Furniture goes in tomorrow, bodies after that. This most recent expansion adds a couple conference rooms, nine workstations, and a full size kitchen / break room. The ultimate in high-tech luxury: a dishwasher!

With our growing portfolio of projects and expanding team, the new space gives us a little more elbow room. It also allows folks working in different practice areas to all be in the same room, and provides more space for our clients when they come spend the day with us.

That’s right, mom, we’re moving on up in the world. Stop by and say hi, grab a morning coffee or afternoon beer, and maybe play a game of foosball!

A main objective of this new contract is to build on Monitoring Methods project, specifically the web application we built to help regional scientists and researchers document and share their monitoring protocols, methods, metrics, and indicators. The current site is available at: monitoringmethods.org

This new contract also builds on some requirements analysis work we recently wrapped up for Oregon State University’s (OSU) Statistics Department related to developing a web application to support monitoring projects based on a “master sample” of sites regularly distributed along a stream network. Such monitoring projects are both cost effective and have relatively high statistical power, and therefore are becoming the preferred approach for funders looking to maximize their investments in regional monitoring.

About PNAMP
The purpose of the Pacific Northwest Aquatic Monitoring Partnership (PNAMP) is to provide a forum for coordinating state, federal, and tribal aquatic habitat and salmonid monitoring programs. More about pnamp.org.

Right now we’re looking for a front-end developer – someone with great HTML, CSS, Javascript skills. Our portfolio of clients is expanding and we have some new, nifty projects we’re managing. This is a full-time position, but we will entertain contract-to-hire folks or even straight-up contractors. We have preferences there, but fit is more important to us.

See our Job Postings page for details!

At the end of August we wrapped up a contract with OSU to conduct a technical evaluation and requirements analysis of for a Master Sample web application that the region’s scientists and researchers could use to develop spatially balanced sample designs for monitoring programs, and then later come back and upload their field data in order to generate population estimates.

In the context of monitoring stream networks, a Master Sample is a spatially balanced ordered list of all the sites in the population, for a finite population. The ordered list is created by subjecting the full list of sites to the GRTS algorithm.

According to a PNAMP publication, “The master sample concept, along with other monitoring and monitoring design tools, has broad applicability to address status and trends questions in the estuarine and near shore marine areas (area-based master sample), in addition to the status and trends of attributes along linear stream networks.”

Sitka was honored to work with the likes of Dr. Phil Larsen, Dr. Don Stevens, Dr. Lisa Madsen, and Jacque Schei of PNAMP.

For more on the Master Sample concept, see Using a Master Sample to Integrate Stream Monitoring Programs (Larsen, et al, 2008).

This same symposium featured a couple of other projects that Sitka has designed and built: monitoringmethods.org (presented by Jacque Schei of USGS) and champmonitoring.org (presented by Steve Rentmeester of Environmental Data Services).

Insightful and inspiring, the AFS conference drew 4,300 people from 32 countries, which featured over 400 posters and 600 oral presentations organized into 95 symposia that collectively addressed issues related to fisheries, habitats, and fisheries science. Check out afs2011.org for more info on the conference.

You can check out the Presentation [PPS] for yourself.

Another project lead by the Pacific Northwest and Aquatic Monitoring Partnership (PNAMP) and funded by the Bonneville Power Administration, this “Master Sample” project has been in the works for many years.

According to a PNAMP publication, “The master sample concept, along with other monitoring and monitoring design tools, has broad applicability to address status and trends questions in the estuarine and near shore marine areas (area-based master sample), in addition to the status and trends of attributes along linear stream networks.”

We are honored to add our requirements analysis and system design skills to this multi-agency initiative.

About PNAMP
The purpose of the Pacific Northwest Aquatic Monitoring Partnership (PNAMP) is to provide a forum for coordinating state, federal, and tribal aquatic habitat and salmonid monitoring programs. More about pnamp.org.

On May 24, Jacque Schei of PNAMP will host a web-based training session for contractors doing data collection and analysis work for the Northwest Power and Conservation Council and Bonneville Power Administration’s (BPA) Fish & Wildlife Program. Part of what Jacque will cover is how contractors developing their statements of work in Pisces can simply link to protocols held in Monitoring Methods. In this way, Monitoring Methods remains the system of record for protocols authored by researchers and monitoring practitioners, yet Pisces can help managers keep track of who is using which protocols and to what end.

This integration between the two informations systems is a great example of a public-private partnership where Sitka worked with the Pisces development team at BPA to ensure an efficient and appropriate flow of data between the two systems. Hats off to the Pisces team for making it happen on a tight timeline!

In March Raynard Lee joined us, bringing a penchant for cranking out code. Next in late April Hugh Ly came on board as a UX designer and front end developer. Most recently Stryder Crown and Jeff Lewis joined the development team, both of already making solid contributions and helping us deliver great software.

We’re working on adding their profiles to our Who we are section of the site.

These are full-time positions, but we will entertain contract-to-hire folks or even straight-up contractors. We have preferences there, but fit is more important to us.

See our Job Postings page for details!

This project is part of a much larger, multi-year, multi-million dollar project lead by NOAA to improve the way monitoring is done in the Columbia River basin. It aims to support both status and trend monitoring, as well as effectiveness monitoring, building on many year’s of work done in a few intensively-monitored watersheds such as the Wenatchee (Washington), John Day (Oregon), and Salmon (Idaho) watershed.

Specifically, this Sitka project involves building a new database and web application front-end for the new Columbia Habitat Monitoring Program (CHaMP).