Logging Track Plans

High -Tech Part Of Owl Plan Drawing Fire

Any day now, the Northern Spotted Owl will have a final plan for its recovery. The iconic bird’s 20 years as a threatened species curtailed logging on federal forests, and shrank the timber industry to a fraction of its historic size. The new Recovery Plan hasn’t even come out yet, and it’s already drawn a lawsuit.

Steve Ackers is doing what he, and lots of researchers do pretty often. He's whistling. Here he is last summer, trying to find a pair of northern spotted owls in the Andrews Experimental Forest east of Eugene.

"That’s our spotted owl," Ackers said.

It can take hours of hiking and whistling to track an owl down. Multiply that across thousands of known owl nest sites over the 20 years the owl has been on the Endangered Species list -- and you’re talking lots of worn out shoes, chapped lips, not to mention, time and money.

The costs of tracking owls got federal officials -- like Paul Henson with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service -- looking for alternatives. Henson says federal biologists and land managers could have relied on the tried and true old way of accounting for owls:

"You know, owl circles and cruder estimates of owl presence, or doing expensive spotted owl surveys to determine whether owls are there or not, over a series two or three years at a time. And those are quite labor-intensive, and expensive," he said.

So, federal officials decided to get scientists together to pool their research for a unique collaboration.

Henson says the goal was to chart with a computer model how the owl is doing.

"We asked the modelers to collect as much data as they can, to use state-of-the-art technology, whether it’s computer modeling technology, or it's Google-earth," he said.

Henson says this technology wasn’t around when the spotted owl first appeared on the Endangered Species list. He says the technology - the modeling tool – can help his own agency, as well as the Forest Service and other land managers, forecast how activities could affect the owl.

"We do not read the models as doing those things," Ann Forest-Burns said.

Forest-Burns is with the industry group, American Forest Resource Council. Her group filed a lawsuit In January over the modeling – or more specifically, the team the feds put together, to build the model.

The modeling team’s work was not being done in the open light of day, as required by the Federal Advisory Committee Act," she said.

Livescape nutrition journal for Windows Phone — windows phone 7 ...

Livescape is a nutrition journal for Windows Phone, According to the developer there are some nice features like OCR scan of Nutrition Facts labels, Nutrition Facts lookup and import, Pedometer, GPS tracking, and more see below .. they also informs us they are open to suggestions on the support site. The most “interesting” feature is probably the ability to scan Nutrition Facts labels with the camera, which works pretty well, provided the user is able to take a clear picture of it with their phone. A new version that takes advantage of Mango’s new features is currently in the works (such as, the ability to fully mix XNA with Silverlight for increased performance; use of the calendar APIs; local updating of Live Tiles) … press release and video demo below

Livescape (previously known as Life Tracker) is an activity and nutrition journal for Windows Phone 7 that features GPS tracking and the ability to count steps. Keep a log of your daily activities. Calculate the number of calories burned. Track your weight, calorie intake, and monitor your Nutrition Facts from day to day. Import Nutrition Facts using your phone’s camera with the help of OCR. Review your trends using any of the built in graphing features, and share your progress with friends by posting your activities on Facebook and Twitter!

Choose from an assortment of activities to track. Estimate your calories burned based on your height, age, gender, and weight. Set up weight plans to help you lose or gain weight.

Website : Livescape , Twitter : @livescapeapp

There is a trial version available and the full version is available for $4.99, The trial version is limited to 14 days and does not allow you to use the OCR scan feature, and does not allow you to use some of the Facebook sharing features, and does not allow you create or restore backups. Otherwise, everything else is fully functional during the 14 day trial period.

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