theoretically at least without a subscription though I couldn't get it to work) http://agcensus.edina.ac.uk/demo

it shows

* What was produced.
* How much was produced.
* Where it was produced.

Ian

edmitchell's picture

Mapping land

by edmitchell - 26 Nov 2009 - 4:54pm

There is some discussion of this on the other forum:

http://transitionfood.org.uk/content/community-mapping-local-food-maps

might be worth a look!

raising money for mapping project

by Anonymous - 4 Dec 2009 - 6:52pm

Ok all you mappers.

I;ve been in touch with Geofutures and they have a cunning plan to create an open source tool for the whole T network but it would require some cash input.

Two advantages are that we would own the info - unlike on Google etc - and they are geographers who are passionate about food security and Transition...sounds like a good combination to me.

In principle, would any of your groups and/or your funders consider chipping in to the pot?

Linda, Somerset Community Food

Cartography 2.0 website

by Anonymous - 13 Dec 2009 - 5:53pm

http://cartography2.org/

"Cartography 2.0 is a free online knowledge base and e-textbook for students and professionals interested in interactive and animated maps. I (Mark) pitched the idea to my co-authors because I knew that, as teachers, we were all frustrated with the inability of traditional textbooks to keep pace with Web technologies. Nor could we find any comprehensive online resources that provided the same breadth and depth we’ve come to expect from a professionally produced textbook. The kind of knowledge that is needed to make dynamic maps spans many (traditionally separate) fields, and we set out to answer a basic question we’ve been asked many times: What’s the important stuff I need to know about making great on-demand/interactive maps?"

also worth looking into are techniques to make information attractively visual.
see http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog

http://visualisationmagazine.com/blogvisualthinkmap/

Mapping wild food

by Anonymous - 17 Dec 2009 - 1:35pm

It's not entirely related to the idea of mapping local food networks, but you may be interested to hear of a project I am working on which aims to map edible and useful wild plants growing in our towns and cities.

You can find a public beta of the map at http://forage.rs

best wishes,

rob