Esri Forestry GIS Conference Keynote: Forest Census Data and GIS Together Create Tremendous Value

REDLANDS, Calif., March 28, 2013 — (PRNewswire) —  Richard Guldin, PhD, acting associate deputy chief for Research & Development of the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) Forest Service, will be the featured keynote speaker at the Esri Forestry GIS Conference, to be held May 14–16, 2013. In the address, titled "Creating Value from America's Forest Census," Guldin will explain the role of GIS in tracking the health, productivity, and diversity of the nation's forests. He will also share his vision for a new Forest Service geospatial platform that foresters in both the private and public sectors can easily use.

Guldin is committed to improving the quality of data and information used by forest resource managers and policy makers at regional, national, and global scales. He has served as assistant station director of the Northern Research Station and held several senior staff positions in the agency's Research & Development headquarters. Since 1996, Guldin has led the Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) program, which is the nation's forest census. The FIA program produces state, regional, and national assessments and reports on forest conditions and trends. This information is used by organizations interested in the health, productivity, and diversity of America's public and private forests. They include a broad spectrum of clients in government, the investment community, academia, industry, and interest groups. Guldin received his PhD from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies.

The Esri Forestry GIS Conference will take place at Esri headquarters in Redlands, California. Foresters and land managers from around the world are attending this event to learn how GIS brings value to forest management and to see innovations that will benefit their operations. The conference is open to people looking to accelerate their use of GIS in forest management.

Since 1969, Esri has been giving customers around the world the power to think and plan geographically. The market leader in GIS, Esri software is used in more than 300,000 organizations worldwide including each of the 200 largest cities in the United States, most national governments, more than two-thirds of Fortune 500 companies, and more than 7,000 colleges and universities. Esri applications, running on more than one million desktops and thousands of Web and enterprise servers, provide the backbone for the world's mapping and spatial analysis. Esri is the only vendor that provides complete technical solutions for desktop, mobile, server, and Internet platforms. Visit us at www.esri.com.

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