Digitizing Field Notes

In 2020, I scanned over 3,000 pages of field notes written by retired Paul Smith’s College forestry professor Michael Kudish. These notes primarily feature hand-drawn maps accompanied by lists of plant species recorded throughout the Catskills, New York, since the 1960’s. Leading a team of students from the University of Vermont, we were able to digitize all species mentioned for 72% of the field notes.

ArcOnline Map

Creating a “Kudish Codes” Conversion Table

  • I paste transpose comma separated species codes identified in the field notes into row 17, as explained in the instructions above

  • The formula removes the space in front of any species code (from a comma and space separated list)

  • We will then VLOOKUP the entry in row 17 to see if we’ve already written the code in the SpeciesTranslation list

  • If we haven’t, it will return 0 and show up red

  • After entering in any new species codes and their matching species names, the species name will show up in column D


=IFNA(VLOOKUP(IF(LEFT(SpeciesCode,1)=" ",RIGHT(SpeciesCode,LEN(SpeciesCode)-1),SpeciesCode),SpeciesTranslations!$A:$B,2,FALSE),0)

SpeciesCode = how a species was written on the field notes (e.g. SUG, OSTRYA, ash, Neckera, etc.)

SpeciesList and SpeciesTranslation Tables

6 second gif

Finally, we bring it all together in a spreadsheet (SpeciesDone) that can be exported and serve as a reference layer for the ArcOnline map. With an FEMC Archive link in the spreadsheet, the user can select a location or filter by species and view the field notes archived with those criteria.

SpeciesDONE

Sample formulas from the SpeciesDONE tab:

=VLOOKUP(CR,SpeciesList!$A$2:$H$1004,3,FALSE)

=VLOOKUP(CR,'Kudish Notes'!$G$2:$O$111061,7,FALSE)

=VLOOKUP(CONCATENATE("*",KR,LR,MR6),PageContent!$A$2:$B$9,2,FALSE)

=IF(VLOOKUP(CR,'Kudish Notes'!$G:$Z,19,FALSE)=0,"",VLOOKUP(CR,'Kudish Notes'!$G:$Z,19,FALSE))

C = given column
R = given row

Creating the Kudish Trip Visualization