Changes in GIS over time, NatureServe Explorer, and Baking with Lori Scott

Welcome back to Environmental Professionals Radio, Connecting the Environmental Professionals Community Through Conversation, with your hosts Laura Thorne and Nic Frederick! 

On today’s episode, we talk with Lori Scott, Chief Information Officer and Vice President for Technology & Partnerships at NatureServe about Changes in GIS over time, NatureServe Explorer, and Baking.   Read her full bio below.

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Showtimes: 
4:42  Nic & Laura discuss the NatureServe Explorer website
9:33  Interview with Lori Scott starts
13:23 NatureServe Explorer
27:40  Changes in GIS over time
33:44  Field Notes
37:04 Baking

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This podcast is produced by the National Association of Environmental Professions (NAEP). Check out all the NAEP has to offer at NAEP.org.

Connect with Lori Scott at https://www.linkedin.com/in/lori-scott-1986493/

Guest Bio:
Lori is the Chief Information Officer and Vice President for Technology and Partnerships for NatureServe, the authoritative source for biodiversity data in North America. She oversees NatureServe’s technology team, with a portfolio that includes software product development, server administration, and user support for mission critical enterprise information management and delivery systems. Since joining NatureServe in 2000, Lori has led the successful transformation of the organization’s core biodiversity data platform Biotics 5 and its public information delivery platform NatureServe Explorer. Lori’s team supports NatureServe’s North American network of biodiversity information centers with implementation of sophisticated online tools to automate environmental review and to manage and direct treatment for invasive species in their jurisdictions. Her team was recognized with the IDG CIO 100 Award in 2016 and the Computerworld Premier 100 Technology Leaders Award in 2017.

Lori’s work experience includes 10 years serving Lockheed Martin Corporation in the field of software integration and information systems development. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Mathematics from Bucknell University in her home state of Pennsylvania. She lives in Arlington, Virginia and enjoys hiking, traveling, and cooking – and she makes a wicked good peach pie!

Music Credits
Intro: Givin Me Eyes by Grace Mesa
Outro: Never Ending Soul Groove by Mattijs Muller

Transcript

Nic 
Hello and welcome to EPR with your favorite environmental enthusiast Nic and Laura. On today's episode, Laura and I discussed the nature sort of explore website. We talked to Lori Scott about changes in GIS over time, nature surf, explore and baking. And finally, speaking of our conversation, here are some fun facts on polar bears. Their skin is actually black. They refer is translucent and only appears white because it's reflecting light, kind of cool. And only 2% of their hunts are successful. It's kind of a bummer, but you try catching a seal. So, yeah, there you go. That's polar bears. Other fun facts. Polar bears are invisible. Pretty much they can cover they cover their noses when they're hunting, not to like hide the black dot. It's very cool. Oh, no, there's

Laura 
a black dog coming after me. It's

Nic 
crazy like that. We actually had a project in Alaska that had people that were like, Yeah, we gotta have rifles out because if we don't, the polar bears will come after us. And it's just like, what? Oh, there's

Laura 
only 2% Chance look at you. So yeah,

Nic 
exactly. Now we know that Yeah. I'm pretty sure that their hands on humans are far more successful.

Laura 
That's 2% of their seal hunts are successful. Right, right.

Nic 
They really are and understand someone could get away from them. Yeah, they are. Very scary. They really don't like anything. They don't care at all. They're just hungry. And so they will come after people. They'll come after whatever. Dogs doesn't matter. They will eat it and they will haunt you. So like the the guys we were talking to you like in their like bunkers like this is like that Coast Guard. And they were just like, yeah, they meet you at the dock with a rifle. Like their assault rifles like the 60s or whatever. And then advantage just shoot it off in the air and run away. The big deal. It's like leave you don't have it though. You'll be lunch. Yeah, and like one of the guys was telling a story about like, he ran outside to grab something like really quickly like it was like two seconds he's like I just I left like something like a tool outside went to grab it came back and close the door polar bear. It was just like there and like they knew they existed but like he just hadn't didn't have any idea that it was literally right outside.

Laura 
So black dot

Nic 
blended in well

Laura 
drew like the polar bear around the corner covering his nose. Just waiting.

