The data…the data…

Entering Data into our master data file in the old GIS lab at CSU Channel Islands.

Key to our efforts to restore the bottomland hardwood forests in coastal Louisiana is rigorous science.  And that mean rigorous data.  And that means rigorous quality control.

Typing in band transect data in the old GIS lab in Bell Tower at CSU Channel Islands.

The challenge with bringing large groups of folks into the forest and divvying them up into distinct data collection teams has always been (and always will be) the integration of the data products at the end of the effort.

While our trip is over, our data QA/QC (Quality Assurance and Quality Control) and data formatting journey has not yet ended.  This year we have run into several struggles with Google Sheets.  Apparently as we thought we were nearing the finish line, we discovered that our large data files were getting trimmed/truncated do to a quirk in the spreadsheet layout.  This seems to have resulted in us effectively losing several band transects-worth of data.  As everyone was burned out (and also a few mysteriously suffering due to the pizza I bought for dinner), we called it a night.

We will reconvene next week to then hopefully finish up our data.  Somehow I suspect that it might take longer than I hope…