Category: GIS in Geology

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Bucknell/Local Interest Data Environment Events/Calendar General GIS GIS in Engineering GIS in Environmental Studies GIS in Geography GIS in Geology Miller Run Restoration Project Slideshow

Come watch the Flying Bison!

Come watch the Flying Bison capture high resolution aerial imagery of the Miller Run Creek watershed area. The flight is part of the work that the GIS Student assistants are doing this summer in support of the Miller Run Restoration project. Details and map below.

What: Come see the Flying Bison take off. Flight will last roughly 30 minutes. The Flying Bison drone will take off and land at the same location (see below)

When: Tuesday, July 26th at 10am

Where:  Tee box behind the new Bucknell Golf Course driving range building.  See map below (note that it does not show the new driving range building – underscoring the need for updated aerial images!):

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Bucknell/Local Interest Data Environment General GIS GIS in Engineering GIS in Environmental Studies GIS in Geography GIS in Geology Miller Run Restoration Project Slideshow

Miller Run Restoration

In January of 2011, Bucknell received a 178K grant through PA DEP’s Growing Greener program to support the first phase of a project that will restore the Miller Run Creek (that runs through campus and the golf course) and provide flood relief to the surrounding areas.  Bucknell’s GIS Student Assistants are supporting the Miller Run Restoration project by collecting high resolution aerial imagery (using a drone) and elevation data (using an RTK survey system and high accuracy GPS).  We’ll post more about the project in the next few weeks, but for now here are a few pictures of Team Survey.

Nick Urban, Computer Science ’12 – designing, building and flying an aerial drone to capture high resolution imagery of the campus area

Max Stiss, Geography/Anthropology ’12 – collecting GPS data near Abbey Lane for the Miller Run Restoration Project

From L to R, clockwise: Mike Grasso, Environmental Studies ’13; Dan Dougherty, Geography/History ’12; Prof. Rob Jacob, Geology; Dan Dougherty, Geography/History ’12; Max Stiss,
Geography/Anthropology ’12 uploading GPS data after a day in the field

Training on the RTK System before heading out in the field:

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Bucknell/Local Interest Data Environment GIS in Engineering GIS in Environmental Studies GIS in Geography GIS in Geology Miller Run Restoration Project Slideshow Videos

Flying Bison

Nick Urban ’12, a GIS student assistant and Computer Science major, recently competed in  the 9th annual student Unmanned Air Systems (UAS) competition held at Webster Field in St. Inigoes, MD.  Hosted by the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI), the competition challenged students to “design, fabricate, and demonstrate a system capable of completing a specific and independent aerial operation.” In other words, the teams had to design, build and fly an aerial drone and compete against each other to incorporate specialized features like automated take-off and landing, auto-pilot flight, in-flight transmission of still and/or video imagery, etc. into their drone flights.  Although Bucknell had the smallest team by far (Nick Urban ’12, Computer Science and Dan Farrell ’12, Physics) and one of the smallest teams in the history of the competition – just two students as compared to upwards of 15 or 20 from other schools – the Flying Bison finished 15th out of 26 teams and earned a $1,000 award.

Earlier this spring, we joked about doing a fly-over (or blimp-over) of campus to collect high resolution imagery, but here we are a few months later doing exactly that thanks to Nick’s project.  During July and August,  Nick will be using the Flying Bison to collect aerial imagery and in-flight video footage of campus and surrounding areas. The data will be used for exploring the possible applications of a UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) as a tool for monitoring environmental change.  The data will also be used in developing a restoration plan for the Miller Run creek that runs through campus.

Click here for more information on the UAS competition and Bucknell’s Flying Bison drone.

