Globe Fodder

Last lab for Spatial Analysis and Environmental Modeling with Drs. Juliana Maantay and Andrew Maroko through Lehman College and CUNY School of Public Health.

Lab for Spatial Analysis and Environmental Modeling with Drs. Juliana Maantay and Andrew Maroko at Lehman College.

Scenario: You have been asked to conduct a spatial analysis and prepare several maps for a conservation project that is taking place in the Black Hills of South Dakota. Your goal is to determine the areas that could potentially house the rare Black Hills snail so that these areas can be included in any management plans. This snail species prefers to inhabit areas with limestone soils in the cool and dense coniferous forest and is rarely found above an elevation of 1600 meters or below 1200 meters. By combining 3 maps- a geological map, a vegetation map, and an elevation map- you will identify areas of potential snail habitat. Your analysis will help conservation biologists create sampling strategies for counting populations, analyze whether the habitats are interconnected or widely separated for purposes of genetic mixing, and help make decisions about forest management to protect the snails. The final output will contain the areas common to all 3 layers- the snails’ habitat. After determining where the snails may be located, you will also identify roads in close proximity to the snails’ habitat and determine how much of the snails’ habitat lies within 200 meters of these roads. You will use this data to create a series of informative maps that can be used by conservation biologists in their recommendations for managing the Black Hills forest area.

Scenario: You are an environmental planner in a municipality that has decided to investigate alternative energy sources that will provide clean and inexpensive power. The city has decided to look into solar power, since coal and oil pollute and are non-renewable, and nuclear power produces hazardous waste with disposal problems and health and safety issues for residents. You and the solar power experts have generated a list of criteria that characterize a good site for a solar power plant, in order to maximize solar energy collecting capacity, and minimize the expense of transmission. The main three criteria are: -Panels should be oriented between southeast (112.50) and southwest (247.50); - Panels should be tilted between 100 and 400; - The power station should be within 1.5 miles of an existing power line. Based on these criteria, you will analyze the area and produce a map showing the best locations for a solar power plant.

A lab for the class Geography of Urban Health with Professor Andrew Maroko at CUNY Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy. A geographically weighted regression analysis looking at the impact of vacant derelict land on mental health, using prescriptions as a proxy.

Scenario: The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)has asked you to create a map and some summary statistics of soil drainage characteristics in a portion of Southeast Asia as they are concerned about flood hazards that may be associated with this variable. Your job is to map out the drainage characteristics using the Harmonized World Soil Database (HSWD), and then calculate how much area in the region is comprised of each class(by area and by percentage). 

First lab for Spatial Analysis class with Andrew Maroko and Juliana Maantay at Lehman College (through CUNY School of Public Health). Here we are looking at distribution of supermarkets and comparing to poverty levels in NYC neighborhoods.

Lab for Quant Methods of GIS with Professor Glen Johnson at CUNY School of Public Health.

Went through ESRI’s kriging lab for Quant Methods in GIS class with Glen Johnson, comparing kriging methods for Ozone interpolation in California. First map is gathering all the data for the model, second map is presentable layout.

Looking at group segregation between non-hispanic whites and non-hispanic blacks in NYC and NOLA. Two indices are used: Isolation Index and Index of Dissimilarity. Lab for Geography of Urban Health with Professor Andrew Maroko at CUNY School of Public Health.

Comparing Inverse Distance Weighting and Kriging/CoKriging methods for interpolation of total organic carbon measurements in the Tamba Bay sediment. Lab completed for Quant Methods in GIS with Professor Glen Johnson at CUNY School of Public Health.

Examining the spatio-temporal clusters that appear when looking at whole state vs. excluding NYC. The density of the city population can often hide patterns in less urban counties. Lab for GIS Quant Methods class with Professor Glen Johnson at CUNY School of Public Health and Health Policy.

Network Analysis to examine real life access to park entrances,  instead of Euclidean distance model. More data is needed to test correlation.

Lab for Geography of Urban Health with Professor Andrew Maroko. Had some trouble getting the 5-year estimate poverty data so had to settle for 3-year estimates, which were missing Herkimer and Schuyler counties.

hidden creek

Swan Lake