The 2015 Esri User Conference, held this year San Diego in San Diego had a very special feature this year, and included a giant blowup of David McCloskey’s Cascadia Bioregion map, which he released at the third annual Cascadia Poetry Festival this year. The blowup of the map was chosen to celebrate it’s choice to grace the cover of the 2015 Esri Map Book. More information can be found at the Cascadia Institute, with cartography by Benchmark Maps, which shows for the first time the natural integrity of Cascadia as a whole bioregion.
The conference is always a huge geography and cartography draw, and groups present included the Jane Goodall Institute, National Geographic, the Aquarium of the Pacific, the Nature Conservancy, and The Natural History Museum in San Diego (or theNat). Each were there to explain their various conservation and preservation projects; and to help illustrate how the various programs which Esri has created over the years, has helped them to not only organize their data, but to better understand it as well. San Diego researchers, for example, were showcasing a new archeology program that they’ve built, which allows underwater drones to photograph submerged caves. The images are then fed into the program, which renders a 3D image of the cave site. Scientist can then view them from the safety of a lab, thus allowing access that would be far too dangerous to obtain in person.
