NOTES AND ANNOUNCEMENTS

Announcing National Gap Analysis Program

Meeting in NevadaThe National Gap Analysis Program Meeting will be held December 6–8, 2005, at the Silver Legacy Resort Casino in Reno, Nevada. The U.S. Geological Survey (Gap Analysis Program), Environmental Protection Agency (Office of Research and Development), Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Bureau of Land Management will host the meeting. The focus will be the Southwest Regional Gap Analysis Project (SWReGAP) in Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico. Further information about the conference and registration information will be made available. For any additional questions, please contact Nicole Coffey at 208-885-3555 or ncoffey@uidaho.edu.

New Staff at National GAP Office

Three of our colleagues have left the GAP office in the past year:

• GIS Analyst Ree Brannon has returned to school at the University of Idaho to pursue a Ph.D. in conservation social sciences.
• GIS technician Joe Cullen has returned to school at the University of Arizona to pursue a Ph.D. in economics.
• GIS technician Ajay Sisodia has completed his master´s degree and left us to pursue his career with GeoAnalytics in Madison, Wisconsin.

We will miss Ree, Joe, and Ajay and wish them well in their new endeavors. We have hired new staff to take over their tasks: Jocelyn Aycrigg, Nicole Coffey, and Todd Sajwaj. In addition to pursuing her Ph.D., Jocelyn is working half-time at the National Gap Program Office as a Conservation Biologist. She is coordinating the Northwest Regional Gap Project, which began in September 2004 and which encompasses Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, Washington, and Oregon. She is also working with various states to help them finish up their GAP projects. Jocelyn was born and grew up in Colorado. She received her B.A. degree from the University of Colorado at Boulder in environmental biology and her M.S. from the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry. Her thesis explored the socio-spatial behavior of white-tailed deer in the Adirondack Mountains of New York. Jocelyn’s professional experiences include working with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Pacific Gas and Electric in San Francisco Bay on a contaminant study of the bay as well as a power line bird mortality project. In upstate New York, she was a contractor with Colorado State University in the Environmental division of Fort Drum (a military installation) doing GIS modeling and data management. She also worked with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Research Laboratories (USACERL) and the University of Illinois in Champaign, Illinois, modeling the impact of military training on desert tortoises in the Mojave Desert. After that experience, she worked at the Illinois Natural History Survey while she was the Illinois Gap Project leader. Jocelyn then decided to return to graduate school to pursue her Ph.D. in wildlife population ecology. She is currently a Ph.D. student in the Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources at the University of Idaho. Her dissertation focuses on the population dynamics and genetic population structure of elk throughout Idaho. Her research question addresses whether the metapopulation concept can be applied to improve the management of elk. You can contact Jocelyn at 208-885-3901 or e-mail her at Aycrigg@uidaho.edu.

Nicole Coffey is GAP’s new Administrative Officer. She has a bachelor’s degree from California State University, Sacramento, and will be attending graduate school at the University of Idaho. She comes to us with seven years’ experience working as an administrative assistant for a prominent law firm in California. As Administrative Officer, Nicole’s responsibilities include budget and financial analysis, record keeping for all agreements, oversight of agreement closeout procedures, and agreement audits. If you have any questions related to new proposals, agreement matters, or any general questions related to the Gap Analysis Program, please contact Nicole at 208-885-3555 or e-mail her at ncoffey@uidaho.edu.

Todd Sajwaj grew up in St. Paul, Minnesota, and earned his B.S. in ecology, evolution, and behavior at the University of Minnesota. Following a period working as an itinerant field technician in Michigan, South Carolina, and California, Todd attended the University of North Dakota, where he earned an M.S. degree in biology. His thesis research focused on the thermal ecology of Blanding’s turtles at the Army National Guard’s Camp Ripley Training Facility in central Minnesota. Todd then went on to attend Utah State University (USU), where he earned a second M.S. degree in geography and earth sciences, specializing in the application of remote sensing/GIS technologies to issues in landscape ecology. His thesis at USU investigated the sensitivity of a temporal sequence of landscape metrics to significant ecological disturbances at the Camp Williams Training Facility in central Utah.Todd’s professional experience began with directing land cover mapping efforts for the Nevada ecoregion of the Southwest Regional GAP Project while working for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Subsequently, he went on to continue mapping land cover and developing a geospatial data browser for Lockheed Martin’s Environmental Services office in Las Vegas, Nevada. You can contact Todd at 208-885-3720 or e-mail him at tsajwaj@uidaho.edu.