Final Prospectus - due Friday November 6

The purpose of this assignment is to help you start thinking about the types of GIS functions you might need to use for your final project.

There is a dropbox for this assignment or you can email it. If you add it to your blog, please email me so I know to check your blog.

Your final prospectus must have these three components:

1.Your geographic problem or question
2.Your materials (data sources)
Now that you’ve completed lab 5 you should know what data sources you will be using. Maybe you couldn’t find what you were looking for originally, but you found some other data.
3.Your methods
For each data source, describe how you plan to use it in GIS. Here's an example:

• Roads: buffer by 200 meters to simulate road expansion
• Landuse: intersect with road buffer, find type of land use that would be most greatly impacted by road expansion
• Big game crucial winter range: find land ownership using Identity and then summarize area of land ownership by public and private categories
• Restaurant locations: use address matching to create points for all restuarants in Laramie, then use "nearest neighbor" function to analyze spatial pattern and identify clusters

Third assignment: draft project prospectus - due Oct 16, 2009

A prospectus is a proposal to undertake a research project. A prospectus is a statement that briefly describes the questions, materials, and methods a researcher will use in his or her research. Your draft prospectus is 15/150 points and your final prospectus (after incorporating comments and suggestions) is worth another 15 points. The draft is due Oct 16 and the final will be due later, to be announced.

Here is an example:

The question that is of interest to me is how much potential for conflict there is in Wyoming concerning wind farms development and wildlife management. Southeastern Wyoming has some of the highest potential for wind development in the US, and there have been 7 new wind projects in this area in the past 2 years. I searched for recent newspaper articles on wind projects and wildlife and discovered that one project was halted because of concerns with it being in sage grouse "core area".

My plan is to combine wind potential data for Wyoming with data on sage grouse core areas, big game crucial habitat and migration routes, and other wildlife data to determine the amount of overlap and identify other potential conflict areas. I plan to use GIS to summarize the amount of potential conflict in terms of area of overlap in both map form and table form.

Please submit the assignment to the eCompanion dropbox (less chance of me inadvertantly missing or deleting your assignments in my email).

Questions a GIS can answer:

•Condition: where do these conditions exist?
•Trends: what has changed here since... ?
•Patterns: what spatial patterns exist?
•Modeling: what if... ?
•Proximity: what are the characteristics of the area around existing features?
•Boundary Operations: what exists within a specific region, and how much?
•Linear Operations: what is the best route to a location?

Second assignment, due Thurs Sept 24, 2009

In Chapter 1 of your textbook, Geographic Information Systems and Science 2nd edition there is a list of geographic problems, followed by a section describing several ways that you can classify geographic problems.

This assignment is to help you start thinking about a topic for your GIS project/portfolio. Describe two (yes, that's 2) different geographic problems - at least one of these geographic problems should be something you're interested in finding more about or working on. Your description doesn't have to be long, just one or two sentences. It can't be anything from the book, though the book may give you some ideas to expand on or you could do a variation on a problem discussed in the book. I am also including some websites below that might provide some ideas.

If you are having problems thinking in terms of a geographic problem, you can also think of it in terms of a question that has some sort of geographic component to it. For instance, suppose you are frustrated with parking (or lack thereof) around campus. What areas around the campus could potentially be converted to parking lots? is a valid geographic question that is related to a problem: not enough parking.

There are three bases for classifying geographic problems given in Chapter 1; please also describe how your two geographic problems or questions fit into each of these classifications. For instance, insufficient parking areas around campus would be considered a strategic (long term planning) issue by the University, but it is a much more immediate or tactical issue for a student.

You can either add this assignment to your portfolio (please email me to tell me that you've posted it), or you can just email it to me. It should be formatted like this:

Your name
Geographic problem/question #1:
A.
B.
C.
(where A, B, C are your description of how the problem fits into the three different types of classifications)

Geographic problem/question #2:
A.
B.
C.

Again, I encourage you to pick at least one problem/question that you would like to pursue for your class project. I will try to provide feedback on whether I think this would be a good topic. One of the limiting factors of many ideas is availability of data.

The next step in your class project (Assignment #3) will be to write a "project prospectus" which will be a brief outline of what you intend to do, how you intend to do it, and what data you intend to use and where you'll get it from. This will require some research on your part to make sure the data you need for your project is available (googling may not be enough; you might actually have to make some phone calls or emails). Or if you plan to create or collect your own data, demonstrate how you plan to do it within the time frame of the semester - collecting data can be very time consuming).

The due date for Assignment #2 is Thurs. Sept 24. The tentative due date for the draft project prospectus (Assignment #3) is Oct 16.

Some websites to get you started
(or Google any keywords with GIS, such as "parking GIS" or education majors might want to try "GIS lesson plans")
UW's own GIS center: www.uwyo.edu/wygisc - click on Research projects
Wyoming Geolibrary: www.uwyo.edu/wygisc - click on GeoData
http://www.directionsmag.com/mapgallery/
http://www.gis.com/
http://training.esri.com/library/
http://www.geodata.gov/

First assignment: due 8/28/2009

One of the requirements of this class is creating an e-portfolio to showcase the knowledge and skills you'll be acquiring in this class. There are lots of places where you can create free websites, but personally I recommend http://www.blogger.com/ which is what I'm using because I think it's really easy and fun.