Nic 
Dang. Dang, he's only for two seconds. Stop there.

Laura 
He's the Yeah, one of those 10% who survived. Right? Okay. Is that music?

Hey everybody, it's that time of year again. Time to start planning for the NAACP annual conference and training symposium. Get the dates on your calendar may 5 through eighth in Minneapolis and we hope to see you there. All right, folks, we do not have a sponsor for today's episode. Oh, wait, but we do. It's just Nick doing something funny. So if you'd like to use this space for your company or your upcoming events, please contact us and we will make that happen. Or you can go to the website to environmental professionals radio.com and check out the sponsor form. So alright, Nick, you got 30 seconds to make us giggle with what you got for sale today.

Nic 
All right. Well, I know many of us, me personally, as someone who doesn't have kids, this doesn't apply to me. Right. And this is I'm sorry to say it it's only for parents and very specifically for dads to keep forgetting their kids. So I know what happens to happens all the time. You know, we're all we're all guilty. of it like, oh, yeah, I have three children. Now introducing data. All right. This is an absolutely revolutionary drug that will not will not let you forget your kids. No matter what you're doing. Doesn't matter where you are. Whenever you take this drug. You'll know exactly where your children are. And I'm telling you right now revolutionising this thing. Men across the planet will now have no excuse as to why they didn't pick up their kids. So there you go. That's it. Dad are all getting the stores now. As Seen On TV called now almost it will suit you another shipment a secondary shipment of a Saturday off which is the depressed version of the drug. There you go. How about that you had a role to really use it. It's nice glamorous today. Hey, sometimes we got puns.

Laura 
Let's get to our segment.

Nic 
Interest service floor is super cool. Like I genuinely wish as a kid, I'd had access to that like I mean, I'm dating myself. And I can say I broke I brought up all my fat files shout out to all those that that had those. But that's a very specific age range, I think.

Laura 
Yeah, a friend with a seven year old I'm totally sharing it with them. Yeah,

Nic 
like zoo books was another one that I had that I loved little magazine. Yeah, got it. Sam knows what's a home zoo books zoo books. And they were like little pistol magazine full monthly subscription type deal. Yeah, yeah. It was like a kid version of National Geographic kind of. Yeah. And it was adorable and like with no wildlife backfiles I don't even know if they still exist. I wonder if that even. It was like you can get them on Amazon. How about that new one. That is so funny. And yeah, it was pretty cool. Had a little binders and everything. Very 90s and look at it all.

Laura 
Okay, so like I'm on here right now. I'm gonna put in polar bear. See what happens.

Nic 
Oh, for any tracer service store? Yeah. It's it's wrong.

Laura 
We do it again. I broke it. Okay, try again. Okay to search for species and ecosystems.

Nic 
It's just like I just put in her the hooded merganser and it popped right up. Yeah.

Laura 
Oh, it worked this time. I don't know what I see. I broke it the first time.

Nic 
Yeah. No, it's pretty great. And, you know, so it was like statuses where it's found, like, it's just such a cool site. I know. Yeah. I hate to just brag on it, but it's really neat. It's really, really neat. You know?

Laura 
There's polar bears here. Not not here where I am, but the places I'm looking at.

Nic 
I didn't know that. Okay, now I'm looking at polar bear and sea versus many retirements. I

Laura 
mean, it's showing but maybe it's probably like, because

Nic 
it shows the whole province so like, yes, it does towards the top. Yeah. So they probably actually, I don't think there Yeah,

Laura 
because like, this is eastern Canada, not Western. I wouldn't have thought that.

Nic 
Yeah, they're all over. It's kind of a funny thing, like we actually like to. There are certain species that are endangered in the US that are not endangered in the world. And I didn't know that. I just assumed that if they were endangered here, they're a danger to everywhere and it's a silly little thing, but there's like some species something I never even thought of. Yeah, like there's some species of like bird, for example, that that are only found in Alaska. And they're very small numbers there. But they're like all over Eurasia. Even wolves, like gray wolves are kind of like that. Where there. There's far, far fewer than many of us and around the world. But still, we're doesn't mean they're not worth conserving because they're still part of the ecosystems here. But it is funny because we tend to have our national lens and projected globally and that's a very good example of it. You just assume there's just off it's not here. It's not anywhere. And it's not always true. But I mean, that's what I love about it, though, like the nature sort of does have a lot of like really fun facts like we can actually scrub

Laura 
there is a million habitats, animals. It's an endless scroll here.

