Geography 291: Geospatial Analysis with Desktop GIS

1. Hi! My name is Zoie Pois; I am a senior double majoring in Zoology and Environmental Science with a Psychology minor. I am from Louisville, Kentucky, and attended a middle school similar to a Montessori school that focused heavily on nature and art, so I have been protective of nature for as long as I can remember. I enjoy being out in nature, doing crafts/art, listening to music, and hanging out with my close friends. I am unsure what I want to do after graduation, but I hope that it will revolve around nature and animals in some capacity, which are two things I am very passionate about. The picture of me for my introduction is refusing to act right, so we’ll see if it decides to show up when I post.

2. I have previously worked a tiny bit with GIS, but I am coming into this class with minimal knowledge about it. It was fascinating to read about the uses of GIS in areas that I did know it could even be used in. I had assumed that it could only be used predominantly for geographical and solar purposes. Now I know that it can be used in things that range from infectious diseases to Starbucks. I appreciated the author’s distinction between mapping and spatial analysis by explaining that spatial analysis generates more information or knowledge than can be gathered from maps or data alone, In contrast, mapping is unable to create more data/knowledge than what is already given. It was also interesting to read about Dr. John Snow and the cholera outbreak and how it is linked to a trend in science towards using visual displays to understand patterns. I am personally a person who relies pretty heavily on visuals to understand concepts fully, so I am glad that this trend continued to gain more popularity. After reading, I wondered what else GIS can be used for and how there is a vast amount of information that I was previously unaware of.

3. I am doing an internship with Watson Acres Flower Farm this semester, so I wanted to look at GIS information in relation to pollinators and maybe even pollen itself. One study I found talked about the interaction of lovebugs (Plecia nearctica) and honey bees. Some studies have suggested that honey bees will not visit flowers that have lovebugs on them, and since the distribution of lovebug populations has the potential to change due to the warming climate, the usual pollination pattern of species like honey bees could be disrupted. Using GIS, the authors tracked what areas would remain suitable for lovebugs and how those areas are likely to increase in the future.

Map showing historic/current habitat suitable for Plecia nearctica in the USA.

Map showing future habitat suitable for Plecia nearctica in the USA during 2050.

 

I also looked into a study that took an infrastructural method of pollinators to strategize urban planning for pollinators by pinpointing hotspots and pinch points. The higher the HSI value (darker areas), the more suitable the 100 m cell is predicted to be for this species group.

 

Abou-Shaara, H. F., Amiri, E., & Parys, K. A. (2022). Tracking the effects of climate change on the distribution of Plecia nearctica (Diptera, Bibionidae) in the USA using MaxEnt and GIS. Diversity, 14(8), 690.

Bellamy, C. C., van der Jagt, A. P., Barbour, S., Smith, M., & Moseley, D. (2017). A spatial framework for targeting urban planning for pollinators and people with local stakeholders: a route to healthy, blossoming communities?. Environmental Research, 158, 255-268.

Hi, my name is Rheigna (Ray-Na) Gullatte and I am from Cleveland, Ohio. I am double majoring in environmental studies and geography with a sociology minor. I put a picture of Apollo, my cat, because I miss him…a lot. I hope to get an internship in the future that supports my major 🙂 I don’t know much about GIS, but that is why I’m here. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chp. 1

     This was a really interesting read because I am majoring in geography and environmental studies and Dr. Rowley said it would be a very beneficial skill to learn. I’m very obsessed with social justice issues so GIS would only help me in research and mapping things out. Early GIS development happened in the 1960s which is fairly recent but I haven’t heard a whole lot about it. Canada is credited with one of the first cartography systems. I thought spatial analysis was interchangeable with mapping but the article says that spatial analysis generates more information from maps or data. There’s also something called spatial mapping that I looked up. This essentially combines spatial analysis and mapping so that’s cool. 

     This article was kind of a hard read with all new information being presented to me but there’s many outcomes of GIS. There is GIScience and GISystems which were all created for their own purposes. GISystems includes processes like spatial analysis and encoding into software while GIScience uses theory and justification for the way GISystems work. The way these definitions are worded are kind of tricky so I know I will have to do a little bit extra research and reading to understand. The chapter 2 title piqued my interest because I am taking Human Geography with Toenjes and having classes that help each other flow makes me really happy. It just reassures me that the classes I’m taking are all going to help me in the long run.

     My favorite part of the entire article is when it talks about who uses GIS and why. I think it’s interesting how GIS is incorporated into our everyday lives and many people do not realize that. The example they gave to put this into perspective is that GIS is used in the process of where we eat, where our food comes from, and how it gets to the grocery store. Google and Apple maps are very popular GIS systems but a lot of people do not know that. 