Your first assignment will be to create a blog for this class which will eventually become an e-portfolio for this class (if you can't figure out how to create a blog, email for help. I'll also provide instructions later in the course for how to organize your blog into an e-portfolio). I suggest a website address for your blog something like this "GISportolioNAME.blogspot.com" where NAME is either your last name or initials. If you don't want to use your name or initials for privacy reasons, that's okay, have fun and make up a name (e.g. MapGeek or GIS Goddess). Same goes for the title for your blog: something like this: "GIS portfolio for NAME/NICKNAME". Keep in mind, however, that there could be a professional advantage to using your full name and making your e-portfolio available to prospective employers.

Your first post to your blog or website should be titled "Why I'm interested in GIS". I like to get to know my students by more than just their sleeping positions during my lectures, so here's your chance to introduce yourself. Tell me if you are an undergraduate or grad, your major, your specialization, and of course, why you're interested in GIS - why you are taking this class. If you are only taking it because your advisor told you to, that's okay. Rate yourself as far as GIS experience so far (0 - no experience, 10 - guru) and also rate your general computer skills the same way. And finally, tell me if there is anything specific you'd like to get out of this course (other than some skills that will look darn good on your resume.)

Please email me the address of your blog sometime on Thursday, August 27 so I have some time to get "acquainted" with everyone before the next class. Please remember that your blog will eventually be available to everyone in the class (I'll be linking them all on this blog), but also to the public. So use professional manners and please no inappropriate content. I will not use your blog (or mine) to post any grades or personal information.

Why I'm interested in GIS

Why I Love GIS and all things geography.

When you’re a kid, you don’t go around saying “I want to be a geographer when I grow up, I can name the capital cities of every country in the world.” Please, if you run into someone like that, don't let them call themselves a geographer; that's toponymy, not geography.

Actually, I wanted to be a biologist when I grew up. Specifically, a marine biologist. I had visions of swimming with dolphins and discovering how to communicate with them. In reality, my first job as a biologist was collecting mouse urine and analyzing it. My second one wasn’t much better: collecting gypsy moth caterpillars and dissecting their infected, decaying remains. I just couldn’t see doing stuff like this for the rest of my life.

Fortunately, during one of my biology classes, a professor mentioned a new computer system called a “GIS” that was the latest technology for natural resource management and forestry and a host of other planning applications (this was 1990). I’d already decided at this point that I preferred working with computers than with microscopes, so I signed up for a GIS class to fill one of my last electives my senior year in college. I loved it. “GIS” stands for Geographic Information Systems, and in it’s most basic form it is making and manipulating computerized maps, but it is so much more than that, too – spatial modeling and analysis of everything from hydrological networks to wildlife habitat to finding the best locations for new Starbucks franchises.

So I did some research to find out how to get qualified for a job as a GIS analyst. Turns out (at least back then) it meant I would have to go back to school for a Master’s in Geography.
Geography? I groaned. Good grief. All I knew about geography was the agony of memorizing state capitals in fifth grade. But, I did like maps. (So did J.R.R. Tolkien, author of the Lord of the Rings. One of my favorite quotes is from him: “I wisely started with a map”.)

I’d just come back from a cross-country road trip with a college friend – we hit just about every National Park west of the Mississippi – and I’d had my nose stuck inside our road atlas for most of that 12,000 mile journey. I was also experienced folding quite a few National Park trail maps, too. So I figured I could handle a masters in Geography at my hometown college, the State University of New York at Buffalo.

I quickly discovered that I loved the interdisciplinary nature of geography. Why limit yourself to marine biology, when you can dabble in areas as diverse as wildlife management, sociology, climatology, and archaeology – all areas that I’ve used GIS as a framework for analysis.

After getting my Master's, I moved out to Wyoming to work as a research assistant in Zoology, working on a GIS project called "Gap" - assessing the biodiversity of species in Wyoming and identifying which species have inadequately protected habitat (gaps in protection). From that job I moved on to the Wyoming Water Resources Center on campus, which eventually evolved into the Wyoming Geographic Information Science Center. While at this center I have worked on a variety of projects, most having to do with designing GIS applications for the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and Wyoming Game and Fish Dept. to help them with assessing environmental impacts. I have been teaching professional GIS short courses for 12 years, starting with the old Arc/Info software. Currently, I am a certified ESRI instructor for ArcGIS Desktop I and II classes. This is my first time teaching a university course.

Oh, and why do I think everyone should take this course, including art majors? I believe GIS is the perfect blend of science, practical application, and design. In fact, one of my daughters suggested that instead of calling myself a GIS analyst, I should call myself a Geographic Information Designer.