Forecasting

It has been a teeter-totter few weeks for me and technology.  I ruined my laptop a couple weeks ago by throwing my morning cereal all over it.  I then got a copy of Windows 7 from the University to reformat the hard drive of my desktop (which had been rendered out of commission due to virus').  My desktop now works just fine, and that computer is where I write this message from. 

Today I installed Arc GIS on my PC and began working on a side project for the Sutton Avian Research Center.  This is actually the beginning of an exciting time for me and my career as I plan on publishing several papers over the next 6 months or so.  The work I am doing for the Sutton Center is with White-tailed Ptarmigan, a species of grouse which lives at high elevations in the Rockie Mountains.  I will also be reworking my thesis data to get at a wider array of deeper questions for publication.  I have also been introduced to several new modeling programs over the past few weeks, and I already see differences between those programs and niche modeling programs which have not been explored in the literature.  I am sure I will touch more on this later.

The new programs I speak of (I don't remember the names without my notes handy) are used to separate existing maps into categories based on color patterns within the maps.  These programs require a map of much higher resolution and quality, which can be quite expensive.  They do, however, offer results at a very fine scale, which is important when attempting to identify patches of habitat via aerial photos.  This process can be done without these programs, in a VERY time intensive process.  I have known graduate students who have worked on projects such as this and spent weeks processing a few hectares of geography by hand.  I am very excited to try out these new methods and see what they can contribute to the field of ecological modeling.