 

1. GIS keywords- My keywords were “gentrification” and “poverty” 

The map above is a simple map showing that gentrification happens at a greater scale in major cities than any other rural city. The major cities where it is happening the most include Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, New York, and San Diego. 

The article is called, “Shifting neighborhoods: Gentrification and cultural displacement in American cities”

• This article explains what gentrification is and why it is so problematic. GIS comes into play because it allows us to map out where gentrification is the biggest problem and why. Like stated, gentrification happens the most in major cities. It disproportionately displaces black and hispanic residents. Gentrification is essentially raising property values, tearing old buildings down to build new and modern buildings. Although this may help the economy, it causes cultural displacement for families who are forced to move because the rent is too high.

Richardson, Jason, et al. “Shifting Neighborhoods: Gentrification and Cultural Displacement in  

      American Cities ” NCRC.” NCRC, 2 Nov. 2022, ncrc.org/gentrification/.  

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2. I used the same keywords with an additional one, “GIS” “Gentrification” “Washington D.C.”

The pictures above shows the same corner about 40 years apart and you can clearly see how much has changed. 

• This article basically discusses one of the biggest cities and their problem with identification. I’m sure a lot of people have been to D.C. but they might write off gentrification as a good thing. I’ve been to D.C. in 2018 and it was running rampant in the hotel where I stayed. A street down from the four star hotel where I stayed would be considered the “hood”. Families’ houses were not up to code, windows broken, and other things that they could not really control. They were watching their neighborhood turn into a tourist attraction. 

Person. “Mapping Gentrification in Washington D.C.” ArcGIS StoryMaps, Esri, 16 Oct. 2022, 

        storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/009773cc5c224421a66d1ce9ff089849.  

 

Hello everyone my name is Riley Brokaw, I’m a sophomore majoring in Environmental Science. In my free time, I love to go skiing at a ski resort not far from my house where I also am a children’s ski instructor. I grew up on a small family farm not far outside of Mansfield, OH that my great grandpa bought and started raising sheep, and since then we have about a dozen beef cattle we will raise and slaughter every year. I feel this is where my passion for the environment really came room and how important it is to preserve what we have around us and understand where our food comes from. In the summers we plant a pretty large garden with probably everything you could think of and just this past summer we used sunflowers as a cover crop for one of our fields which attracted so many bees. While I’m at school I enjoy getting ice cream with my 2 best friends and watching their field hockey games. I am also on the women’s tennis team here at OWU!

I thought the first chapter of Schuurman was very interesting although somewhat confusing. He really went into depth on GIS and how many purposes it has for humans and how we use it to map out where a disease originated from or how a certain species is decreasing. I liked reading how we use maps to show the path our food originated from around the world and how it got to our grocery stores. I had learned that as a business strategy, farmers use GIS to strategically send their produce to areas with the local interest of course but also purchase pricing and its associated transportation cost and if the community would spend that on the produce. It was also very interesting to read how Amazon tracks and uses information collected digitally to make a rough map of every person on their interests and likes, so Amazon can promote products tailored to what information they have. From what I understood the main similarity between GIScience and GISsystems is that they both share common kinds of literature and ideals and use spatial data. When looking at just GIS systems I learned it is heavily focused on facts, classification, and outputting data into the software. While GIS science is focused on theoretical ideas and justifying the reasons for GIS systems, a GIS scientist would look at the cause and effect and ask questions associated with why and how something would react in a situation. The history of GIS comes from a very practical area of pre-planning infrastructure and looking at the landscape for what the easiest and most cost-efficient path would be. Still to this day, we as humans try to look for those characteristics in everything we do to cause the least disruption to our environment.

I took a search into GIS on vineyards and how water erosion from farming and harvesting practices is affecting the landscape. The dotted circles show where the whole terrace has slid down from an influx of heavy rain.    https://doi.org/10.1016/j.catena.2020.104604

The second source I looked into was a watershed and after sediment loss was reported a system was constructed to combat the soil erosion called the GIS-based Sediment Assessment Tool for Effective Erosion Control (SATEEC). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.catena.2005.06.013

 