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What we’re up to this summer (and why we’re not posting)

Thanks to the Mellon grant and a huge number of faculty teaching and research projects it’s been a very busy summer of GIS work at Bucknell.  Over the coming weeks I’ll write detailed posts about the work we’re doing on each of the projects.  If I’m really ambitious I might try to post some interviews with faculty and students – and some footage of the aerial drone flights that Nick Urban ’12 is doing. But for now here’s a short overview of who’s doing GIS work at Bucknell this summer and what we’re doing:

GIS Student Assistants:

  • Chad Lawlis, Environmental Studies ’11
  • Dan Dougherty, Geography/History ’12
  • Max Stiss, Geography/Anthropology ’12
  • Nick Urban, Computer Science ’12
  • Mike Grasso, Environmental Studies ’13
  • Robby Holler, Geography/International Relations ’13 (pictured below)
  • Darin Rockwell, Geography/Geology ’13 (pictured below)
  • Dan Ladd, Middlebury College ’14 (pictured below)

Key Projects:

  • Maps for Sudan field guide atlas to mammals
  • GPS data collection for Lewisburg Cemetary
  • GPS data collection for Miller Run restoration project
  • Aerial drone data collection for Miller Run restoration project
  • Lycoming County/Williamsport community asset mapping
  • Mapping toxic contamination from Marcellus Shale natural gas wells
  • Mapping locations of Marcellus Shale water withdrawl permits
  • Georeferencing & vectorizing 19th century economic maps of Vietnam
  • Georeferencing & vectorizing maps of environmental hazards and resources in Kyrgyzstan
  • Georeferencing & vectorizing 1868 Historic Atlas of Union & Snyder Counties
  • Data development for Stories of the Susquehanna project
  • Support for student research projects – including GPS’ing dumpster locations on campus for an analysis of campus waste and recycling, and updating Arboretum tree dataset with location info for newly planted and felled trees
  • Develop pilot web map apps for showcasing faculty research
  • Develop pilot web map apps for use in teaching
  • Implement backend IT infrastructure to support ArcGIS server
  • Maps for Bucknell admin purposes, including: analysis of parking shortages on campus; maps for task force report on campus climate; maps for SBDC report on services by county; arts festival map.

 

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GIS in education – EPA grant and campus mapping

Notes on two interesting stories about GIS in education. Thanks to Adena Schutzberg’s All Points Blog for the heads up about the stories.

1. Texas State University’s Center for GIScience was recently awarded 500K grant from EPA to use GIS for modelling/mapping air pollution-exposure-health effects:
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Science to Achieve Results (USEPA-STAR) program has awarded a grant of nearly $500,000 to The Texas Center for Geographic Information Science in the Department of Geography at Texas State.

The grant will support a project entitled “Air Pollution-Exposure-Health Effects Indicators: Mining Massive Geographically Referenced Environmental Health Data to Identify Risk Factors for Birth Defects.”The three-year project will develop air pollution exposure assessment methods, visual geospatial data mining tools, and epidemiological analysis procedures to define new air pollution-exposure-health effect indicators that cover three components of the hazards-exposure-health effects-intervention paradigm.

– San Marcos Local News

Click here to see more EPA STAR Research Grant Announcements.  The EPA STAR grants are just one of the types of research grants available through the US EPA National Center for Environmental Research.   Click here for an overview of the Center’s research and fellowship opportunities.  Check the Bucknell GIS Calendar (featured on the main page of the GIS blog) this fall for deadlines for student grant applications for the EPA GRO fellowships – awarded each year to undergraduate students in environmentally related fields of study.  From the EPA Fellowships web page:

Eligible students will receive support for their junior and senior years of undergraduate study and for an internship at an EPA facility during the summer between their junior and senior years. The fellowship provides up to $19,700 per year of academic support and up to $9,500 of internship support for the three-month summer period, for a total of up to $48,900 for the two year period.

2.   Grad students at Utah State University are collecting high resolution imagery of their campus using a small blimp.

Soaring above the Quad on Tuesday afternoon, a white blimp controlled by Utah State University graduate students was almost hard to spot against the Cache Valley’s overcast sky.The only object that was clearly visible was a black digital camera, snapping one picture every five seconds, providing color georeferenced aerial photography of the entire Quad in UTM (metric) coordinates.

The students were conducting a lab by running a blimp survey for Joseph M. Wheaton’s geographic information systems class. The objective: To provide aerial imagery of the entire Quad. The 1,000-plus pictures the blimp provides them with will be used to make an image that can fit “on top of” the images on Google map, said Bryan Watt, a USU graduate student in the class.

– Herald Journal

Could we do this at Bucknell? Twice in the last month I’ve had faculty (half-jokingly) suggest that we rent a plane to do a data collection fly-over of Lewisburg. Forget the plane, let’s figure out how to get our hands on a blimp!