Cohort March 2022: Faculty of Forestry – Paul D. Pickell, Honghong Li, An Hoang, Marcellus Wang, Kailey Chelswick, Han Yan
Project background
Geomatics is a rapidly advancing field with constant technological and software changes, which make it challenging to ensure that instructional labs are up-to-date and relevant for teaching and learning. Geographic Information System (GIS) educators will recognize the significant burden of continuously updating lab instructions to accommodate the evolving GIS technology and students’ interests.
Project details
We describe a student-led approach to developing new GIS lab topics for teaching GIS in the Faculty of Forestry. We produced four new GIS labs:
- Urban green space equity: The unequal distribution of urban forests in cities is associated with many socioeconomic factors such as income level. Students will explore the greenery status in Metro Vancouver to better understand what factors contribute to inequality of access to green space using proximity tools.
- Historical redlining legacies: As a discriminatory zoning system, redlining not only influenced the neighbourhood living style in the last century but also impacted the current urban setting such as greenspace allocation, green gentrification, and public well-being study. Students will explore specific city characteristics using overlay tools.
- Wildfire burned area: La Niña has affected BC for three years and has caused more intense drought and increased the risk of wildfires. Students will learn about the frequency of wildfires in BC in recent years and learn how to search, download, and manage public geospatial data sources.
- Cloud computing: Western mountain pine beetle has been severely damaging pine forests in the BC interior and in places in Alberta. Students will use Google Earth Engine to determine the areas in Jasper National Park that experienced a decrease in vegetation health. In addition to describing the workflows for the labs above, we detail our process and lessons learned for undertaking this collaborative and student-led process for developing new GIS labs.