Nic 
I went to like scrub j which I believe is dangered endangered in Florida,

Laura 
but the only place that script fees are cool. I've seen them. Yeah,

Nic 
yeah, they're super awesome. But yeah, like no, I would have loved to read this. You know, like polar bears had a circumpolar distribution in northern hemisphere, including the Eastern Siberia and lefty you know, that's what I would have read that up as a kid and I probably will later anyways, just just just for fun, because I just

Laura 
want to know that a little obese is my spirit animal. So I have to look that up.

Nic 
Well, well, the nature service should be just North Americans North America.

Laura 
Yeah. So it's not actually coming up. So yeah. Alright, so I'll be waiting for the global version of

Nic 
yeah, let's go Laurie. Come on. You're not doing enough.

Laura 
Not in here. Okay.

Nic 
It's only North American. See this? What happens when I get into software? I tried to break it. Yeah, well, that's the whole point. Is for the laws of the world to come in.

Laura 
Alright, you know what wouldn't work it would probably be like,

Unknown Speaker 
4 million things.

Laura 
Oh, that's the that's really cool. For anybody who's like an organ person. You can be on this for hours.

Nic 
Yeah. So I'm telling you, it's absolutely that. Very

Laura 
cool. Well, we're gonna talk to her about this in the interview. So let's get to

Nic 
it. All right. Hello, and welcome back to EPR. Today we have Lori Scott, the Chief Information Officer for nature surf on the show. It's great to have

Lori Scott 
you Lori. Thanks, Vicki. It's really good to be here. Oh, man,

Nic 
I just there's so many questions. I don't even know where to start. But let's say we love to dive into people's career paths. So what inspired you to study mathematics and how did it kind of get you to where you are now?

Lori Scott 
Well, I was really undecided in college and undergrad was what I wanted to be when I grew up, so I wanted to pick the most, I guess neutral major, I could but keep all my options open. I also I was just telling someone this story last night I took one computer science class and I think had that gone well I would have gone that route. But in the era that I went to school, thinking computer science was daunting. You had to sign up for time on a mainframe and that often meant staying up really late at night, waiting in line and it was a multi day process to debug your software because you had to like wait for the like, processing time and I was a varsity athlete as well and I just couldn't give up that much sleep. So I'm like, I'm gonna stick with maths that simple.

Nic 
Sci Fi, which I don't think anyone's ever said before, I'm going to keep it simple with math.

Lori Scott 
That hurts my brain. That tells you a little bit about me. I just like I like solving problems. I really, really do.

Nic 
Okay, so how does that how did that help you then transition into the workforce? Well,

Lori Scott 
I went into I decided I wanted to work in Washington DC out of school, and I moved to the city first and then figured out what to do second and I also had really mad typing skills. I took typing in high school. So I got a job as a like an assistant because I could type really fast and I was working in in a group that also did economic analysis and they saw my math background and they put me to work on on actual research projects. And then I went from there into a software development role even though I said I only took one computer science class, but I had I had enough to qualify for that. And it just kind of went from there. So I've always been in the technology field other than the stints working in restaurants and as a typing assistant, answering phones and stuff like that. So yeah, I worked for 10 years before I came to my current position at Nietzsche, sir, in a corporate setting, doing software development system integration, and then I just decided to look for something with a sort of a different purpose and mission and that's what led me into the nonprofit world and I've never looked back.

