The Biodiversity of the Southeastern United States

Why AI? With AI becoming increasingly integrated into our lives, I've embraced it as a tool to enhance my work, studies, and for fun! Primarily, I use these tools to confirm my plant ID, but sometimes I also rely on tools for bird calls, herping, and identifying a particularly perplexing insect. Generally, I consider myself an intermediate-to-expert at flora and fauna in the southeast region, but the further I get from North Carolina, the less accurate I become. I'll be the first to admit uncertainty, and in those cases I often have an app or a resource I rely upon to point me in the right direction. It's much easier to pull out my phone and try to identify something - rather than keying out plant species like I have had to do on many occasions for work that relied upon the correct wetland plant ID. Often times you get the correct answer, or you get close enough to use your results as a starting point for further research. I've experimented with various tools, but I alw...

My personal review: A tool for Professionals and Land Owners/Land Managers Web Soil Survey is an incredibly helpful and powerful tool for customized soil investigations. Whether you're a landowner planning a garden or building a shed, or a professional environmental scientist needing detailed soils data for reports, this tool offers a wealth of features tailored to your selected location. Starting is straightforward: You select your "Area of Interest" by either uploading a shapefile or navigating to your area and draw a bounding box for investigation. For this exercise, I chose to investigate my own property.  I used my property as my "Area of Interest"  Once you've chosen your location you can start exploring all the features and really "digging" into the soils information. The tool allows you to explore the physical properties of soil in great detail, providing valuable information about flooding frequency, landforms, drainage classes, depth to w...

To understand the biodiversity in the Southeast, and to gain insight into the threats to biodiversity there, one needs an understanding of climate changes and current conditions. These are a few resources I found to be helpful: Southeast Regional Climate Center (SERCC) Image from SERCC, accessed 6.27.24 The Southeast Regional Climate Center has a ton of climate resources, and is a user-friendly and informative site established by UNC Chapel Hill. This site has a broad collection of climate data focused specifically on the Southeast.  Their " Climate Perspectives Too l" is interactive and allows the user to look at different variables across the region on specific dates, both observed and predicted.  This is really a one-stop shop for the Southeast climate data. It also includes links to other data sources, and most of its maps are provided by NOAA or are made from data extracted from NOAA. It was interesting to look at the precipitation maps and compare them from 2002...

Google My Maps - A Brief Review I'm a pretty experienced cartographer, and I've been using ArcMap desktop since 2012, and ArcPro since about 2019. I was interested to hear about Google's new mapping tool, Google My Maps, and was intrigued to give it a try. Specifically I wanted to find out whether or not it would be something I'd find useful at work for making quick maps. The interface is really user friendly, and for anyone who has even a little experience with Google Maps or Google Earth - using it comes rather naturally. I like a few things about this tool.  First, I like how quickly you can open it and get your map started. Unlike ArcPro, it's easy to make a new map without having to go through the whole "start a new project" process. I also like that you can tie your points of interest to photos easily - easier than in ArcMap in my opinion, and I like the functionality when you click on your point; just like in Google Maps/Earth, you see your descript...

So I put together a quick set of slides to introduce the basics of ecology. Enjoy!

Biodiversity: What it is... and why we should care Biodiversity describes the variety of living organisms on Earth, their genetic makeup within and between populations, and the intricate web of interactions between them that sustains life across ecosystems, regions, landscapes, and oceans. -Adapted from the National Research Council (US) Committee on Noneconomic and Economic Value of Biodiversity and the World Wildlife Fund's definitions of Biodiversity - intermingled with my own understanding.  So, why does it matter?  Biodiversity is vitally important. It's key to the proper functioning of an ecosystem. Each species has a role to play - a niche to fill. When we lose those characters, we lose their contribution to the system, and that leaves an open space for non-native, and often times invasive species, to fill. When this happens it can throw off the balance of the entire ecosystem and the intricate ways in which the plants, animals, fungi, and bacteria interact to maintai...