Rio Grande Chapter Report

I attended the Rio Grande Chapter 7 April,It was a good chance for me to get more information about a real applications of GIS science. The meeting was very well organized and controlled from time perspective. the time in this meeting is very well used, but I think that may be it will be better if the time for the meeting expanded more or reduce the load of schedule itself.
I jointed and enjoyed the talk of Steve Sesnie about his work of mapping rare habitat MBQ and how he utilized GIS and species distribution model to investigate the home and best locations for MBQ and how he deal with missing data problem. in his presentation, he clearing the research question about the MBQ current distribution and the best place or location to save and increase the survive chance for MBQ? moreover, he explained the modeling steps and show the major part of his work results.
in second talk on behalf of Aaryn Olsson, 
he highlited the importance of remote sensing technique in Phenology and he compared the spatially weighted ensemble approach with regional models methods. he found that both methods could produce some availabilities in results and performances.
In the Poster section,
I enjoined the presentation of different poster providers. the 5 poster actually were a good examples of GIS application in the natural life. Again, the good time management sometime make a stress load on the presenters. But in general I enjoined all posters. however, I have some notice on them. most of poster are very loaded by words, so the line was very small and it is hard to read the poster even if you are very close. I think the main idea from poster is to being an abstract so it have like a short, straightforward, and clear messages. As well, the picture or map should be an alternative of words. while to content of the most of posters were very good, I think that all of them very loaded with redundant information that could be eliminated form the poster and then the poster idea and messages could be easily realized.
In general, It was a very good experiences for me and I hope if I can attend this meeting every year.