Speaker 2 
Yeah, that is so great. And like so like okay, nature serve as a website and I'll let you talk a little bit more about what it is and what the mission is in a bit. But like it's like the website that I dreamed up as a kid like I would go to like, had the things called wildlife backfiles. I don't know if anybody even knows what those are. But they were like in the mail and you get a species report. Right? And they would tell you every single thing they want to know about certain species and they had a whole bunch of different ones and I was really proud of the fact that I knew so many random weird species, right? So imagine my delight years later when I am, you know, tasked with writing a biological resources report and there someone tells me, hey, go to nature surf, and that's where you'll find the information on your species. And I'm like, What's that? And I'm telling you the first time I used it, it was like the little kid that five year old and I was like, you know, so that's kind of I have to forgive myself for that. And so because it's just I couldn't get had to get it out there. But it's such a cool site. What is nature surf do? Why am I gushing? about it so much?

Lori Scott 
I love that story. First of all, that you got species fax in the mail and and just devoured them. So nature serve. We are a nonprofit, but we're the hub of a network of what are called Natural Heritage programs. They're in every state. They're also throughout Canada. So we cover geographically the US and Canada. And we we document comprehensively, which species and ecosystems exist, where they're found. And then we also assess how they're doing so we really try to triage which species are most imperiled and how do we help them so we really do focus on the more rare threatened and endangered species nature. Surf Explorer is the website where you can go get all those facts. You can search by species, you can search by place, you can also search by status. So you could say, oh, what are the most threatened species where I live? And you can get a list and then you can dig into each profile? So those species fax profiles, you were getting in the mail. We have like a whole database of those.

Nic 
Yeah, I know. And that's the that's the part that was so cool. For me. I was like, Oh my gosh, this is literally all I ever wanted as a kid. It's all right here. And it's like I say it's a really comprehensive list. And I can say we're gonna dive into like what your current role is in a bit, but how do you manage all that data?

Lori Scott 
Well, nature serve as a nonprofit, we're not that large. We're only 60 to 70 staff. But the power is that we have this whole network. So we've got 1000 scientists and information technologists that are working across this network, and it's a joint effort. So we collaboratively have developed this database over 50 years. And information poured into these systems that the beginning you know, we seeded the database with information from museums and herbaria. But over these decades, scientists in our network were out in the field independently gathering surveys in the field of species in their states and their provinces. So we've developed really the unparalleled resource of field verified occurrences of where species populations are. And they're ranked. They're categorized so you can say which are the best remaining populations of a given species. And we look at incoming threats and those inform the status assessments that we do. So yeah, all this information is a real village. It takes a village scientist bringing all their expertise biologists from you know, botany, zoology, ecology, the geospatial engineers, you name it.

Laura 
Yeah. Wesley Knapp on here, right, Nick?

Nic 
Yeah, yeah, that's right. Yeah. And, yeah,

Laura 
he talks about that work in depth. So that's right. The back end part he told us all about the front end.

Lori Scott 
That's right. That's exactly right.

Laura 
Well, for those of you listening, Nick had to pop off of here for some personal things. So I'm going to take over this interview with Laurie and we'll march on without him. So Laurie, tell us about some projects that you're working on. I know that there's one that you're pretty excited about. That's right. So

Lori Scott 
we were just talking about nature surf explorer with Nick, we have a an add on or an extension of that we're calling nature explorer Pro. So niche of explorer, it's free. It's open to anyone. It's anonymous. You don't have to register or anything but explorer Pro lets you create an account and login with just your email address. And then we deliver a whole bunch of additional information, more spatial information, so interactive mapping tools. So you can look in detail at the distribution of one species or you can search an area and generate a report on what species are documented to occur in that location. So it can provide sort of a screening list of potential species at risk in a location and we're also incorporating into the tool, lots and lots of models. Of predicted distribution for species. So we've developed 1000s of predicted species habitat models, that takes all that great data I was just describing from our network and it kind of extrapolates on that using a bunch of environmental predictor layers so we can infer where else it's likely first species to occur. And that can really fill in the map of where we haven't been to survey on the ground and give you a really high confidence estimate of where else you might look to find species. So we're really excited about bringing all that data we've been developing and getting out into the hands of people who need it.

