GIS Extra Credit: Geography Open House

Overview
     The geography open house is an event which took place from 5:30 -7:00, Thursday, November 17 and was located in Phillips Hall. The open house was an informal event where individuals could talk with geography students and professors in order to learn about more about what UW-Eau Claire has to offer in the Geography and Anthropology department. Students presented on their capstone projects and on geography courses. Below are a few of topics which were presented.

Drones
     One student used a drone to collect data about the water content of vegetation at the Eau Claire Golf and Country Club. Using the data collected, he displayed the data on a map which showed areas that were dry, areas that the sprinkler missed, and the difference between water content mainly on grassy surfaces. After analyzing the data, he found that fairways were severely under watered when comparing them to the greens.
     A different student used drones in a different matter. He used one to collect footage of the large flooding event on the Eau Claire river which occurred earlier this fall. Footage was collected and then displayed in a short film. He was using his own drone, and was presenting for geography 390 - Unmanned Areal Systems to show how the topics learned from this course can be applied to real world events.

Ground Penetrating Radar
     Another student worked with a team this past summer to locate a lost Jewish man's body buried since the Nazi's buried him in World War II. Based off of eye witness and written accounts his team was able to identify a possible location for this lost body. They used ground penetrating radar across a large area to collect the data needed to search for the exact location. This student searched through the data to find anomalies in the soil layer to pinpoint the most likely location of where this body could be found. Him and his team then identified this spot and began digging. They found a tombstone and a skeleton. Currently the DNA from the skeleton is being tested to see if it matches family members to see if it indeed the correct skeleton.

Remote Sensing
     One student presented on our department's quantitative methods course (geography 370). He wanted to identify the change in a landscape over time. He used areal photographs taken 30 years apart and then used a computer program to identify the pixels which had changed the most over this time. Most of the change was due to urbanization, although vegetation also played a role.

Conclusion
     All of these presentations were very informative and showed how applicable different skills can be in the job market. The students who presented their findings using data collected from drones kept on reiterating this point. The drones were very cool. They are a fairly new and growing field to go into as well. The time taken to attend was well worth it as the information taken in was very significant.