Hoooooo doggy!

I've been a busy girl! How are you?

Well, as I promised I'll tell you about the training I got to go to for groundtruthing. One morning, we (Frank, Dr. Dave, Dick, and myself) to Ye Ol' Findlay, Ohio. It was, shall we say, early. After a brief stop at a coffee establishment, we arrived at the Division of Wildlife, Region 2 offices. I saw some familiar faces and some familiar decor. We were all there to learn how to groundtruth a wetland survey done by Ducks Unlimited with the help of several other organizations besides D.O.W. that I cannot remember now.

This is an update of the National Wetlands Inventory for Ohio. (Lookie! Wetland plants!) The last time this was done here was in the mid-80's. On the national level, things were done by aerial photos. Here, in Ohio, it was done using sattelite data. Well, now the information has been taken again because Ducks Unlimited started a mallard survey and found the maps were very outdated. Time to do all of this again.

The majority of the budget was spent on color and color-infrared photos. (Aerial photos mind you.) Now, it's up to people like us to double check a percentage of the inventoried wetlands (no less than 1/10 acre) for accuracy. Right now they only have imagery for the northern half of Ohio and Erie County is one of the counties that will be checked soon. (Eventually, all counties will have been checked.) We are including farm and backyard ponds in this survey which I believe is a new thing.

To do this, we are going to use GPS units to help us find the wetlands indicated on the maps we'll be provided. We go, we look, we mark the map with our determination of what kind of wetland it is (forested, emergent, unconsolidated bottom, etc.) and make any notes or comments we feel will help the inventory folks get a more accurate description.

Why is this so cool for me? Well, not only can I help with this here in Erie County but when it comes time to do Franklin, I can do it there too. This equals more experience for resumes! (Score!) I'm hoping this will start before I leave in a few weeks. I'd like to get a chance at helping with this. At least I'm trained already.

So what other resume builders have I accomplished? Well, we just had our Project Wild Aquatic and Science and Civics training this week. Teachers from all over (including one chap from Dublin!) came together to be trained to use these two books. It was a fun two days. We played with sand and "seined for fish" (or beans in this case) and looked at plankton under a scope. Door prizes were given out and I got a set of fish life histories and a book called A Guide to Ohio Streams, and, of course, we all got the Proj. W.A. and Sci.&Civ. books.

So, those were the biggies of late. I've also been able to visit my relative's in Akron and see one of my cousin's 4 metroparks (he's the head guy at those parks but I can't remember which 4 they were, sorry). The park we saw was very pretty and had remnants of Ohio and Erie Canal locks. There is also an old general store that has been restored that has displays and some souveniers.

We also visited Stan Hywet Hall. The guy responsible for Goodyear tires lived there. Stan Hywet Hall is a way cool place. Beautiful gardens and right now they're having a treehouse exhibit and they have butterflies in the greenhouse. Mom and I stayed in the Quaker Square Crowne Plaza hotel where we slept in a silo. (I am very upset at Univ. of Akron because they bought the historical hotel and landmark and are planning on turning it into a dorm. What a waste of a beautiful building and a waste of an opportunity. I feel they should turn it into a Univeristy owned hotel and confrence center since it is one of only two large hotels in Akron right now. Think of the money they could make!? ~steps off her soapbox)

I've been canoeing twice this week and the last group was just today from the Firelands Chapter of the Western Reserve Land Conservancy. They've managed to save 1500 acres of land so far just this year!

So there's my week and a half. Next up is my ficilitation of a meeting about window displays and COSEE's Teachable Moment class.