Author: JDonoghue2
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CNPS Online Inventory of Rare Plants v9.0
For the past year, while working for Rincon Consultants, I have been working with two colleagues, Andrew Walter of The Jones Payne Group, and Mark Naftzger of Studio Simple, to develop the latest version of the California Native Plant Society’s Online Inventory of Rare Plants.
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Re-engineering the Business Process of Desert Tortoise Data Collection
Ironwood Consulting re-engineered the business process of Desert Tortoise field data collection using iFormBuilder, SQL Server, and ASP.net to transform a once cost-intensive activity into a financial and practical benefit to Ironwood’s clients.
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Some Coveted Programming Skills
To follow-up on an earlier post I wrote this year about GIS Skills, I recently read a story in Readwrite Enterprise outlining 15 programming skills most coveted by employers (http://readwrite.com/2013/04/09/15-programming-skills-most-coveted-by-employers). While their story was aimed at the development community, two of the 15 skills outlined in their story are definitely needed by GIS Analysts and…
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A Maxent Script Tool for ArcGIS
As part of my PhD research at the University of Arizona where I study biogeography, biodiversity and macroecology, I have been part of a group looking at large-scale biodiversity questions for New World plants. In this role, I have been responsible for generating many species distribution models using Stephen Phillip’s Maxent software (and R with the Dismo…
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Speedy Attribute Editing with a Custom ArcMap Add-In
One of my colleagues, TerraSystems Southwest, is assisting The Nature Conservancy in Tucson with the Sonoran Desert Disturbed Lands Analysis project. As part of their scope of work, they were asked to assess the level and type of land disturbance for over 100,000 1-square mile hexagons covering the Sonoran Desert. As you might expect, editing the attributes…
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Landing a GIS Job and GIS Skills Development in 2013
Note: This post is a 2013 update to my earlier post on Learning GIS and Getting a GIS Job – Some Tips and Tricks which was originally posted in 2009. In 2009 I wrote a post on how to obtain a GIS job that focused on pathways to learn GIS, critical skills every GIS analyst…
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Les Miserables Look Down, Look Down the PhD Version
In the opening scene of the new Les Miserables movie, Jean Valjean (played by Hugh Jackman) is one of many shackled prisoners trying pulling a large ship into a dry dock during rough seas. The work song, “Look down, look down” is quite dramatic and the whole scene is cinematically spectacular and a powerful opening…
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Creating a Video of Vegetative Cover Sampling
As part of my graduate obligations for a course in methods of measuring and monitoring plant populations, I had to do some type of course project. Though our instructor offered several options of varying difficulty, it was clear that he really wanted someone to attempt to produce a video outlining how to do a method.…
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Desert Tortoise Training
From this post title, it might appear that I took part in training desert tortoises. In reality I participated in a workshop to learn how to survey, monitor and handle desert tortoises. The 2-day workshop is conducted annually in Ridgecrest, CA by the Desert Tortoise Council and covers a tremendous amount of material including: an…
John Donoghue 