GIS me

Somehow I’ve become the GIS “expert” in the lab. Well, not exactly the expert, but the intern who has been here the longest, the one everyone turns to with questions. I don’t think I sat at my desk today longer than thirty minutes. Every small thing David (the previous most experienced intern) had under control I am now running around trying to manage. 

I am organizing our upcoming GIS course (we will be teaching for a week in June). In addition to sending out advertisements for the course, answering email and phone queries, and general record keeping of deposits, my main work duties still center on dry forest scenarios. My boss is trying to combine various data sets (rainfall, land cover, fires, elevation) to find the best predictor of dry forests in SE Asia. Currently we are ordering ASTER satellite data to compare actual land cover random points to points of our scenarios to judge their accuracy. On a more exciting note, there is potential for me to get involved in a Clouded Leopard study that the Smithsonian is involved in in Thailand. The focus in the past year or so has been on captive populations, improving living conditions, nutrition, and breeding, but there are plans to extend to in situ populations and construct a GIS habitat analysis. Also, there is talk about looking for a student to go down in the fall and supervise data collection in Khao Yai National Park. (I’m excited without trying to get too excited so I won’t fall hard with disappointment if this thing doesn’t work out). Yet, there is huge potential. 

I’ve also taken to babysitting on the weekends for a two year old! Yes, it involves changing diapers. Yes, this was my first experience changing diapers. Niko is a smart kid, you can’t trick him. During my first job both of his parents were at home. They simply wanted to work in their offices uninterrupted. Of course Niko knew they were behind the closed doors and had a screaming fit until I could divert his interest. I enjoying reading books with him as long as he doesn’t insist on the German ones. He speaks a bit of English, German, and Spanish. Lucky.