community

This week I'm in Juneau attending a Regional Data Integration Workshop hosted by the Alaska Coastal Rainforest Center and Southeast Alaska GIS Library at the University of Alaska Southeast.  The organizers are bringing together nearly 40 scientists and practitioners from federal and state agencies, universities, and non-profits to coordinate data and data integration tools built to address issues of regional importance.  A bit more on that below, but first here are the week's updates:

Who doesn’t like maps? Our director James Strittholt has said before that maps are a unifying object from which people can find common ground. You can take a group of people, spread out a map on the table and everyone will begin dreaming, talking and telling stories. Data Basin is not much different and, from the beginning, we have been thrilled by how much the community has taught us how it will be used. 

This past week, Conservation Biology Institute and Data Basin staff had the opportunity to attend the 2010 ESRI International Users Conference in San Diego California.  In recent years the conservation community participated in the vendor and partner exhibits but was only given sideline space that few attendees had a chance to visit.  This year was different: the Conservation Science and Climate Change Showcase was given generous central space in

The science of climate change adaptation was created before its practitioners existed. International bodies working to identify the effects of climate change and to create legal frameworks for solutions deemed it to exist. Today, there is no time for a methodical evolution of the field as the count-down for the world as we know it has started. Of course the planet is not going to blow-up when it reaches zero but there will be an increasing number of changes with fewer and fewer opportunities to choose ways to adapt to them.