Category: GIS in History

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Bucknell/Local Interest GIS in Geography GIS in History GIS in Humanities GIS Jobs, Internships, Scholarships & Grad Programs Slideshow

Summer 2013 GIS student research opportunities in Connecticut, California and Hawaii

Yes, we’re in the middle of a deep freeze, but it’s not too early to start thinking about summer 2013. Here are two opportunities for undergraduate students to do GIS research and field work. Both programs provide a stipend, housing and expenses. Deadlines are approaching fast so get moving if you want to apply for these!

(1) GIS Approach to Water Level Change – Keck Geology Consortium. Application deadline February 1, 2013. 

This project funds three students on a GIS project analyzing water levels, island area, and plant species richness for a study site in the Great Lakes. The students then continue with the project independently into the fall semester and present their work at the Keck Geology Consortium Undergraduate Research Symposium in the spring.

What: Investigation of spatiotemporal changes in island shorelines due to water-level changes using the mapping and analytical tools of a geographic information system (GIS). Study area is The Massasauga Provincial Park archipelago (Georgian Bay, Lake Huron, Ontario)

When: July 10 – August 7

Where: Wesleyan University. The project consists mainly of spatial analyses using ArcGIS but will also include training in field data collection.

(2) NSF REU – Geospatial Research and Mapping (GRAM) program. Application deadline March 1st, 2013

Geography and Archaeology undergraduates, as well as others interested in the study of landscapes, may be interested in our summer 2013 field program on geospatial research and mapping (GRAM) that will take place at both California State University Long Beach and at the famous* Kualoa Ranch in the picturesque Ka’a’awa valley on the north shore of O’ahu.

This field research program is a joint effort between faculty in the Department of Geography and Anthropology at CSULB and is focused on the use of cutting edge geospatial techniques (e.g., satellite and aerial imagery, the use of UAVs, geographic information systems, spectral analyses, topography generation, landscape analyses, and near surface remote sensing).   The research being undertaken by GRAM includes the study of prehistoric landscapes as well as contemporary resources and environments.

Our website (http://www.csulb.edu/colleges/cla/departments/geography/nsf-reu/) describes the overall program and include the research of last year’s students, the application form and additional program information. This is the second year of our 3 year project funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) under their Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program.

This year’s GRAM project will take place June 2 to June 30 and include training in Long Beach and on Oahu. The NSF-REU program provides funding for student to cover travel, housing, tuition costs as well as a small stipend. Applications are competitive and open to undergraduates across the country.

* The site of the field work is famously known as the location of the filming for Lost, Jurassic Park, among other TV shows and films.

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Bucknell/Local Interest Digital Humanities Events/Calendar GIS & Environmental Justice GIS by Academic Discipline GIS in Art GIS in Biology GIS in Computer Science GIS in Economics GIS in Engineering GIS in Environmental Studies GIS in Film Studies GIS in Geography GIS in Geology GIS in History GIS in Humanities GIS in Political Science GIS in Psychology GIS in Public Health GIS in Social Science GIS in Sociology GIS in Women's Studies GIScience, Pedagogy & Spatial Thinking Slideshow

Register & Submit Presentations for Bucknell-hosted GIS conference

We recently launched the conference website for the upcoming Bucknell-hosted conference GIS & Spatial Thinking in the Undergraduate Curriculum.  Basic info is shown below, but please check out the conference website for details and updates as they become available.

About the Conference:

  • When: November 16-18, 2012
  • Where: Bucknell University, Lewisburg, PA. Click here for a map.
  • Details: Click on the pages shown on the menu above to access information onregistration, lodging, conference schedule, and submitting presentations and maps.
  • Deadlines:  Deadline for early bird registration is September 15, 2012. Deadline forsubmitting presentations and maps is September 21, 2012.
  • Format:  We have chosen a work-group format for the conference in order to maximize opportunities for discussion and brain-storming amongst participants. The main day of the conference will feature five work-group sessions. Each session will consist of 45 minutes of presentations and 45 minutes of open discussion organized around a theme. We are seeking 3 presenters and 1 chairperson for each of the 5 sessions. See the submissions page for a detailed description of each of the session topics:
    • 1a (Concurrent with 1b) – Mapping Human Activity – Qualitative Analysis GIS
    • 1b (Concurrent with 1a) – Quantitative Analysis & Technical Applications of GIS
    • 2   (Single group) – GIS in Pedagogy
    • 3a (Concurrent with 3b) – GIS in Community Outreach & Service Learning
    • 3b (Concurrent with 3a) – Software & Data Issues in GIS Instruction
  • Goals: Desired outcomes include: (1) providing mutual support for imaginative and challenging applications of spatial technology in undergraduate education; (2) fostering potential collaborative efforts between and within participant schools, such as joint research initiatives and/or shared resources for data, web maps and teaching materials, and; (3) creating a regional community of faculty and GIS/IT staff to interact on a regular basis, share information, and exchange ideas about the priorities identified during the conference.

This event is sponsored by Library & Information Technology at Bucknell University. Should you have any questions, please contact Janine Glathar at jlg046@bucknell.edu or (570) 577-1990.

