Science Features

Science Features are a great way to find out about the science activities conducted at the FORT both in the past and today. Written in plain English, science features highlight the exciting work conducted everyday by FORT Scientists.

Software for Assisted Habitat Modeling (SAHM) for VisTrails

The Software for Assisted Habitat Modeling (SAHM) was created to assist with habitat suitability modeling within VisTrails, an open-source system designed to integrate the best of scientific workflow and visualization systems. SAHM combines environmental data for a study area with field data for a particular species to analyze the habitat requirements for the species, and predicts it’s potential distribution based on habitat suitability.

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Snakes in the Wrong Places: Gordon Rodda’s Career in Invasive Species Research

When USGS research zoologist Gordon G. Rodda was a graduate student at Cornell University studying behavioral biology of alligators —or later, completing a post-doc at the Smithsonian Institute studying the social behavior of green iguanas in Venezuela or following that, as a statistics and sociobiology instructor at the University of Tennessee—he did not foresee that his professional future was in snakes. Lots of snakes, and in places they don’t belong.

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