Kelsey Yoder-Ostroski's Portfolio of Geographic Information Science

Visualizing Terrain in ArcGIS Pro Ever hear the joke about the topographic map? It was hill-arious! As stated in my last blog post, the world is not flat but traditional mapping is. So how do we go about translating 3D objects into a 2D space?  Terrain visualization is the process of representing either the physical characteristics of the terrain or phenomena occurring at that location. The goal is to provide a visual and intuitive understanding of a specific area's topography and landscape features. Frequently slope and elevation, rainfall, and landcover are recorded and symbolized in various methods. By combining recorded measurements with location and elevation, we can analyze possible patterns and make more accurate predictions.  Contour lines are lines on a map or a two-dimensional representation that connect points of equal elevation above a reference point, usually sea level. These lines help visualize the shape and relief of the land, indicating changes in elevation ac...

 The Perfect Projection Finding a solution to the persnickety problem of projections The world is not flat.  Ok, maybe you already knew that. I think we all already know that (not looking at you, flat-earthers). So, if we all already know and understand that the world is round, why is mapmaking so vexing?  The problem is: the world IS round. Maybe you've already noticed but most maps are flat. They exist on paper, on cellphones, on the GPS of our cars, and sometimes on really cool scrolls an adventure unfurls dramatically before the big battle. Until we get bigger pockets, nobody will carry around a globe for quick reference. The second problem is: the world IS NOT round. No, I am not conceding to the flat-earthers. The world is still a sphere but it's full of imperfections (aren't we all). There are mountains and oceans: gravity pulls and pushes the planet into an oblique spheroid. One of the most basic, yet most challenging, conundrum for mapmakers is to recreate the ac...

  The Importance of Typography Or why Times New Roman is so last Century Gothic Alternatively, what the Helvetica is going on with fonts?      So this is going to sound kooky, but fonts have personality. No, not fronts or fronds or fondue-- fonts. You probably remember your teacher telling you, " Only use Times New Roman or you'll never get into college! " Yes, the thing you probably can barely describe but completely surrounds you in print media. It's on your favorite bag of chips, your comfy sweater, and on the computer screen right in front of you.       Font, or typography,  is the purposefully and carefully chosen craft of choosing how words and symbols appear in print media. It conveys personality and purpose. It taps into the Jungian archetypes-- from heroic to villainous, from analytical to whimsical, and to everything in between.  "elefonts" by John Atkinson     Cartographers employ the same skills in order to communic...

Creating Corridors: Multi-Path Suitability Analysis Creative Commons Background Wildlife corridors are a stretch of land where animals migrate from one location to another. They can be as small as a culvert or as wide as entire continents. As humans encroach on habitats, creating and maintaining wildlife corridors are vital to the preservation of animal species. In this hypothetical scenario, we have been asked to propose a wildlife corridor for black bears living in the Coronado National Forest.  Coronado National Forest encompasses a large swath of southern Arizona and New Mexico, consisting of eight "wilderness areas". Animals wishing to travel from one wilderness area to another will encounter human development. We can think of animal movement in terms of cost. Like humans, the bears will want to use as few resources as possible and minimize risk in order to travel.  Objectives For this project, we need to create a corridor. The corridor is the overlapping area between tw...

Suitability Analysis: Booleans in Vectors & Rasters An important product of GIS is identifying areas that fit a range of criteria. Where should the local city focus its limited resources? Where can ecologists find a rare species? How do we make the best choice when time and money are on the line?  In GIS, we can attempt to answer these questions with a suitability analysis, which provides a framework for picking "the best" locations for our needs.  Suitability analysis (also called a multicriteria decision analysis) consists of criteria and objectives, the corresponding layers, and a composite of all layers. In other words, there is a problem that needs to be solved, information related to that problem, and a system of making a final result that considers all of the required objectives. So what does that mean in the real world? For the following example, we were asked by wildlife experts to help create a map where mountain lions (cougars) could be located. For this object...

This week we continued exploring the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy by tracing its path in the Atlantic and inspecting just a small portion of the damage it caused.  By using NOAA data, we created a storm path map to illustrate Sandy's course as it began as a tropical depression, strengthened to a category 2 hurricane, and subsided into a post-tropical cyclone.  Next, we explored a small study area of 1 square mile off the coast of New Jersey and performed a damage assessment. Each property had to be identified and categorized using "domains". Each domain provides a dropdown menu of subtypes, which are pre-specified levels of damage. This is a useful tool for limiting the number of choices and reinforcing data integrity. Imagine telling a hundred people to describe thousands of buildings after a major storm. The responses would be wild! Overall, it is difficult to discern what damage has occurred and to what extent. A great deal of assumption was done on my part based on pe...

     As climate change continues to intensify storms and increase flooding, it is vital for communities and governments to prepare for inevitable storm damage. In this week's lab, we explored coastal flooding models and prepared our own storm surge analysis. Our study area was Mantoloking, New Jersey, a low-laying barrier island that suffered major damage from superstorm Sandy in 2012. More information about the storm can be found on New Jersey's Department of Environmental Protection . Superstorm Sandy     By comparing LiDAR data before and a few days after the storm, we can create a comparison analysis. The LiDAR data is converted into a DEM by first creating a TIN (triangulated irregulated network). As the TIN shows, the topography varies little with only very mild sloping.  LiDAR .las point cloud dataset is converted into a  TIN       By subtracting the two DEMS, we can see the changes in the environment. Further color manipulat...