Last Week Review (10/20-10/24)

Happy Fall!

The highlights from last week’s work in the SAL are as follows:

1. GPS Lab with Professor Ninian Stein’s ENV 201/202
2. Ebola First Responder Social Mapping Night
3. Zebra Fish project continues
4. Coffee machine mapping survey conducted
5. Continued SWG 230 individual meetings
6. Digitizing Coral Reef Mounds

1. GPS Lab with Professor Ninian Stein’s ENV 201/202:
Last week ENV 201/202 kicked off its GIS labs through GPS data collection. This class — a requirement for all ES&P (Environmental Science and Policy) majors — includes three GIS labs that collectively introduce the students to GIS, which they will continue to work with in ENV 311. In the morning session a presentation on the basics of GIS was given, followed by a short talk about how GPS units work and a brief hands-on tutorial outside. In the afternoon the class headed out to collect data along Damon road in Northampton where the lack of sidewalks makes food access in the area limited. The class will share the collected data with local efforts to expedite the sidewalk building process along Damon road to alleviate the lack of access.
This week the class will work with the data and use the GIS to investigate food and access data for Northampton.

2. Ebola First Responder Social Mapping Night:
The Spatial Analysis Lab hosted a second mapping night to teach attendees how to use OpenStreetMap editing tools to populate maps of Liberia and Sierra Leone. This session started off with an update on the virus from Dr. Leslie Jaffe, Director of Health Services on campus. The group discussed many aspects of the disease ranging from the biological effect it has on the body that results in death to the likelihood of spread in Africa and the States. See a write up of the event in the Hampshire Gazette here.

3. Zebra Fish project continues:
Having hurdled the Model Builder obstacle, our students spent Friday afternoon exploring the spatial autocorrelation tool Moran’s I. The project is moving along quite well, more to come later.

4. Coffee machine mapping survey conducted:
Post-bac Victoria Beckley collected data on campus to investigate campus movement patterns in relation to a specific coffee machine. See the write up here. Maps to come very soon!

5. Continued SWG 230 individual meetings:
The “mappers” from Professor Lisa Armstrong’s SWG 230 course have begun working in ArcGIS Online to explore our Springfield database that contains layers on food access, transportation, and demographic data. During the remainder of the semester these students will produce webmaps and populate a storymap to share this data in a narrative form with the Springfield and Smith communities. More here.

6. Another unusual use of GIS, but one that we think effective is digitizing coral reef images taken from underwater video.

 

 

IMG_2394

View of the Lanning Fountain from Sabin-Reed