1. Hello everyone my name is Logan McFarland and I am a freshman with plans to major in environmental science. I  love backpacking, fishing, and generally being outside. I was born in Medina, OH but lived in Granville, OH most of my life. My passion for the environment stemmed from being able to visit many wonderful natural places in my life; even being able to go backpacking in four states just last summer. This picture was taken during a week long backpacking/fishing trip in the upper peninsula of Michigan
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2. Coming into this class I wasn’t really sure what GIS was, where it came from, or how broad its applications are, so this chapter was quite eye-opening for me. GIS is a very convoluted field of geography with a subsequent convoluted history. It was interesting to me that the beginnings of GIS were far before the beginnings of the digital age, and that in the early stages of digital GIS many geographers  preferred the manually produced maps. The third section of this chapter regarding the convoluted history of GIS that I had previously mentioned, although relatively difficult to follow, gave me a good look into the subtle differences that scientists debate like: Was GIS a mere descendant of the quantitative revolution or did its inclusion of visual intuition transcend the quantitative revolution itself? I liked how the author recognized that the use of visual means of conveying information rather than text or numerical data is seen as generally “unscientific” but when used in this application is often more efficient at conveying patterns and phenomena. Not to mention patterns that would go unnoticed using tables become the keystone discoveries of GIS.  The next section exploring the differences between GIScience and GISystems was equally interesting and and puzzling as the previous section. From my interpretation it is that GIScience is the ideas and theories that are put into application using GISystems, but both require spatial data and analysis to create a mutualistic relationship. The example about the relationship between the spread of Cholera and the use of public wells in London brings to light the importance of local information alongside GIS, but it also shows how tedious GIS can be with much room for error. Previously, I knew that GIS had everyday applications- i.e. GPS- but I did not realize how it is used in almost every aspect of our lives in some way or another.
3. The first application that I came across came from searching for GIS use for trout fishing. In this application Trout Unlimited used arcgis to show where protected lands cross streams with natural brook trout populations
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   The second application is from the California department of Fish and Wildlife to use GIS to map chemical spraying in an attempt to restore the population of native cutthroat trout in the remote Carson-Iceberg Wilderness. This stream is the only native area for this rare trout species.
   Will Patterson, Ken DeVore. “Restoring Rare Trout to Its Native Range.” Esri, 6 Feb. 2019, www.esri.com/about/newsroom/arcuser/restoring-rare-trout-to-its-native-range/.

Hello, my name is Logan Fraire, I am a senior majoring in Zoology and Environmental Science with a Botany minor. I’m pretty involved with the ENVS Department, I am a member of the Student Board as well as the Student Department Manager on the Faculty Board. I really love nature and all the arts (books, fashion, applied, etc.). I’m super into plants and hope to work with them using remote sensing when I graduate 😀

Reading this chapter, it’s interesting to think that people wouldn’t be able to give a single example of GIS impacting their day-to-day lives. It just feels like such a prominent tool in my life that I wouldn’t be able to do a lot of things without it. I did agree that as an undergrad student, I knew what GIS was, but not a ton of how scientists use it for their research. (This text feels like they used big words on purpose to sound cool). When it talked about overlay and spatial analysis, it reminded me of Rowley telling us about how he had to manually overlay maps as an undergrad student. I often forget the times before tech and what that would have looked like so it’s always interesting to me to hear about these methods. I knew of ESRI but for some reason, I didn’t know it stood for Environmental Research Systems Inc. It’s also interesting to think of GIS as a new tool in Geography. It makes sense but to my knowledge, it is nearly fundamental for Geography and would be difficult to do without it. In the context of the chapter, I agree with Nancy Obermeyer’s view of GIS being as fundamental as a calculator. The chapter mentioned how GIS users don’t often question the result output from their technology and I related to this because I am also guilty of not questioning it. I just assume the system is right, like many other users. I agree that GIScience is foundational for GISystems, but it just goes well over my head to keep in mind sometimes. It’s interesting to question the relationship of GIScience/systems with humans. It makes me wonder what the evolving world of AI will do to GIS tech and our relationship with it. I knew about a lot of GIS applications, but not about G-commerce/business applications, very cool.

I looked into GIS applications and lizards. I found some cool work using GIS to model lizard habitat sites for research by Branch et al. Here’s a map of those habitat types:

I also found a cool study where they were trying to map the fundamental niche of a nocturnal gecko species using internal, environmental, and climatic data gathered in their work. They used GIS tech to run many models to understand where these geckos might be active in Australia based on multiple factors. Here’s an example of some of those models:

caption: Fig 4: Results of continent-wide 0.05°-resolution biophysical simulations for the physiology of EA6 male Heteronotia binoei for (a) degree-days for egg development, (b) potential activity time, (c) maintenance metabolic costs, (d) food requirements per hour of activity, (e) water loss, and (f) discretionary water. All maps are of annual summations. The dotted line represents the known southern distributional limit of H. binoei”

Branch, L. C., Hokit, D. G., Stith, B. M., Bowen, B. W., & Clark, A. M. (1999). Effects of landscape dynamics on endemic scrub lizards: an assessment with molecular genetics and GIS modeling. Florida Game and Fresh Water Fish Commission.

