From the Chair
By Wayne Thogmartin
LA CROSSE, WI - The Geographic Information Systems/Remote
Sensing/Telemetry Working Group has had a busy year. Since our
last newsletter, members of the Working Group have been involved in
preparing 2 symposia and 2 workshops for the The Wildlife Society’s
annual meeting in Madison, Wisconsin. Those symposia are ‘Kernel
Methods in Space Use Analyses’ and ‘Overview and Treatment of Spatial
Errors in GIS Applications’. The workshops are ‘ArcGIS 9.x
Basics’ and ‘Spatial Modeling with ArcGIS
ModelBuilder/Scripting’. For more information, see the conference
offerings article in our newsletter. And please join us at
our working group meeting, Monday, September
26, from 4:00-5:30 PM in Monona Terrace-Meeting
Room Q (check the program for changes). Students: apply for the student
travel grant here!
We have also begun initial preparations for the Anchorage meeting in
2006, at which time, the Working Group hopes to offer a workshop on
‘Radar Ornithology’ and a symposium on ‘LIDAR’. There is still
plenty of time to organize additional proposals for 2006, so please do
not hesitate to contact me if you would like to organize a symposium or
workshop. It is through the efforts of the Working Group members
that our Working Group is successful.
The Working Group also held an internet-based GIS survey this winter
via The Wildlife Society webpage (http://www.wildlife.org/wg/gis/index.cfm?tname=gis_survey).
The Working Group held the survey of Society members to improve
communication with the Society and to strengthen our ability to meet
Society member needs. Detailed results are available via
download of the survey
article (Adobe Acrobat PDF format).
Thanks to all who participated.
Briefly, results from 160 respondents, most of whom were self-described
as Intermediate users (46%), indicated the vast majority were using
ArcView 3.x (66%), whereas a roughly equal number of respondents were
using either ArcGIS 8 or 9. Responses suggested that the Working
Group should sponsor an Animal Movements workshop, and in response to
this finding, preliminary inquiries have been made to Phillip Hooge,
author of the Animal Movements extension for ArcView, in an effort to
make this workshop available at the Anchorage annual TWS meeting in
2006. There was also a call for the Working Group to more
explicitly consider free GIS in its offerings. In this regard, I
would like to extend the offer to folks using GRASS and other free or
open source GIS to consider organizing a workshop at a future
meeting. Frankly, I think most folks are probably unaware of the
options available to them in the open source GIS community.
As Chair I am greatly pleased by the survey and believe it will help us
target our future group efforts. I look forward to future
installments in our attempts at increasing communication between the
Working Group and the Society; soon we hope to survey members on their
interests in remote sensing and telemetry. When you next hear our
call for respondents, please participate, because unless you do, the
Working Group will not (can not) be as meaningful to you as it could be.
In the mundane matters of business, soon after I took over as Chair of
the Working Group, I learned that my election may have been in some
measure of doubt because of vague, misleading, or flat-out ill-suited
wording in the Working Group’s by-laws. This led me to scrutinize
our Working Group’s by-laws in greater detail. I found that there
were a number of things that we have been doing these last several
years that are not in accordance with the by-laws. Thus, in my
duties as Chair, I would like to clear up these discrepancies. I
offer a couple changes. The focus of these proposed changes would
1) allow for internet balloting, and, 2) explicitly separate the duties
of the Secretary/Treasurer into 2 positions. Thus, in compliance
with Article X, Section 1 of the by-laws, the following changes are
advocated, and will be ruled by the members in attendance at this
year’s working group meeting held in association with The Wildlife
Society’s annual conference in Madison, Wisconsin.
The first change would amend Article IV, Section 2, to read (with
changes in bold) as:
Section 2. BALLOTING – Balloting shall occur by mail, internet, and/or
at the annual business meeting. Written ballots shall be received
from the members and counted by the Nominations and Elections
Committee. Internet ballots
shall be cast and automatically
tabulated at the Society’s webpage, and results affirmed by the
Nominating and Elections Committee. For ballot purposes,
the
Working Group Chair shall appoint a replacement for any member of the
Nominating and Elections Committee who has been nominated for an
elective position.
The second change would amend Article IV, Section 3, replacing the
current clause D with clauses D and E, to read as:
Clause D. Secretary- The Secretary shall be responsible for
maintaining the files an records of the Working Group (Article VI,
Section 4). Duties shall include recording the minutes for all
membership and Executive board meetings and issuing copies of the
minutes to the Executive Board, members, and Society.
Clause E. Treasurer- The Treasurer shall be responsible for the
funds of the Working Group. Duties shall include the recept and
disbursement of funds; preparing and submitting an annual fiscal-year
(Article VI, Section 2, Clause D) financial report to the Executive
Board, members, and Society; and prepare an annual budget for approval
by the Executive Board.
As mentioned, we will deliberate these suggested changes in the fall at
the Madison meeting. I look forward to seeing you there.
Wayne Thogmartin, Chair
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