Mountain Clearing and Urbanization in Yan’an, —Shaanxi, ChinaYelizaveta Aleksyuk, Noah Eckhous, Gabriel Jacobs, and John Solly
Department of Geography
University of California, Santa Barbara
Since 2010, rapid urbanization in China has propelled the transformation of the surrounding landscape at an unprecedented rate. Near the city of Yan’an, in Shaanxi Province, 20.186 square kilometers of mountainous terrain has been flattened and cleared for the purpose of constructing industrial parks. Anthropogenic geomorphological processes have been working at phenomenal rates to prepare mountains for their industrious future. However, this $16 Billion project was initiated without a scientific inquiry into the viability of the terraforming venture. These practices are causing notable impacts on the air and water quality of the region as well increasing the frequency in landslides.
Crop Evapotranspiration and Change in Irrigation in Kern CountyYelizaveta Aleksyuk, Noah Eckhous, Gabriel Jacobs, and John Solly
Department of Geography
University of California, Santa Barbara
This study is estimating water expenditure based on ETc, precipitation, and land-use map data in Kern County, before and during the recent California drought. Nine focus crops were selected by largest crop area from Kern County agricultural land polygons and evaluated for their evapotranspiration values with inclusion of soil types. Crop Evapotranspiration (ETc) is the sum amount of water (in inches) that evaporates from the soil and transpires from plants in a given area of farmland. This value is unique to each crop and varies with both environmental conditions (e.g., precipitation, humidity, and temperature) as well as agricultural conditions (e.g., irrigation and soil type). In the past decade, California has experienced drought conditions that have caused variations in precipitation year categorization (2006 being a typical year, 2010 being a wet year, and the recent 2014 being a dry year). Looking at these three year types in accordance with ETc values can give us a reasonable estimation of the change in irrigation needed to sustain crop growth. With these visualizations, it is possible to assess which locations and major crop types are excessively demanding during California’s water crisis.
Neighborhood Boundary Representations: Koreatown, Los AngelesCrystal Bae
Department of Geography
University of California, Santa Barbara
This poster explores where residents in and near the officially designated neighborhood of Koreatown, Los Angeles, locate the boundaries of “Koreatown” as well as how these boundaries are similar or different from other boundary definitions, and why? Further, it explores which physical and social factors relate to the residents’ understanding of these boundaries and how cognitive neighborhood boundaries relate to residents’ ethnic identity, their activities within this space, and their level of identification with Koreatown.
Using Social Media to Predict the 2016 ElectionsNhi Chung, Hans Marasigan, Richard Ko
Department of Geography
University of California, Santa Barbara
Using Java programming language and Twitter to gather geotagged Twitter data for four weeks, the authors compared their data with polls, sentimental analysis, flow maps, network graphs, temporal trends, and spatial visualization to make predictions for the 2016 elections.
Testing Core Spatial ComputationsSara Lafia
Department of Geography
University of California, Santa Barbara
Existent solutions for translating a traditional GIS workflow into a set of core computations that extend across domains are explored.
Developing Representational Competence with Concrete and Virtual Manipulatives in ChemistryAndrew T. Stull and Mary Hegarty
Department of Geography
University of California, Santa BarbaraIn two intervention studies, concrete and virtual models were examined for their support when teaching diagram translation in chemistry, important to developing representational competence. Translation accuracy was compared over time for three groups that differed on the type of model (Concrete, Virtual, or none) used to give intervention feedback. Concrete models were manipulated directly by hand but virtual models employed either a lower-fidelity (mouse and keyboard) interface (Study 1) or a higher-fidelity (co-located 3DOF prop with stereo-display) interface (Study 2). In both studies, the two model groups were not significantly different, but the combined model group was significantly more accurate than the control group, which was provided with feedback but without models. Also, the model group was more accurate than the control when tested 7-days later without models. These results show that manipulative models can scaffold learning but that interface fidelity is not essential in this learning task.
UCSB Interactive Campus Map
Christian Czotscher, Thorben Schiller, Andrea Ballatore, Werner Kuhn
Center for Spatial Studies
Department of Geography
Started as student project in the Department of Geography, the Interactive Campus Map now has 8,000+ visits during the first week of the 2015 spring quarter, demonstrating it’s value as a service to the entire UCSB community.
Soil Erosion Modeling Using the Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation (RUSLE) in the Sedgwick Reserve
Scott Yehl
Department of Geography
Modeling soil properties in a landscape is difficult because of their wide-ranging, three-dimensional variability. However, using topological and hydrological data analyses of digital elevation models (DEMs) that take the heterogeneities of soil landscapes into account, certain characteristics of soil media within a specified watershed can be predicted. Using geographic information systems as a platform, attributes of a DEM can be calculated and combined to describe spatial variability in landscape properties, such as soil erosion. This project examines the well-studied soils of the Sedgwick Reserve in order to determine annual soil loss distributed across the landscape. The RUSLE model for soil erosion is employed in this analysis.
Explanation, Comprehension and Control in Interactive Information Spaces
B. Kang, S. Bostandjiev, B. Gretarsson, C. Segal, J. Schaffer, Y. Teng, I. Andjelkovic, N. Davis, T. Höllerer, J. O’Donovan
FourEyes Lab
Department of Computer Science
This poster explores the dynamics and value of Interactive Information Systems, which are largely based on awareness and trust.
