Nicholas School MEM student Maggie Ernest is carrying on with our work mapping habitat and identifying conservation areas for the San Martín titi monkey, the most endangered primate in Peru.  Maggie has put in countless hours working with satellite imagery and cranking out grant applications in order to get her hands dirty this summer in Peru!

You can follow Maggie's work during her summer internship with non-profit Proyecto Mono Tocón at her new blog. Her work is supported by the Nicholas School and the Center for Latin American and Carribean Studies. 
http://blogs.nicholas.duke.edu/internshipblogs/monkey-business/

Along with my advisor Jennifer Swenson, I had the opportunity to attend the NASA Biodiversity and Ecological Forecasting Team meeting in Washington D.C., along with my advisor. The work presented by this group of researchers was so impressive and directly applicable for my work that I found I couldn't miss a single presentation. My favorite part of the experience was an interactive discussion regarding future research priorities. NASA is gearing up for its second "Decadal Survey", which sets goals and outlines the planned missions and specific sensing instruments to achieve those aims over the next decade. It is pretty cool that NASA so actively engages researchers and end users in this process!

Check out the NASA Science Mission Directorate's hyperwall for some cool summaries of earth observation research.
http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/search.cgi?content&value=None&Earth=True&page=5&ipp=12

My talented friend Andy Warner authored an infographic for KQED entitled 'Rationing the Rain: How California Distributes its Water in Dry Times'. You can see the full story here. 

You can find more of Andy's work at http://andywarnercomics.com/

I have been invited to give an oral presentation at the US-IALE meeting in Anchorage, Alaska this May. I will present a comparison of classification approaches to track water availability at Owens Lake California over approximately 30 years during the peak of Spring migration. I am looking forward to networking with many other landscape ecologists and I am hoping to also squeeze in some shorebird watching! 

February 2nd is the anniversary of the Ramsar Convention, an international agreement to protect wetlands. The theme this year is Wetlands & Agriculture: Partners for Growth.

Learn more about WWD and the Ramsar Convention here:
http://www.ramsar.org/cda/en/ramsar-activities-wwds-wwd2014index/main/ramsar/1-63-78%5E26287_4000_0__

A friend sent me this piece, which was published in Grist on January 29, 2014. 
http://grist.org/news/rice-paddies-providing-respite-for-birds-in-drought-ravaged-california/

California recently declared a drought emergency and  in these dire conditions the Nature Conservancy has partnered with growers to provide temporary "pop-up habitats" on agricultural lands for migratory birds.