Mapping Alaska: update on digital data: Alaska Geospatial Council says 60 percent complete.

• Author: Anderson, Tasha
• Position: TELECOM & TECHNOLOGY

The Alaska Geospatial Council is charged with addressing "a long-standing deficiency in digital map data [which is] essential to economic development, public safety, and the responsible scientific understanding of the physical environment." On August 18, Alaska Geospatial, along with other government entities and invested individuals, announced that the goal to digitally map the state of Alaska in its entirety was 60 percent complete at Sky Breaking II, a public awareness and outreach luncheon.

Funding Collaboration

The project, which saw its first flight in 2010, has to date cost $36 million, according to Nicholas Mastrodicasa, large project manager, State of Alaska, Department of Natural Resources, Office of Project Management and Permitting. "We'd like to get [the mapping] done in the next two years," he says, and estimates that would cost about $12 million per year, bringing the cost of mapping Alaska digitally to approximately $60 million.

The largest obstacle in reaching that two-year goal is finding funding. "With the exception of USGS [US Geological Survey], there are no programmed funds," Mastrodicasa says. "My job over the past ten years has really been to get people on board with the project and then go around and pass the hat." He says that most of the funding so far has come from federal land owners and the state. However, contributions have also come from the Natural Resources Conservation Service, within the US Department of Agriculture, which was formerly called the Soil Conservation Service and which is not a land owner.

In fact, several of the speakers at Sky Breaking II lauded state and federal agencies for the level of collaboration that has taken place over the last five years in pursuit of mapping Alaska. This collaboration has been essential. As Mastrodicasa explains, Alaska is like a patchwork quilt in terms of land ownership, and "the calculus can get kind of challenging when you're planning acquisitions because agencies can only expend agency funds on agency lands. But the vendors want long, straight flight lines for efficiency, so there has to be a high level of cooperation and coordination among the agencies and the state." USGS has been instrumental in backfilling these acquisitions because they have no land management concerns restricting where their funding can be spent.

Map Layers

Mapping Alaska doesn't end with imagery and determining elevations, though Mastrodicasa says acquiring elevation data is the...