Happy Fall, OFWIM Members! Please enjoy this 2024 Fall edition of the OFWIM Newsletter! |
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OFWIM 2024 Fall Newsletter
September 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
It’s almost here!!! The annual OFWIM Conference is something I look forward to all year!! I’m very excited to see all your smiling faces and hear the latest updates on all things data management. I’ve already heard from a few folks that budget cuts are going to keep them from attending. I’m really saddened to hear that. Hopefully things will improve for the upcoming budget year and those folks can make it to the 2025 conference.
I’ve enjoyed serving as your OFWIM president this year. I look forward to supporting Jennylyn Redner as she takes the reins at our business meeting in October. Speaking of the business meeting, I want to urge all of you who can come to the conference to attend the business meeting. In addition to hearing what we have done over the past year we discuss plans for the future of OFWIM and we would love to have your input. I also invite you to join a committee. It’s the committees that keep this train running. These committees put together the newsletter, send out email reminders, plan the conference, choose the scholarship award winners, put forward a slate of candidates for the election, plan for training for our members, and so much more. Your input to these committees ensures you get what you want and need out of OFWIM. Please consider joining one or more of these essential teams so your voice is heard. It’s only one hour a month, give or take.
Let’s keep OFWIM alive and growing. It truly is a great organization for people who aren’t just biologists or just data managers or just GIS staff. We represent the group of folks of each state’s wildlife division who weld science, data, and technology together into a harmonious picture for the public and often for our state agency’s leaders. It’s a neat job to have and it’s great to have like-minded people to share the joys and successes, the pitfalls and failures of such a unique work situation. |
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I searched online for an image that would capture all that we do into one concise masterpiece, and this is what I came up with. I’m sure we all have days like this. I downloaded this from Wikipedia and they said their version is public domain so hopefully Mr. Edvard Munch will not haunt my dreams.
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This picture of Hollie might also sum it up.
-Lynn Barrett, OFWIM President |
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Way back in 1993, OFWIM held its first conference! Where was that conference held? (Answer at the end of the newsletter.) (hint: The answer is somewhere on the website, and it has something in common with this year's conference!) |
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-- Data Dash --
Climate Scenarios for the Western US Now Available!
The University of Wyoming (UWyo), in collaboration with UCLA, has developed a comprehensive suite of downscaled Global Circulation Models (GCMs) at a 9km resolution for the western United States. This dataset spans the years 1980-2100 and is available at daily, monthly, and annual (water year) temporal resolutions. If you were a participant of the OFWIM 2023 conference in Ft. Collins, CO, you were exposed to the public-facing dashboard (WyAdapt: https://wyadapt.org), which aims to reduce barriers to accessing and visualizing terabytes of data by providing on-demand charts and tabular data at varying spatial aggregations (i.e. county or watershed polygons). However, one of the limiting factors of data dashboards is the restricted ability to customize your own questions of the underlying data. To facilitate deeper research questions and enable more flexible use of these data, we have developed a cloud-optimized storage architecture (using Zarr and COG file formats, coupled with API endpoints) that enables on-demand spatial queries of the underlying data, thus giving registered users the ability to ask their own questions of the data! To help folks get started, we have some API documentation (https://wyadapt.org/swagger/index.html) as well as some examples to follow using R (https://pathfinder.arcc.uwyo.edu/wyadapt/WyAdaptExample.html) or Python (https://pathfinder.arcc.uwyo.edu/wyadapt/zarrWorkflowNB.html). We would love to hear some feedback if you have any, so please don’t hesitate to let us know what you think! (Figure below represents the extent of the climate data) |
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Thank you to OFWIM member, Shannon Albeke (salbeke@uwyo.edu), Senior Research Scientist at School of Computing / WyGISC, University of Wyoming, 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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The Organization of Fish and Wildlife Information Managers’ 32nd Annual Conference and Business Meeting is fast approaching! No virtual option is available this year, so plan to attend in person. Details are coming together and an overview of the conference is below:
Monday kicks things off with Keynote Speaker Jason Sumners, Director of the Missouri Department of Conservation followed by afternoon presentations. The Hackers Ball, Poster Session and an evening of socializing round out the first day.
Tuesday is Education Day and will give us the opportunity to experience some of the exceptional natural parks and historic sites of the area. We have a full day planned, starting with a guided tour at Johnson’s Shut-Ins State Park. Next, we will travel to Elephant Rocks and end the day with an interpretive tour at the Battle of Pilot Knob battlefield for an interpretive tour, wrapping up around 4pm.