Laura 
That's awesome. I used to work for Hillsborough County, and we had 40 years of water quality monitoring data, and I was our database person. And it's so much fun to dive in there and pull that information out and make you know, predictions inferences. But for this program for you guys who do you intend to use it? Is it for lay persons is it for other scientists? It's

Lori Scott 
all of the above. So I see uses for you know, lay people really the kid and Nick You know if you're really enthusiastic about the place where you are or about a certain species, just getting more information to those folks a lot of government use, both state and federal people who are responsible for land management decisions will get in for access to this information to inform their planning, environmental consultants that are supporting or or private industry that's looking to maybe do a project and wants to get information to inform that those project plans on siting decisions. So we serve a lot of audiences. We're kind of a one stop shop at nature servant and from research to environmental impact types of use cases.

Laura 
That's awesome. And then so how do you source the data where is it coming from? Yeah.

Lori Scott 
So the location data on species occurrences is primarily coming from the nature serve network. So those are state natural heritage. programs throughout the US and in Canada. They're known by a different name conservation data centers, but they're the same kind of thing and they're, they're, you know, responsible in their jurisdictions for being the authority on at risk species and ecosystems. So we are the hub of that network when we aggregate data from throughout the US and Canada. And we work together with those partners at the state and province level, to assess how species are doing so the source information that that is mapped comes from the states and provinces we sometimes supplement that from other sources. If there's a species that's not well mapped, or well documented. We'll look out onto places like aI naturalist or other citizen science applications, and other researchers that we know about. So we're always trying to bring good quality data into the system to give make it the best we can. That's

Laura 
awesome. How do you so I know from experience that pull in data from different sources can be very tricky. Measuring and different different equipment, different measurement units and things like that. And just validating whether it's quality, you know, are they using instruments that are calibrated, you know, especially the citizen science stuff, what goes into and I want to ask you these questions, because there may be people out there who like math who like coding or maybe don't know that they do, but they might be interested in this conversation and go, Oh, that sounds fun. I know for me, especially as a woman and back when I started I was I ended up same as you I typed really fast. I got an assistant to an assistant job and then a year later I was doing programming. So I fell into doing that kind of thing and it didn't take it as far as you did. I didn't see any like space for me in it back then. So I would like to talk about it so people know that there's space for it. And if you have a mind for it that you know you can do this work and you can even do it in environmental spaces, right? Because there is all this data in the environmental world and someone needs to manage it, massage it, validate it. So what goes into your work during the day like are you looking at your automations Are you putting in new programs? What is your day look like? What's exciting because I love it. I want to hear what you're actually doing because this is like this is what I couldn't like a path I could have been on and I hope not. So I want to hear.

Lori Scott 
Sure. So a day in my life. It may not be as exciting as a day in some of my colleagues lives who are actually touching the data on a day to day basis. But my team at Nietzsche said we're developing software. We're building technology to support what we do. But also we've built you know, business critical systems that are used by these state agencies to manage this data so geospatial data, massive databases on all these species and ecosystems. You mentioned at the beginning of that question, you know, the challenges of aggregating dissimilar data. Well, one of the hallmarks of our network is we've developed really rigorous data standards and data methodologies. So we were designed from the beginning. It's really just designed from the beginning as a standards based data organization. So we created this network and we set them up with a common data model and data base tools so that it would make it possible to synthesize and aggregate this information most networks like ours, I think, don't have that luxury and they're kind of stitch together after the fact and you're doing a lot of crosswalking and massaging of the data. So we've got that advantage. Now. We do have to worry about that when we are integrating data from outside that network. But you know, one of the things we have to do is harmonize taxonomy and what that means is we might call a species by a different name in different places, but there's ways to crosswalk or aggregate data and relate data across synonyms and use other techniques to make sure the quality control is there that we're really aggregating the data into the right part of the database. So let's see in terms of the day to day then yes, nature serve and really our natural heritage programs in the States is there are people in your audience listening who have that bug to you know, work on really important data challenges, it would be an excellent career path. I think it's just so much relevant, impactful work happening in these programs. When jobs come open and the nature surf network. We advertise them on our website. So there'll be database managers or GIS specialists or other disciplines on the tech side or the data management side. There's also biologists who are doing more of those field work who know the ins and outs of the plant taxonomy and botany and zoology and their area. So we cover a lot of related disciplines in our field, from the science to the technology. And what I really value is how we all work together. So I just learned so much working with so many biologists that I didn't I didn't study biology in college, but I've picked up a lot and just working day to day with everybody.