Metadata Topic Harmonization and Semantic Search for Linked-Data-Driven Geoportals
Yingjie Hu, Krzysztof Janowicz, Sathya Prasad, and Song Gao
STKO Lab
Department of Geography
Geoportals provide integrated access to geospatial resources, and enable both authorities and the general public to contribute and share data and services. An essential goal of geoportals is to facilitate the discovery of the available resources, which relies heavily on the quality of metadata. While multiple metadata standards have been established, data contributors may adopt different standards when sharing their data via the same geoportal. This is especially the case for user-generated content where various terms and topics can be introduced to describe similar datasets. While this heterogeneity provides a wealth of perspectives, it also complicates resource discovery. The problems addressed in this project are: (1) Heterogeneity in metadata topics, whereby different data providers may contribute data to the same geoportal using different metadata standards; and (2) the lack of semantic search for RDF metadata, whereby search is based on keyword matching instead of the meaning of the input query.
Measuring the Effects of the March 2011 Japanese Tsunami using Landsat 5 Imagery
Dominick Burnham, Ben Schock, and Dana Tuttle
Department of Geography
The 2011 9.0-magnitude Tohoku earthquake on northeastern Honshu Island, Japan, caused large tsunamis to hit the northeast coastal regions of the Island and flow into urban areas, ultimately causing immense infrastructural damage. This project examined the tsunami-related land-cover change in the areas surrounding Hirota Bay, Yamada Bay, and Motoyoshi Bay and created a classification system to quantify land-cover change to serve as an accurate model of land-cover change caused by tsunamis.?
Populations near Active Oil Wells in Kern County, CA
Ben Schock, Colin Loustalot, and Clark Shao
Department of Geography
The locations of oil extraction wells were investigated for the counties with the highest production of oil in California—Kern County (which has 77 % of California’s active wells) and Los Angeles County. The goal of this project was to assess the distribution and relationships between extraction well sites and the populations and places, including ethnic communities, those of low socioeconomic status, and K-12 schools.
Isla Vista Street Lights Analysis
Alvin Yeung, William Kaufman, Ryan Allen, and Mike Grossman
Department of Geography
Street light improvements are systematically installed in certain parts of Isla Vista as it grows in both population density and crime rate. A student group project conducted in 2012 found very little association between street lighting and crime occurrences; however, it serves as a great comparison to the current lighting conditions for this current project. The goal of this project is to provide a student’s perspective to the upcoming improvements as well as assessing the current effectiveness and coverage of Isla Vista street lights. Analysis of the luminosity, intensity, and cost of lights, is expected to help understand and suggest improvements for this college town’s night life conditions.
Astronomy Learning in Digital Virtual Environments Pilot Study: Desk Top Immersive Environment
Jatila van der Veen (Physics Department and U.S. Planck Team)
Jessica Cornick and Jim Blascovich (Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences)
Luke Spooner and Hannah Kang (Physics Department, Undergraduate Research Assistants)
The objective of this pilot study was to establish a baseline of students at the University of California, Santa Barbara who use the Virtual Solar System simulation in a desk-top virtual environment (DVE), which will be compared to a similar population who use the simulation in a fully immersive virtual environment (IVE) with head-mounted displays. Target questions addressed were: (1) Does navigating in a virtual solar system improve learners’ spatial comprehension in astronomy, compared to a reference group who experienced only traditional, lecture-based instruction? (2) Does increasing the level of immersion from DVE to IVE improve spatial learning in basic astronomy? (3) What role does a student’s prior knowledge and experience play in learning spatial concepts in astronomy in virtual environments.
Spatial Ability in Expert Geoscientists
Margaret R. Tarampi, Kinnari Atit, Heather L. Petcovic, Thomas F. Shipley, & Mary Hegarty
This project explores if expert geoscientists have high spatial ability in (a) cross-sectioning (spatial reasoning about internal structures based surface information); (b) spatial perspective taking (mentally transformation of one’s perspective relative to spatial forms); (c) environmental spatial ability (large scale spatial ability); and (d) spatial visualization (small scale spatial ability).
Resurrecting Yesterday’s Landscapes
Jon Jablonski
Map & Imagery Laboratory
UCSB Library
This poster demonstrates how multiple images can be combined into a mosaic to provide a larger canvas on which to examine land-use data.
Why is that Property Shaped the Way it is? Telling the History of Thousand Oaks with Searchable Tract MapsHelen Johnson
City of Thousand OaksThe City of Thousand Oaks has a public facing online map service accessible to residents and businesses interested in better understanding the city. One of its many features is a search tool for individual properties with information such as acreage, assessors book page, water and sewer service, zoning, and links to Public Works drawings including tract maps. Currently, tract maps are only available for modern developments that have a standardized naming structure. Older developments with no regular naming structure are not accurately linked to from the online map. This project aims to compile tract map data into a single feature class that can link each parcel to all of its historic tract maps. This will allow the online map to link to tract maps from every parcel. In addition to links to the current tract maps, each parcel will also have links to all previous maps. This will help owners understand how and when property boundaries came to be. The objective of this project is to create a more useful, streamlined map service and to improve data access to the public.
