Thursday, January 13, 2011
GIS
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
Hiatus
and conservation prioritization
for African Chamaeleonidae
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Literature Search
I spent many many hours one night just poking around and I ran into big fat brick walls. Several of the papers are written in German (I can read Danish NOT German!). Many are published in German Journals or in random small African Journals the KU library doesn't subscribe to. The ones I could read had a lot of sketchy location descriptions such as "one possible male found on a tree on the side of X mountain." Wha??? I decided at the end of the night maybe it was time for a chat with Neil to see if there was a better approach to take for now.
Over several emails back and forth and a phone chat we have come up with a few different goals for me to work on over the next few weeks.
- Meet up with Louis Hansen at the Zoologisk/Zoological Museum. He is THE map guy and has generously offered his time and talents to help me get started mapping. He has also offered to help me dig up some information in their library on reptiles.
- Rework my species list with a template provided by IUCN. They will verify and validate my info once I have it in the proper format so we have the most up to date accepted list of species.
- Neil has agreed to be trained on the IUCN Species Information System which he will then come back and teach me and others how to use.
- Help Neil come up with a flyer to put around school advertising our project to prospective students. He envisions this becoming a fantastic research group we just need more students to come join me.
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Distractions
Saturday, October 10, 2009
Tools and Social Networking
Networking: Just signed up for this www.academia.edu. Anyone else that joins let me know so we can connect! Here is a link to my page. http://ku-dk.academia.edu/AngeliqueHjarding
Side Note
So when I looked at my personal needs and desires and the projects available, this one just fit!
The Project Description
Species mapping projects
Over the past 10 years various people in Denmark have been involved in the work of mapping species distributions in Africa. This has entailed producing maps of all species of birds, mammals, snakes and amphibians. And a selection of plants. This work has been concluded for the time being, but there are a number of potential student projects that would be good to see happening:
African reptile mapping. The distribution of snakes and chelonians has already been mapped in Denmark. But there are a large number of other reptile groups that are found in Africa and which are not yet mapped in any meaningful way. A number of Masters level projects could be devised that look at mapping the distribution of different reptile groups, and analyzing the distribution patterns that result, potentially comparing these to the patterns seen in other taxonomic groups. These projects would be based on the literature available and also on some data compilation work that has already been completed by Conservation International.
And what is the best part of all of this? My department and adviser have expertise in East Africa. And who has a massive collection of East African snake maps (like 400+ maps)? Copenhagen University. And where does IUCN need the help? East Africa. So if all goes as we plan we will be the experts for East African reptiles. Yehaw!