Recently in SAL…

The end of January saw an increasing influx of staff and students return from their summer fieldwork and holidays, so its been a bit quiet on the blog but very busy in SAL!

Most notably over the last couple of weeks we have:

• Taken delivery of some more COWs, bringing our herd to 9
• Refreshed several computers in the TOL (Spatial Research Lab), only TOL11 to go and the lab will be full of shiny new computers
• Updated several sections of the SAL Portal – see below for details
• Done a lot of back-end work on the systems that help us to support the applied spatial science research projects – which will make it easier for us to keep track of all of you
• Helped to develop a (we think!) fun mini-lecture on the dangers of drop-bears and developing a field work plan for identifying the hunting grounds of this dangerous creature.

The SAL Portal has had a revamp for the new year and now sports several new pages that you might find useful if you are just starting your research project. The SAL Data Repository section has information on some of the more popularly used data sets under the themes elevation, water resources, and vegetation. Geology is the next theme to be showcased, we’ll let you know when it is up.

If you haven’t visited the SAL Portal yet, you might want to check out the Research Project Support section too. It has links to some tips and tools for making a preliminary exploration of your study area and creating metadata records for the data you are likely to generate with your research.

In slightly less exciting news, we have had to abandon the COW naming project (Boo! 😦 ) and will be going with the much more functional (though less herd-like) convention of giving our COWs numbers instead of names. There should be some COWs ready for teaching staff to borrow for development of practical resources later this week – all going to plan!

That’s it for now 🙂

See you in the next update!