Laura 
Yeah, that was another question that I kind of have was like, how did you make a jump from the industry that you were in which is heavy just engineering into environmental? Was it accidental, you just applied for a job or were you looking to make a switch like that?

Lori Scott 
It was a little bit both a little accidental, you know, I got to 10 year mark and my previous job, or I was doing software development system integration, and I wanted to make a change, and back in that timeframe, so I've been at nature serve for 23 years. Jobs were advertised in the newspaper classifieds. Pretty much and I saw an ad for a GIS project manager. And I had been doing I had gotten exposed to GIS mapping software in my last years of the job that I was in. So that was my sort of skill set hook into the job and it was in a nonprofit and it thought it you know, I thought it just sounded really interesting and really important work and a nice way to channel the skills I had developed in technology to a different end and I've just never looked back. It's been so fascinating and eye opening and one really interesting. I don't know side note is the career I had before I worked in a classified setting. So I worked on technology where I had to have a security clearance, lots of secret stuff behind closed doors. And I was really shocked and amazed and coming to work for each serve how much of our data we really have to be secure about our handling of it because we publish as much as we can but the most imperiled species, the last few remaining populations that's sensitive data. So we have to take care to sometimes blur the precise locations of those remaining populations. And we do that in consultation with our partners in the states and provinces in they set the rules of like what data is appropriate to share publicly, and what data should be blurred to respect or protect the potential risk to the species. Oh,

Laura 
wow, that's interesting. I never really thought of that. But that's that's important stuff. Yeah, exactly. And but it's, you have to hide that. It

Lori Scott 
is you want it all out there because you know ultimately, there's power and information and the information is to help safeguard this species. But there are risks potential risks of persecution or harm to a species that might be collectible. I don't know think about orchids or cute turtles. And people may not intend to do harm, but they could inadvertently do harm or even sometimes species can be over loved, you know, trying to get out and see a bird that you want to add to your life list or a rare plant that could get trampled if too many people discover it. And then I can't find it. Where is it?

Laura 
Oh, terrible. That's really cool. Thanks for sharing all that. So you will have been doing this work for 23 years with GIS so I know I worked with GIS for the last 10 or more years give or take, and it's changed so so much so 20 years ago. How's that looking compared to now? Yeah,

Lori Scott 
very different. Very different indeed. The leaps and bounds of technology evolution over my career. It's been nothing short of amazing are beginning humble beginnings. Before I got to nature serve. The system was literally index cards. And it's progressed through punchcards era of computing to databases relational databases, GIS was added as I was coming in to the organization. So we had paper maps that hung on files and a Map Room and each state office and they were topo maps and they had sticky dots indicating the locations of species that had been found and they were color coded for plants and animals and there were details in the margins of the paper maps. When I joined we were converting to use GIS for the first time so there was we've always use ESRI GIS software and it was there was a PC arc info version and then we had ArcView was the first version that I was integrating into our systems. And then we use ArcGIS Server now and we're getting ready to make another leap forward into upgrading to like the latest ArcGIS Enterprise with portal in a way to like bring all these data together across all the states in a in a very performant way and moving into the cloud. So we've gone from server desktop installations to sort of centralized but on servers we own to moving now into the cloud. So a lot of evolutions and just the the power of what you can do in online. GIS today, which I remember took supercomputers to do not that long ago. I mean in my career span, which is fully two decades. I

Laura 
know can you imagine
________________
Laura 
But imagine the next set of career when someone starts out at this level and 20 years later what that's going to be like I don't even can't even imagine but I bet as he already knows the AI on top of it

Lori Scott 
artificial intelligence is common man i It's there's some interesting I think things coming that it's almost hard to imagine the power of that but to an AI just we all have to hope it's going to be a power that's used for for goods.

