Reflections on the Course
This course provided students with an opportunity to explore a variety of geospatial problems and to enhance their own problem-solving skills and skills utilizing ArcMap. The framework was such that with each assignment, students were presented with a new set of tools and a problem to solve. The course encouraged us to expand beyond the problem presented by forcing us to think about other problems that could be solved with the tools provided. We were also provided with a platform to showcase out work, which you are seeing on this website.
Throughout the semester, I learned new skills utilizing CAD data, linear referencing, and customizing the ArcMap interface. I also learned new ways to work with raster data, such as performing site selection based on given criteria, and performing site suitability analysis by performing weighted overlay. I expanded upon my skills with geocoding, performing tabular and spatial joins, working with census data, performing various types of spatial analyses, and image classification.
Throughout the course, I not only learned new procedures for tackling common geospatial problems, but more importantly, I gained confidence in my ability to solve problems on my own. I learned to experiment with different techniques, to trouble-shoot problems when they arose, and to evaluate my results to ensure I was reaching the proper conclusions. I will undoubtedly call upon the skills that I gained from this course repeatedly throughout my career.
I look forward to applying the skills and concepts learned in this course to tackle several research questions that I am currently hoping to answer in future endeavors. I previously performed a multivariate analysis of morphological features of several species of sea krait (Laticauda colubrine complex) including a cluster analysis. Certain morphological features clustered into previously presumed species groups. I am interested in re-examining these data with some of the tools I used in this course. Many of the specimens were from museum samples, and only general localities were provided. I am curious about using a gazetteer style address locator to georeference these data. I would want to perform clustering analyses and potentially run the Hot Spot and Outlier Analysis on the data and see how the output compares with the results of the analyses we have already performed.
I have also been working on a research question addressing the nesting habitats of Bald Eagles across Pennsylvania. I have nesting locations and I would like to perform an analysis of the land cover in the areas around the nest. I am interested in using remotely sensed images and performing an image classification to determine the extent of various types of land cover. I would then like to analyze how the landscape features surrounding the nest have changed over time. I plan to utilize the fuzzy overlay technique to determine the areas of suitable habitat for Bald Eagles across Pennsylvania. I hope to be able to develop a model to predict new nesting locations and have a research proposal in the works to perform follow-up surveys in search of new nest sites.
I am also curious to try out the skills I learned from the linear referencing exercise. A colleague of mine collected data on ant species and on forest canopy herbivory along large transects. Once these transect data are made into event layers, I will be able search the data for patterns of species presence or type of herbivory and a variety of other habitat variables. Again, several statistical analyses can be run to determine what, if any, spatial patterns exist.
The structure of this course encouraged me to think about how the skills and tools that were presented in each assignment could be applied to questions that are of interest to me. I not only look forward to exploring these research questions with the skills I gained from this course, but I also look forward to continuing to learn new techniques and concepts as I move forward in my studies and my career.
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