 

 

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Bucknell/Local Interest Digital Humanities General GIS GIS in History Slideshow

Faculty GIS Profiles: Song Chen, Assistant Professor of Chinese History

The following is a guest post by Prof. Song Chen, Assistant Professor of Chinese History, who arrived on campus in fall 2011. Click here to read the profile of Prof. Chen that was posted on the Bucknell website. In addition to his use of GIS for research purposes, Prof. Chen is planning to integrate GIS into a Spring 2013 quantitative methods course for history majors. Below is Prof. Chen’s description of how he uses GIS in his research on connections between the imperial state and local elites in 10th-13th century China:

My research combines GIS, network analysis, and prosopographical research. To understand the relationship between the imperial state and local elites in China, I use GIS to map out geographical patterns of civil servants and their marriage networks. Though my recent work relies primarily on a dataset I have personally built from a collection of several hundred funerary biographies from the 10th to the 13th century, I have also benefited significantly from other existing data collections and databases. I owe much to the China Biographical Database (CBDB) and China Historical GIS (CHGIS) projects.

CBDB is an online relational database under development but already contains about 120,000 historical figures. It contains massive geo-biographical data points, which are easily cross-queried and exported. CHGIS provides the most complete and authoritative point and polygon files for places in Chinese history. In future projects, I also plan to use GIS tools to visualize and analyze patterns of demographic settlement, economic activities, and social and intellectual interactions. I have also found G. William Skinner’s datasets on China tremendously useful.

The following maps, for example, are generated by combining CBDB data and CHGIS polygon files and coordinates, with graduated symbology in ArcGIS. They show the native places of civil officials who were in the Sichuan region (the four highlighted administrative divisions) between 960 and 1279. These maps allow me to discover macrohistorical patterns of local governance during these centuries: a growing tendency of having native men staffing local offices in the Sichuan region.

Click image below for larger view.

 

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Bucknell/Local Interest Environment General GIS GIS in Geography GIS in History GIS Jobs, Internships, Scholarships & Grad Programs Slideshow

GIS could help you get into grad school (and get funding!)

In recent posts I’ve given examples of how GIS can help you find an internship during your undergraduate years (click here to read more) and/or help you land a job once you have graduated from Bucknell (click here, here and here to read more).  Having experience with GIS as an undergraduate can also help you get into grad school (and get funding!).

Nick Gonsalves, Geography ’11, is a great example. In addition to taking Prof. Duane Griffin’s GEOG204 ‘Applied GIS’ course, Nick used GIS as one of the key research methodologies for his senior honors thesis. For his thesis, Nick reconstructed the historical vegetation of Union County during the early historical era (1755-1855) to assess the relationship between topography and vegetation, as well as the impact of European settler tree cutting on vegetation. Nick’s undergraduate experience with GIS and his ability to apply the technology in developing his honors thesis was surely a factor in his acceptance and funding for graduate studies in the University of Georgia’s Geography Department.

Now that he’s in the graduate program at UGA, Nick continues to use GIS for class projects (such as researching the distance food travels from the farm to the farmer’s market in Athens, GA) and for developing his Master’s thesis.  He’s also continuing to present the results of his senior honors thesis from Bucknell – including participating in a poster session at this year’s American Association of Geographers conference in NYC (see below – click on image for a larger version of the poster).

 

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Data Digital Humanities General GIS GIS in History Slideshow

Free, GIS-ready historic maps from New York Public Library

Here’s another treasure trove of data that’s ready and waiting to be added to your ArcMap session.

Over the last several years the New York Public Library has scanned more than 10,000 public domain historic maps and atlases of New York City and made digital copies of those maps available via its website. Recently NYPL took this project to the next level by creating a web tool that can be used (by NYPL staff as well as volunteers from the general public) to georeference the maps – i.e. pin the historic maps down to their location on a modern-day reference map.  Click here to check out their blog post about the project. Or click here to check out the do-it-yourself MapWarper tool and/or browse through the thousands of maps that have already been georectified.

What’s the big deal about being able to look at historic maps in GIS? Here’s an excerpt from the NYPL blog post on the project that does a great job of explaining how GIS can shed new light on old maps.

So, what does this all mean? If we have documents related to past times and past places (old maps), then we can create data to “rebuild” those past times and past places. And if we “rebuild” old places in virtual space, we can then organize a universe of other information around those old places. Wouldn’t it be great to haveyelp.com and menupages.com, but for old restaurants and with old menus and prices? Or to have at least a smattering of old photos in a historical street view? Or to search the National Newspaper Digitization Project using a map interface? At the core of all of these dream-like research futures is geographic information, in machine-readable format. And to get there, we need to warp, crop, mosaic, and trace our old maps. That’s why we’re doing what we’re doing. And as a positive byproduct, the maps just so happen to become more useful at each step along the way.

Using the NYPL website to find GIS-ready historic maps is incredibly easy. I used the ‘search by map’ option to zoom into Prospect Park in Brooklyn to find georectified historic maps that I could download and add straight to my ArcMap session. A whopping 394 maps were returned in the results – i.e. 394 maps that I could download as a KMZ file and add directly to ArcMap to explore how this small chunk of turf grew, changed and evolved through time to become the place that it is now.

 

If you find maps in the NYPL collection that have the historic places or events that you are interested in, but are not yet GIS-ready, you can use the MapWarper tool to georeference them yourself. Here’s a link to instructions for using the MapWarper – along with a YouTube video that describes the process.

httpv://youtu.be/G8ms_eBU8MQ