RAVG'ing BAERs!

Boy, work has gotten busy. I've been given more responsibility. In our office, there are federal employees and contractors. There is a really good working relationship between the two, but the feds run the joint. I'm currently involved with three projects: BAER, RAVG, and MTBS. BAER is my #1 priority and what will keep me the most busy. RAVG (Rapid Assessment of VeGetation condition after wildfire - pronounced "ravage") is very similar to BAER, but for a different audience and slightly different output. I will be managing that program as well. MTBS (Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity) is a huge project where we're mapping the fire severity of every fire greater than 1000 acres since 1984. I am the "leader" of the contractors for this project.

So, three huge projects, and I'm heavily involved in all of 'em. I'm coordinating the work of 5 other analysts for MTBS and I have another analyst helping with RAVG and BAER. I guess they call this mid-level management. Wohoo! I've arrived! Ugh.

Currently, MTBS is taking about 95% of my time. We have a lot of work to do and I'm trying to take on responsibilities previously placed on one of the federal empolyees. I've been very busy in the last few days updating our nationwide fire occurrence database for all fires between 1984 and 2006. It's been a big task, often tedious, and often frustrating. But I've made progress.

I'll write more later when I get some time.