Wednesday’s agenda includes presentations, business meeting and committee signups and an evening dedicated to the banquet, awards, and silent auction. Get your buzzer skills sharpened and ready for ‘Friendly Feud’ with Host Keith Hurley!
This year’s workshop, A Road Trip To Better Presentations, will be led by Keith Hurley. During this workshop we will explore and discover tips and tricks for improvement in four of the main skillsets used with scientific presentations: including messaging, delivery, and graphics design. As with most road trips, this will be an interactive experience with plenty of joyful discussion. Come journey with us as we expand our speaking skills. |
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REGISTRATION
· Member – $350.00
OFWIM membership required
· Non-Member – $400.00
· One Day Attendee – $150.00
· Retired Professional – $150.00
· Student – $100.00 |
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Second call for abstracts... 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
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St. Louis Lambert International Airport to Arcadia, MO, approx. 1.75 hours depending on traffic. No transportation to/from airports will be provided. Those renting vehicles are encouraged to carpool
You can access the OFWIM Airport Carpool Signup Spreadsheet by clicking HERE. |
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Support our Student Scholarships… 2nd call for Raffle & Silent Auction items! Please gather items & contact Michael Barbour at mbarbour@azgfd.gov or provide descriptions of your items by clicking HERE. |
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2024 OFWIM Officer Elections OFWIM members, there are two positions you must elect this year: President Elect and Member-At-Large. Please see the bios for candidates below. |
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Ben Wasserstein
for President Elect
Ben is a seasoned database analyst with 13 years of experience specializing in the creation and management of robust database systems. Currently, Ben serves on OFWIM’s Communications, Membership, and Outreach Committee (CMO) and has been a proud member for the past year. He graduated from Colorado State University (CSU) with a degree in Fish, Wildlife, and Conservation Biology and later earned a graduate certificate in Business Information Systems. Ben is the Research and Species Conservation Database Analyst for Colorado Parks & Wildlife, where he helps develop custom database solutions from scratch, tailoring back-end databases and front-end applications to the needs of researchers and biologists as a full-stack database developer. Ben previously worked for CSU’s Center for Environmental Management of Military Lands (CEMML) as a Database Specialist, GIS Analyst, and Team Lead for 6 years – an experience that brought him a wealth of knowledge in regards to GIS data collection, data standardization, and supervisory skills while working under the U.S. Air Force Environmental GIS Program.
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Outside of work, you can usually find Ben spending time with his family, fishing, hunting, playing ice hockey, snowboarding, biking, seeing live music, and generally enjoying all that the outdoors has to offer.
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Zach Collins
for Member-At-Large
Zach is Wildlife Support Biologist with the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency (TWRA). He has a Bachelor of Science in Wildlife Biology from the University of Tennessee at Martin. Prior to working as a Support Biologist for the TWRA he was a Wildlife Technician in North Carolina for the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission for 5 years. In 2021, he moved back home to Tennessee to work as a Wildlife Technician for the TWRA before accepting this current role in 2022. As a support biologist, he assists program chairs with data management and works on special projects, such as helping develop, test, and release a web portal for reporting Depredation Permit usage. Most of his work efforts are spent in the management of TWRA’s CWD sampling data. Zach has been active in OFWIM since 2023 where he attended the conference in Fort Collins, CO.
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Please click HERE to vote for this year's OFWIM officers! 2024 elections will close during the Business Meeting at the conference, on Wednesday, October 9th. |
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East Coast Bound... The 2025 OFWIM Annual Conference & Business Meeting will be in Lewes, Delaware, on October 5-9, 2025! Tentatively, OFWIM's 2025 Conference will be within Cape Henlopen State Park at the Biden Environmental Training Center. Look forward to this and many attractions within the park and in the surrounding area of Lewes... the first town in the first state! |
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71 members representing 22 states |
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About OFWIM Membership
Check out membership benefits at ofwim.org and become an OFWIM Member today at: ofwim.org/join-us Encourage expansion of our membership! If you know of others in your state, in neighboring states, or even abroad, who might be interested, then forward an invitation to join OFWIM! |
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Upcoming Events
Annual Conference October 7-10, 2024 |
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2022 OFWIM Conference Group Shot |
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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 Jessica Perkins at jessica.d.perkins@wv.gov |
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Trivia answer: St. Louis, Missouri! (Same state as this year's conference!) |
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