INTRODUCTION:

Robyn and I have worked together for several years at the Information Center for the Environment at U.C. Davis.

I am the “GIS ….” at I.C.E., as the Information Center for the Environment is known. And Robyn is a PhD candidate in the Graduate Group in Ecology, as well as a Federal Research Scientist. [When she started her research she worked for the NASA Ames Research Center, and early this year transferred to the California State Office of the NRCS.]

I’ve worked with Robyn on her research from the beginning. Her plan from the start was to conduct a GIS based research study that was scientifically based, met the needs of the local resource managers, and could be delivered to them in a form they could use when the research was completed.

While I’ve not been involved in the planning or the field work, I’ve worked with Robyn along the way in developing a PC ARCView based research strategy. It’s been challenging because many of the things Robyn wanted to do are generally done in UNIX based ARC/INFO. But she wanted to be sure her end users could continue to use the database and results in a PC environment, so she persisted. ...