Geospatial Pinpointing!

Hey Everyone!

As we have talked about previously, we have a pretty solid way of identifying plant and animal occurrences within the landscape. Unfortunately, we do not have such accurate pinpoint measurements in terms of collecting geospatial data. Fortunately, we do have overhead maps. The overhead maps we will utilize first will be google mymaps.

We will use an 'expedition' based methodology and will go on scavenger hunts for the specific organism we are trying to catalogue. I understand this will not be the most efficient method, but it will get good information on the area.

The species we have catalogued so far have been the ones easiest to identify. Once we fill the map with markers of each species, we will then go in and search for species yet to be tagged. 
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Animals will be the trickiest for us to catalogue, as there are camera devices setup, but many are unreliable for animal identification, especially of the smaller variety. Animals will not be plotting as pinpoints, but instead will have distributions of their 'travelled' area. If I had expendable monetary funds, I would instantly invest in a PUC, a fantastic bioacoustic monitoring device that synchronizes with popular bird identification apps and organizations such as Cornell. While disadvantageous, as we are not measuring this specific yard, we will combine both bird sightings by myself and visitation reports from other PUC's within the area. 

Expedition Ahoy!

I will walk the non-wetland property, and systematically record what are approximate coordinates using landscape features that have been largely unchanged. These features include concrete, fencing, and larger structures. 

I collected the first round of data and unfortunately, despite using ARC GIS as a backbone. I personally have had bad experiences with relying on semi-proprietary software that requires a constant subscription, so I will take the painful route of adding each gps point into Google MyMaps.

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