GIS Certificate student, Daryl Austin, is one of three 2006 recipients of the Wisconsin Land Information Association's annual scholarship for the 2006-07 academic year.
Recipients are awarded $1000 for tuition, a one year student membership and free registration to the WLIA 2007 Annual Conference. www.wlia.org
2007 GIS Certificate Achievement Award Laura Cotting
William Gartner
This annual Dept. award recognizes outstanding GIS Certificate students for achievement in academics, GIS application and extra-curricular activities. Presented at the Trewartha Lecture on May 11th, 2007
2007 Barbara Bartz Petchenik Memorial Award Graduate Award in Cartography Design, Runner-up
This annual Department award recognizes outstanding maps produced by undergraduate and graduate students.
GIS Certificate student, Samual Johnson, was this year's second place winner in the graduate category for his map, "For Gud og Vort Land!: Three Years of Campaigning in the 15th Volunteer Infantry".
The map follows the 15th Wisconsin's movements through key Civil War campaigns in North-South border states, including battles at Stones River, TN, Chickamauga, GA, and in William Tecumseh Sherman's Atlanta campaign. Many were captured
and died as prisoners of war at Andersonville Prison in Georgia. View map text
Johnson's map was also of particular interest to the Wisconsin Veterans Museum for its subject and use of historical sources and is now being sold through the museum. Awards are based on maps submitted by students and chosen based on factors including idea/concept, data, cartographic concept, attention to detail and visual appeal.
This year, UW GIS Certificate students took multiple awards in this map competition at the WI Land Information Association Conference.
Daryl Austin won first place in two categories - Best Map Poster and Best Student Map - for his entry, How Humans Adapt to MPA Regulations: Channel Island National Marine Sanctuary (1997-2006).
Laura Cotting took second place in the Orthophotography Base Map category for her Frankenstein's Landscape: Controversial Proposed Transmission Line Routes of the Jefferson County Reliability Project.
The competition, part of WLIA's annual membership conference, was held March 7-9, 2007at the Radisson Paper Valley Hotel in Appleton, Wisconsin. The Wisconsin Land Information Association (WLIA) is an association of GIS and Land Information professionals dedicated to the development, operation and maintenance of a network of statewide multi-purpose land information systems.
Student Projects Go To Awards Examples of some student internship projects.
Locating and Ranking Hotspots of Imperiled and Vulnerable Species in the Mojave Desert
Noah Najarian, Internship Project (2006) Host: Center for Biological Diversity, Tucson , AZ
The Mojave Desert harbors at least 396 species that are at risk of extinction. To identify hotspots of biodiversity, at-risk species occurrences were sampled within a hexagonal grid, and rarity-weighted richness index (RWRI) scores were calculated. Classification of cells by RWRI score suggested priority areas for conservation. Layers of land ownership and conservation status were superimposed to define protected habitats or highlight potential vulnerabilities.
Impact of “High Risk” Flood Risk Zones on Ozaukee County,
Wisconsin Private Parcel Owners
Matt Taran, Internship Project (2007) Host: WI Department of Natural Resources
The impact of new and revised Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) flood risk zones on Ozaukee County, Wisconsin property owners is investigated. The impacts were evaluated by comparing the number and locations of privately owned Ozaukee County land parcels intersecting with “high-risk” flood zone designations on expiring FEMA Flood Insurance Rate Maps (FIRMs) against private parcels intersecting “high-risk” zones on the county’s new Digital Flood Insurance Rate Maps (DFIRMs). The DFIRMs included both new and revised flood zone extents and should replace the old FIRMs as the official current effective flood maps of record in autumn 2007. This case study revealed that a total of 3,490 privately owned parcels intersected a “high-risk” zone on the expiring flood maps or FIRMs. Of those 3,490 private parcels, 648 fell outside the “high-risk” zones on the new Ozaukee County DFIRMs. The new flood maps, called DFIRMs, included a total of 3,742 privately owned parcels which intersected “high-risk” zones. Of those 3,742 parcels, 900 parcels were not considered “high-risk” on the expiring FIRMs. An examination of “high-risk” parcels on both map versions showed 2,842 private parcels maintained a “high-risk” status on both flood map versions. In summary, this Ozaukee County analysis revealed the new countywide flood maps included an overall net gain of 252 “high-risk” parcels.
An Assessment of Potential Source Regions of Winter Manure Runoff in the Upper Sugar River Watershed
Matt Rehwald, Internship Project (2006) Host: Upper Sugar River Watershed Association, Mount Horeb, WI
In late February 2005, the combination of warm temperatures, rapidly melting snow cover, and impervious frozen ground created heavy inflows into the Upper Sugar River watershed in southwestern Dane County . Over 200 brown trout were killed when several thousand gallons of liquid manure, carried by meltwater, entered the West Branch of the Sugar River (Fetter, 2005). This event undid several years of trout restoration work by the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR), Dane County , riparian landowners, the Upper Sugar River Watershed Association (USRWA), and other conservation groups in the West Branch sub-watershed. A steep-slope field near the headwaters of the West Branch, where liquid manure had recently been applied, was identified as the source of the manure spill (Fetter, 2005). To reduce the risk of a similar manure spill and fish kill in the future, this analysis was conducted to identify other potentially problematic steep-slope fields within its watershed.
We decided to use ArcIMS because it provided the functionality we needed and the ease of working with large data sets. The final project was a combination of three parts. First prepare the data that we wanted to serve on the site, second create the ArcIMS service, and third, customize the HTML viewer.
Northern Wisconsin Historical Orthophotos ArcIMS
Aaron Mielke , Internship Project (2005) Host: UW Department of Forest Ecology & Management
In 2002 I created a collection of digital orthophotos while working for the SILVIS Lab, Department of Forest Ecology and Management, University of Wisconsin Madison. The orthophotos where used to digitize roads and houses for seventeen townships in Northern Wisconsin as part of two graduate projects in the department.
After the projects were completed there seemed to be no other use for the orthophotos, so they where burned on to DVDs and stored. Members of the lab quickly realized that the thousands of hours that went into creating the orthophotos would be a waste if we did not do more with them. We decided we needed to make them available for others to view, download, and use. The goal of my internship was to publish the historical orthophotos on the web using ArcIMS to facilitate interactive web-based mapping.
Identifying Potential Dugout Locations at the Nicodemus National Historic Site
Katie Dosch , Internship Project (2006) Host: National Parl Service
Nicodemus National Historic Site (NICO) was created in 1996 by the Department of the Interior. It is located in the central part of Kansas. Nicodemus is historically important, because it was the first, and is the only remaining all black settlement that arose after the civil war. The original settlement of Nicodemus consisted of sod-ups and dugouts, which are rooms dugout of a hill side, with dirt floors and walls. The location of most of these dugouts and sod-ups is unknown. These houses provide archeologists with a lot of information about the quality of life and style of living of the inhabitants of Nicodemus in the early settlement period (1877-1879). In 2003 a Cultural Landscape Report was created documenting the history and condition of the town and each building. This report included information about all parts of the historic site, including two sets of aerial photographs. Our goals for this project was to build or create a digital data model for use in future management of the historic site, to predict potential dugout locations, based on the attributes of known dugouts in the area, and create a general base map based on the collected data.