Laura 
Yeah, well, you touched on like, information knowledge is power, but that power in the wrong hands is still power right? So it's yeah, it's a little can be scary. But yeah, let's hope it's a good future and some good but as far as like using being a user of the software, it's so exciting. Yeah,

Lori Scott 
I mean, we hope we could really help users you know, you can get information overload you know, there's all this information online, but how do you find what you need? So the power of these tools like chat GPT style tools to help you quickly navigate an interface like ours and like, ask just the normal phrasing of a question. I want to find the plants that are in this kind of soil in this kind of location, you know, you could start to really turn just a human phrasing of a question into a quick database response. Using tools like that, that you know, today takes a lot of programming of an interface and all kinds of query structures to get to the backend of the database. But I'm excited to see where this will go and also the reduction and time it will take for us to maintain that high quality data. We're really excited to see where that takes us soon, where we could much more quickly assess how species are doing and more closer to real time versus spending hours and hours and hours per species gathering all this information across the internet from the literature or bringing it together or reading it analyzing it. Computers can do that a lot faster.

Laura 
So now do you have advice for other people who would might want to get into this work? Do you do men Tempe? Like do you do mentoring events? Do you go to women in STEM things and you know, help share people's love for math.

Lori Scott 
I shouldn't be doing more of that. And I look forward to doing more of that as I'm sort of coming to the later part of my career and when I expect I'll have some more time. I have gone to some and I definitely go to conferences and a lot of the traffic we get if we're exhibiting at conferences, often younger folks early in the career they might be still students or they're graduating and they're looking to get some knowledge to help you know, form their career paths. So I definitely done a lot of that informally, and some more formally, I guess, I would say volunteering, interning, whether it's unpaid or paid increasingly there are paid volunteer and intern opportunities that can help you get exposure to a field without going all in or committing and it can be a two way win win for the prospective employer as well as the person looking to gain that experience and knowledge and just building your network. So joining professional societies, you know, there's NAEP but there's society for conservation GIS is one that's a really fun and helpful community and there's resources where the community just answers your questions. Through listserv, I don't know if they're still caught on this there but that you know, kind of an email gathering of questions and answers and people just help each other out through these kinds of communities. So if you're in a field or looking to break into a field, I always recommend that because you'll get to know people, you'll get to see exposure, the kinds of places they're working, the challenges they're solving, and see how they're helping each other to solve those challenges. That's

Laura 
great. All right, well, now it's time for field notes, the part of our show where we talk to our guests about memorable moments, and we encourage our listeners to share their stories using the hashtag field notes so that we can read them on a future episode and your field may look different than other people's fields. But you'd be like conferences and presentations. Do you have any, like, fun stories of you know, something that happened doing your work that was unexpected or, or just a proud moment?

Lori Scott 
Well, yeah, like I know some of my colleagues who are out in the actual field to have more interesting, funny stories from you know,

Laura 
wild stories. Yeah, exactly. And

Lori Scott 
you know, when you're when your field is the keyboard, it's not quite as exciting, but I would say in terms of proud moments, I've keep talking about the network and how we support those partners. But for me, that is the thing I'm most proud about. And it's most gratifying to me about my job at nature serve working with these partners across the states. It just it amplifies the impact of what we can do. And so I am really proud about tools we've built that we've been able to through the power of that network spread proliferate across the country much more quickly than they might otherwise have happened. So we've built these tools to automate environmental review and assessment of what projects what impact a project might have on the ground for rare species. So by building that tool together, we've saved on the cost it takes to build something like that some, you know, powerful technology, and we can share it over and over, you know, build it once, deploy it many times. So I'm really proud of the unique ways each state makes those tools their own. I mean in Colorado, for example, they built into this tool, an ROI assessment. So it generates the return on an investment of protecting a given place on the landscape. So they brought together these economic analyses to value the land and how much return on that landscape being put into protection. Or conservation could have into the future. So that was one really unique add on to the tool that we hadn't thought of other states took this tool and made it their wildlife action planning tool, like really brought their state wildlife Action Plan, which is a requirement for all states to have the fish and wildlife agencies produce these but they can sit on a shelf as a PDF, and they're not really being used. So making it an online interactive tool where you can get into the map and see that see the impacts on species and habitats of those plants. That was really another gratifying example. So I'm proud of those tools. We've built on a shoestring budget and then been able to proliferate them.

