Documenting habitat

Beginning in 2005, Bob Christensen and I developed a protocol for rapid field assessment—new-age ground-truthing—that builds on timeless naturalists’ skills and adds cutting edge technologies as these emerge.

Field device technology evolves rapidly. Every few years I create an update of my methods and workflow: prefield prep, fieldwork, and postfield processing and journaling. Usually these updates happen during or after a chance to hang out with Bob, who’s always several leaps ahead of me at the intersection technology with boots-on-the-ground. A vignette of that hybrid between oldschool & hightech methodology is in Doug Chadwick’s 2007 article for National Geographic.

A more recent update was in 2022, during the Landforms class with Cathy Connor. Here’s a field-&-office methods summary from the  course manual for that class.l

The methods paper discusses:

● cameras

● gps

● field notes (including audio)

● navigation apps

● drones

● and processing programs including: ● ACDSee ● Robogeo ● ArcMap

● journaling

● online slideshows and video editing

PS 2022

Wow, a lot can happen in the tech world in 5 years! Bob Christensen, who first set me up with Robogeo and ACDSee, has long since moved on from these programs. As Cathy Connor and I introduce students to ground-truthing and mapping technologies, seems high time i update the 2017 appendix excerpt. . . .  That said, its impressive how well certain technologies have held up. Bad Elf is still my favorite GPS. And Avenza has widespread adoption by field people in many disciplines.

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