Now that I’ve had 3 1/2 weeks behind me, I finally feel like I’m making some real progress and can see my deliverables coming together. The first two weeks were definitely challenging and I initially had some doubts in my abilities to successfully and meaningfully create maps about the elk reintroduction project. But I was able to problem solve and now look forward to sharing with you what I have done so far and what is still coming.

To initially retrieve the logging data which contained the location coordinates I needed, I was given a log in to a website which stored years worth of data. After just learning how to navigate the website and narrowing it down the year and months I needed, I faced a new challenge. All of the file types that I was downloading were not compatible with ArcMap, so I couldn’t add the data. This was really discouraging because it was my first day of my placement and I felt like it was a rough start. But luckily after some research I was able to manually enter it into an older version of Excel and input that into ArcMap. During the spring semester I took for granted the ease we had during the GIS courses by not having to prepare our data. We were lucky enough to get the files in an compatible format and start work from there. But during my placement I realized the work that needed to go into preparing data and finding data from reliable sources. And hopefully by doing this I will be able to gain some more skills in GIS for future jobs.

From there I have been able to really start map making and analyzing the data. My supervisor at the DNR, has given me the perfect amount of freedom with what content should be in the maps, while still providing me with guidance when I need help. So far I have calculated or created the following layers:

• Mean Center Point (This displays the geographic average center of all the points, this is helpful when looking at all the elk because each one has about 30-40 points and I have 26 elk that I’m looking at. Combine all of that and its a lot of data points!)
• Total Distance Traveled Post Release (A lot of variation here, some elk stayed near the quarantine pen while we had some outliers that traveled far in a few weeks to some crop fields.)
• Preferred Habitat (The preferred habitat for each elk was calculated for each individual to see where they tend to travel to after being released from the pen.)
• Home Range (The area encompassed by elk after being released, excluding the outliers.)
• Buffered Home Range (The area encompassed by elk for 6 months after they had the chance to get acclimated to Wisconsin, with a 1 km buffer.)

To create the layers listed above, it involved a lot of data transformations and different layers to make it meaningful. For instance, I added county boundaries, land cover data, and road data.

These are not the final products as they are missing some key map features like scale bars, legends, and titles. Throughout this process I have been able to learn some new tools to use in GIS and further understand tools I have learned in the lab assignments. But along with just maps I have come to realize that not everything can be displayed on a map so I created some tables which I’ll include in a report to summarize the work I’ve done. I would also like to add a base map which is similar to a Google Earth kind of view, but have experienced some issues from ArcMap constantly crashing because it was too large of a file. In the upcoming weeks I will continue to try to get this to work by clipping it to a smaller area the size of the counties.

Logistics

In the beginning I was worried about working remotely, specifically maintaining self-motivation and getting enough support for completion of my deliverables. But now after going through a few weeks I feel comfortable in both of these aspects. The weekly phone calls with my supervisor have helped me think about my most important tasks for the week and foreshadow anything I may need help on. I create an agenda for myself prior to the meeting so that I don’t miss any points and I can add notes or reminders to it during the meeting. Another aspect of communication I have been paying attention to are emails. I find myself thinking before I send it, is this an issue/problem that I can try to solve and troubleshoot for another hour or does this need immediate help from my supervisor? This pushes me to problem solve and reach out for assistance only when I have exhausted my resources.

In the following weeks I’ll be finishing up my maps, beginning the brochure, and hopefully exploring a few new coffee shops in Madison to change up the scenery!