CNDDB News Blog

Misty Nelson was recently hired as the Lead Scientist and supervisor of the CNDDB program. She brings nearly two decades of experience to the position, including a B.A. in Environmental Biology from the University of Montana, and an M.S. in Marine Science from the University of South Florida, where she studied the acoustic behavior of red grouper from marine reserves in the Gulf of Mexico.  She has worked in a wide range of natural resource science and data management positions, with projects spanning an array of taxa and subjects, including freshwater and marine fisheries, small mammal ecology, aquatic invasive weed surveys, large whale research, and noise and light pollution. Most recently, she worked with the CDFW Wildlife Branch, where she coordinated a large-scale terrestrial biodiversity monitoring effort at hundreds of locations in the Mojave Desert and Central Valley of California.

The CNDDB has added a new feature to the publicly accessible CNDDB QuickView Tool. In addition to generating lists of CNDDB elements for quads and counties, users can now view CNDDB quad-level data for any selected CNDDB-tracked element. Both CNDDB Mapped Data and Unprocessed Data will be displayed as with other searches in the CNDDB QuickView. Mapped Data indicates data that has been evaluated by CNDDB biologists and mapped into the CNDDB’s Element Occurrence database. Unprocessed Data indicates data that has not been quality-checked by CNDDB staff and should be used with caution. This new feature provides users with an easy way to visualize CNDDB quad-level data for a species. For more information on the CNDDB QuickView Tool, see our User Guide.

We have updated the Special Animals List to reflect the recent release of the 2016 California Amphibian and Reptile Species of Special Concern from CDFW’s Nongame Wildlife program and the University of California Press.  

 Over the past few months we have been working to add Element Occurrences for new Species of Special Concern (SSC) on the Special Animals List from this project. Lead Zoologist Brian Acord recently mapped over 200 Element Occurrences of the recently designated SSC, the California giant salamander (Dicamptodon ensatus), and visited a number of occurrences in the field. Tammy Dong, a CNDDB Scientific Aid, worked with Zoologist Ryan Elliott to map occurrences of another new SSC, the southern long-toed salamander (Ambystoma macrodactylum sigillatum), with over 300 added Element Occurrences mapped in CNDDB as of the August distribution.