Laura 
That's awesome. And then you guys have won some recognition, too, right? We have

Lori Scott 
Yeah, this software that we've built and evolved over the decades it's won awards, you know, when, before I joined it won awards, but we applied again and got some recognition from the like the CIO 100 award recognize our biodiversity information software. We got a computer world Technology Award, and our state partners have award winning innovations. as well. So that is, that's pretty exciting.

Laura 
That's awesome. Congratulations. Thank you. And before we end with you here, I gotta ask you about this hobby of yours because I'm really surprised this I think this is our 100 and 50th episode, or interview ish, maybe. And I don't think anyone has had this as their big hobby that we talk about his speaking. Yeah.

Lori Scott 
Well, that's a shame that there's not bakers on your on your guests list. We'll have to fix that. I don't Yeah, I just love I love baking. I always have i i learned how to bake from my dad actually, who learned from his mom. So I love making pie especially anything big scones is a big one too. But there's something about pie. Pie, peach, who each pie and sometimes or the twist like with raspberries and it

Laura 
was delicious. But I just

Lori Scott 
think there's a just a reaction of delight I find in people's when you bring a homemade pie to them, and maybe they didn't learn how to make their own pie crust and they've only bought the pie crust that's, you know, pre formed at the grocery store. And I find it just people can be easily impressed by like that touch of a homemade pie crust. And I'll tell you a secret and my pie crust. I use vodka. Yeah, there's pie dough recipe, all butter and you use vodka at like frozen ice cold because you want really ice cold lit and very little liquids. You want the flour and the butter to come together but you don't want to melt the butter in any way. So you want to minimally work the dough and vodka it you know it dissipates in the baking process, but it's like ice cold and it brings the dough together quickly and effectively. And I find it to That's my secret to a really good podcast.

Laura 
This is like your open data source mindset. I'm just gonna give it all away.

Lori Scott 
That's right Well, I didn't invent it. It's out there and recipes just Google Vika all butter pie crust and go for it next time

Laura 
when it both sounds great. I'm sure there are like pie baking has not been on the list. But drinks and alcohol definitely bringing it together. end You also like to travel which we love to so many favorites.

Lori Scott 
Oh well. Yes. I like I've gotten into a ritual of going to Maine the last dozen or so years so my husband is a distance runner. And his cohort of runners here in the Washington DC area where we live. They go up to me in the summer to escape to heat and humidity and we go near Acadia National Park and there's these wonderful carriage roads that you can run on. Soft forgiving surfaces. And it's just a wonderful place and I always love visiting national parks. That's a pretty special one for us. And then I mean anywhere going towards I love going into the mountains or at least semi mountains. I mean I'm not I'm not like a you know a mountain climber by any stretch, but I like hiking in the woods and on terrain that's you know, getting up in elevation and getting those viewpoints. The vistas Yeah, that's that's a favorite.

Laura 
Very nice. Well, we're just about out of time. It's always goes by so fast. Is there anything else you'd like to talk about that we didn't get to?

Lori Scott 
I guess I'll just mention, you know, since we were talking about networking opportunities and career paths, nature serve has a conference. It's called biodiversity without boundaries, and it's a convening that brings our partners across the US and Canada network together as well as other partners we work with and federal and state agencies and industry. So we have that next conference coming up in April in Seattle this April 2024. So that would be something to keep an eye out for. Yeah, stay tuned for the big promotion of the Explorer pro tool that I mentioned earlier. We'll be launching that at that V web conference and promoting it online. You know, wherever, wherever you look for your environmental and biodiversity data tools.

Laura 
Nick will be there waiting

Lori Scott 
for sadly, didn't put them on our mailing list.

Laura 
Oh, thank you so much, Laurie, this has been a lot of fun. And lastly, where can people get in touch with you? Sure.

Lori Scott 
Well, my LinkedIn profile I think will be one option. And also you can just go to nature serve that org. That's our website. And we provide our who's who listing of staff there so you can find my contact details on the nature of that org website as well.

Laura 
Awesome. Thanks so much. We'll talk to you soon.

Lori Scott 
Thank you.

Laura 
That's our show. Thank you, Laurie for joining us today. Please be sure to check us out each and every Friday. And don't forget to subscribe rate and review by city everybody.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai