Landscope America - Natural History on the web

Our ability to represent what has been observed about our natural world - our collective, place based, natural history knowledge - has progressed by leaps and bounds. Google Earth (http://earth.google.com/) , the first user friendly application allowing us to view our world, has served as a springboard for efforts that are more targeted to natural history and conservation. The most recent, and in many ways most promising of these approaches may be Landscope America (http://www.landscope.org/preview/Home.html). This initiative is still in the early phases of development, but this joint project of Nature Serve and National Geographic promises to connect people to what is known about the natural history and conservation work going on in their back-yard, and serve as a clearing house for natural history efforts that range from local to national. To date, this project is only a US effort, but my hunch is that this type of interface will quickly move to the international stage if it is successful here. Look over the webpage, and contact your heritage program to see who is collecting the information in your area. This resource only works if we make sure the relevent information is included.

How to do Ecology - a concise handbook

This is perhaps the best value for dollar investment any aspiring or beginning graduate student in fields even vaguely similar to ecology could make. The book is "How To Do Ecology - A concise handbook" By Rick Karban and Mikaela Huntzinger. It is well written, and it answers questions like "how should I approach my first presentation?" "How to get down to the nuts and bolts of a big-picture question" and "where is the balance between experiment and natural history?", while offering some well-thought out answers to more general questions, like "why does it seem like I am not keeping up in graduate school unless I am a complete fanatic about my research?" This book will will save you hours of work and perhaps years of pain as you begin your career. If you an advanced grad or professor - give it to your best undergrads as they get going in their careers. It's that good, and it took me only about 4 of my sons swim lessons to read.

for the lab

Hello all - this is my first post on this blog, but I thought it would be good place to put down thoughts and highlight connections / important literature, and other issues that come up related to ecology, evolution, conservation, and natural history. To join this blog, and become an author, all you need to do is send me your google account login, and I will "invite you".

Cheers!