Ongoing research

Great commentary from Martin Isenburgon of LASTools fame on releasing data with false precision. This deals with the new open data release by the Environment Agency in England.

Sometimes in a world of towering skyscrapers, jumbo jets and warehouses big enough to hold a small planet--or at least a state the size of Rhode Island--we don't realize how small small is. Last weekend it was a veritable insect feast on our narrowleafed milkweed.

The first years of a tree's life are for building a structure for the future. Many varieties of trees are precocious and will bear fruit when they should be building structure.

We just received information on the following event: The Delta Stewardship Council will be hosting a Science Symposium on Invasive Aquatic Vegetation at UC Davis on September 15, 2015. See below for details and go to the DSC event website for the tentative agenda: http://deltacouncil.ca.

Here are the tag clouds from this year's GIS class: the why, how and what of our upcoming semester's projects. Word clouds from Wordle. The Why: what are the key problems class members want to focus on... The How: possible methods we will use... The What: some of the datasets that might be used...

Thank you, Mrs. Monarch. Thank you for laying your eggs on our newly planted narrowleaf milkweed. We planted the narrowleafed milkweed last spring, hoping we could coax you to come.

Yes, it happens. We've heard the stories and read some of the scientific literature about what a female praying mantis will do to her partner during the mating process. Sexual cannibalism. She'll bite the head off of her mate and eat it--but the mating process continues unabated.

Check out this cool Google #MapsHack...

Here in the Kelly Lab we talk a lot about effective ways to visualize data. How do we show the true weight and impact of those data we work with? How do we communicate uncertainty? I think this fellow Neil Halloran did a pretty great job with WWII.

Nitrogen and its Effect on the Balance of Vegetative and Reproductive Growth With the big avocado crop out there, the question came up about whether a grower should add extra nitrogen to encourage more canopy growth to protect the fruit from sunburn or whether that would cause the fruit to drop.