Happy Summer, OFWIM Members! Please enjoy this 2024 Summer edition of the OFWIM Newsletter! |
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OFWIM 2024 Summer Newsletter
June 2024
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Join us for the 2024 Conference
in Arcadia, MO! (Scroll down for details!) |
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President's Message
If I had been asked to have this message ready in May I
would have been hard pressed to get it done.
There has been an annoying buzz in my ears for the past few weeks. Thankfully it is subsiding now. Don’t worry.
I wasn’t the only one afflicted.
Lots of folks have been hearing the same thing: |
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Adult Periodical Cicada in Tennessee! |
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Periodical Cicada emerging from exoskeleton! |
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These noisy little critters have taken over everything. They’ve made Hollie wear long pants and
jackets because she can’t stand the feeling of their scratchy legs when they
land on her. We didn’t get to spend much
time outdoors during the best weeks of spring weather. But they are finally at the end of their life
cycle. They made sure to leave behind
plenty of eggs for another hatch in 17 years.
I wonder what technology for GIS and data management will
look like in 17 years. Are we, the
generation doing the work now, laying the groundwork for the generation coming
after us? Or are we just maintaining the
status quo? Do we embrace new technology
and enhancements or are we curmudgeons griping about all the changes to our
workflows? Let’s be change makers. Let’s be the generation that lays the
foundation for better ways of doing data management in our agencies. Be loud about it! Fly in the face of the status quo! Be tenacious!
Learn from our noisy little friends that periodically join us for a few
short weeks.
-Lynn Barrett, OFWIM President |
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Adventures of Hollie (OFWIM's unofficial little mascot)
When the cicada invasion first started there were just a few and they were fascinating to Hollie and her classmates. One day they found a dead one in the school parking lot. So, they did what any one of us would do. They took it to the playground and buried it. They had a funeral service which I understand was saying The Lord’s Prayer over it a few times. (See photo below) Fast forward a few weeks, and cicadas were everywhere in all stages from molting to dying and dead. Hollie was tolerating them fairly well until one landed on her arm. Its scratchy legs were too much. Her concern and care for the cicadas was no more. She is quite happy to be on the back side of the cicada invasion. |
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-- Data Dash --
Would You Like to Time
Travel?
I’m sure all of you who work with ESRI software or AGOL are aware
of using ESRI’s imagery service to display an aerial view of your project
area. ESRI is always updating this
imagery service with the latest information available to them. For most projects this is perfectly
acceptable and is often exactly what you want short of real-time imagery. But
there are times when you would like to turn back the hands of time to see what
the ground conditions were like a few years ago, perhaps a specific month of a
certain year. Well, ESRI has you covered
there as well. It’s called the Wayback
App and you can find it here https://livingatlas.arcgis.com/wayback/
You can use the imagery as part of an online map or you can
add it to an ArcGIS Pro project for printing or data visualization. You can use it with the swipe feature to
showcase changes to the landscape or show the extent of flooding. I recently had a situation where I needed to
show the positions of some duck blinds somewhere during the time frame of Nov
2017 to Feb 2018. Wayback gave me
exactly what I needed for this situation. |
The Wayback App has a swipe feature built in so you can do a comparison to determine which image date works best for your situation. The images below are screenshots showing the most current image dates available for this area. The left panel and right panels let you choose your comparison dates. I chose the most recent for the left (brown tones) and the oldest for the right (green tones). |
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Once you have found
the image date you want to use close the comparison view and choose the date in
the left panel. Then click on the letter
“i” to get an information page about the image: |
From the information
page you have two options: copy the URL
link at the top of the page to put this layer into your ArcGIS Pro project or “Open
In Map Viewer” to use it as a layer in an online map. |
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Tip: If you are using it in ArcGIS Pro – once you have the URL copied on the Map menu in Pro click the drop-down arrow under Add Data and choose “Data From Path” and paste the URL in the window.
Tip: If you are using it in ArcGIS Pro – once you have the URL copied on the Map menu in Pro click the drop-down arrow under Add Data and choose “Data From Path” and paste the URL in the window.
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Thank you to OFWIM President, Lynn Barrett, from the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency, for providing this issue's Data Dash submission! |
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The 2024 OFWIM Annual Conference & Business Meeting will be in Arcadia, Missouri! Plan to attend in person! (There is no virtual option this year.) |
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We would love to hear about your experiences or projects with fish & wildlife data! |
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For all who plan to attend and have dietary restrictions, please provide advanced notification to Jennylyn Redner at jennylyn.redner@redboscience.com or Dyan Pursell at dyan.pursell@mdc.mo.gov
If you need financial assistance to attend the conference in person, please complete an OFWIM Travel Grant Application using one of the following links: Google Form or fillable PDF |
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REGISTRATION
· Early Bird Member (before 8/9) – $300.00
OFWIM membership required, early bird ends 8/9/24
· Early Bird Non-Member (before 8/9) – $350.00
early bird ends 8/9/24
· Member (after 8/9) – $350.00
OFWIM membership required, early bird ends 8/9/23
· Non-Member (after 8/9) – $400.00
early bird ends 8/9/24
· One Day Attendee – $150.00
One Day Attendee
· Retired Professional – $150.00
· Student – $100.00 |
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To nominate an individual for the
OFWIM Innovation Award
or
Student Scholarship
please Click HERE |
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Support our Student Scholarships… Raffle & Silent Auction items needed! Please gather items & contact Michael Barbour at mbarbour@azgfd.gov to provide descriptions & photos of your items. Michael will need photos of each item to load to the online raffle site. |
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Additionally, be on the look out for details for the Thursday workshop. Plans are forming for a workshop by OFWIM's own great presenter, Keith Hurley, to work with us on our presentation skills!
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Please keep checking the OFWIM homepage for more details, as the Conference Planning Committee works on them now to October! |
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79 members representing 21 states (Note: Recently expired members, included here, will get a renewal reminder on July 1st, so be sure to renew!)
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Upcoming Events
Annual Conference October 7-10, 2024 |
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Visit OFWIM on social media: |
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Members, if you have any materials or suggestions for the OFWIM Newsletter, please let the editors know: Susan Watson at susan.watson@dwr.virginia.gov and/or Heather Power at heather.power@accsp.org |
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