Kearney, M., & Porter, W. P. (2004). Mapping the fundamental niche: physiology, climate, and the distribution of a nocturnal lizard. Ecology, 85(11), 3119-3131.

 

First Week

ArcOnline Exploring: I have previously logged into my arconline account in Dr. Krygier’s earlier GIS class (before the 191 and 192 modules). I enjoy working with ArcOnline and think it is a good addition to the desktop GIS software. I find it relatively easy to navigate and use to view and make maps. Every time I go on it I am surprised by how many tabs and different buttons/capabilities there are, and this time was no different. I’m excited to hopefully understand the function of all of these tabs at the end of the course. 

 

Get Started: What is ArcGIS Online. Readthrough: I think one of the most exciting things about arc online to me is that you can work on maps collaboratively and virtually with other users and organizations. This is an incredibly powerful tool to connect people and to accomplish projects with people in far away locations. I read about this in the “Get Started” tab in the “Share and Collaborate” section and can see this being super useful when working with a professor or in a professional capacity and not having to go on a desktop machine or share drives/folders. I was interested in the app section of the read-through, because I haven’t had much experience with ESRI (?) apps beyond ArcOnline and ArcPro, so clicking through them on arconline was interesting. There is a large span of content/ industries covered by the apps, and it really highlights how diverse and powerful GIS can be. I was particularly interested in the GeoPlanner app, and a bit more research showed that it can be used to design and plan buildings and other structures in accordance with the geographic information of the area.

 

Getting Started Course(s): I had already completed the ArcGIS Online Basics course, so chose to do the “Basics of JavaScript Web Apps” because I am anticipating having to make a Web App for an independent study with Dr. Rowley and think this may be useful. My first impression is that using HTML format for web pages is familiar, because of work that I have done with Dr. Krygier in previous classes. That feels good and is making me excited about potentially being able to do this (the coding is a little scary). The section on software development kits (SDK’s) and introducing maps to online apps makes sense and I feel is applicable to what I want to do with Dr. Rowley.

 

Interesting ESRI online training: The “Get Started with ArcGIS QuickCapture” seminar seems interesting. It focuses on how you can use QuickCapture to take images and make them into data to be used in arc. I was interested in this because it includes “rapid data capture from moving ground or air-based vehicles” which could potentially include remotely sensed data. Another course of interest is the “Creating and Sharing GIS Content Using ArcGIS Online

“ because I am interested in being able to share maps that I make with other people. I think this might provide some insights on how to share maps in a variety of ways.

 

GIS Application Areas: Making interactive web maps using arc online. I know I’ve talked about it before but this website details how you can make these maps and post them online which is something I’m very interested in doing at the moment. It is a 13 page pdf tutorial of how to do this. This website details how to map flood risk areas with arc online. I think this is an interesting topic and is something that the remote sensing class worked on doing in ArcPro on the desktop machines. I think it would be interesting to see how the online software compares and if there are any major differences.

 

Second Week : Chapters 1 & 2:

My first impression reading chapter 1 is that the capabilities of Arc online are immense. There is so much powerful stuff that the software can do. It’s pretty amazing. Learning about the five main types of content supported by arc online, data, layers, web maps and scenes, tools, and apps, was really helpful and explanatory. I also found the attachments section, starting on page 17, very interesting because I have never been able to attach a picture of ppt or video to an Arc map before and this could be a super informative and useful addition to a map.

 

Chapter 1: 

This is the Redlands attractions map from Exercise 1. It was kind of tedious to make with the new ArcOnline software but generally pretty straightforward and workable. The others parts of the chapter were also straightforward and easily completed when working slowly and methodically.

Chapter 2: 

I wasn’t able to correctly code in a new expression in chapter 2 and so I didn’t have the growth rate (2010-2020) pop-up  when I clicked on specific cities. The book’s description of the expression generator tab was different from what it actually looked like so this was kinda difficult. 

This is what my map looked like after 2.4. I couldn’t find the “sample chapter2 owner.gtkwebgis” so I was not able to do the tutorial for 2.5 and 2.6.

 

I can see the sort of techniques we used in chapters 1 and 2 being used with the Delaware data for the school districts. I could potentially see us generating a map similar to the map in chapter 2 with the Delaware county school district. We could also use the techniques from chapter 1 in order to make a similar map from subdivision data. Highlighting where all of the subdivisions are in Delaware County.