Feature-undergrad

Brandon Brown Defends Honors Thesis Visualizing Renewable Potential in Colorado

Anonymous — Fri, 10 May 2024 16:47:31 +0000

Brandon Brown Defends Honors Thesis Visualizing Renewable Potential in Colorado Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 05/10/2024 - 10:47

I am Brandon Brown, an undergraduate dual major at CU-51�Թ��, with an independent focus on applied GIS for sustainable development planning. Geography’s interdisciplinary nature sets it apart from other majors due to the flexibility with which a student can dual major, minor, or pursue a certificate. I transferred from Colorado Mountain College in Fall 2022 with a major in Environmental Studies, swiftly adding a Geography dual major after taking Intro to Mapping. GIS generates insights into spatial relationships, societal patterns, and geographic boundaries. The limits of applied cartography for analytics are the limits of human imagination. Ask where!

Geography offers academic experiences for students in environmental science, social sciences, and cartographic practices. Sarah Schlosser coordinates the GIS certificate which will familiarize students with RStudio, Python, and ArcGIS Pro for mapping platforms. Professor Taneesha Mohan coordinates internships for the department while teaching courses on methods and skills for socially conscious research. Professors John Adler and Rachel Isaacs teaches remote sensing and mapping climate change, both giving students the opportunity to implement remotely sensed imagery into their map products. Professor Stefan Leyk organizes the GIS Track of the Geography major with a heavy emphasis on spatial analysis, modeling, and programming. Studying Geography taught GIS methods I apply in my Honors thesis for clean energy site selection with an environmental justice lens.

The goal of my Honors thesis is to illustrate wind and solar energy potential in the state of Colorado, with the possibility of remediating contaminated environments on EPA REPower sites within Energy Communities. It is important to consider land ownership, indigenous sovereignty, economic policy at state and federal levels, solar and wind resourcing data, and potential environmental impacts. Qualifying advanced energy projects focus on commercial viability, greenhouse gas impacts, domestic labor/manufacturing, and community engagement.

A federal interagency working group has created the Energy Community initiative, geographic identification of areas for reinvestment as power sources are decarbonized. The EPA has designated contaminated sites with potential remediation efforts of renewable development called REPower sites. The Tribal Government territories of the Southern Ute and Ute Mountain are officially recognized Southwestern Colorado. Solar and wind data is provided by NREL’s archived RE-Atlas. By further honing in on EPA REPower sites within Energy Communities we can affordably remediate contaminated lands while decarbonizing power sources with qualifying advanced energy projects. My research uses multivariate criteria analysis of ethical, economic, policy, and environmental data to make recommendations for the initiative.

Recently passed, the Colorado Clean Energy Plan is a policy mandating Xcel Energy to reduce statewide energy-based carbon emissions 80% by 2030 as compared to 2005 levels. Greenfielding is a term I use to describe geographic areas which contain both the highest wind potentials and the highest solar potentials in their region. Below you will find a map of Colorado I made taking each criteria into account. I successfully defended my Honors thesis on April 8!

Off

Traditional

White

Matthew Woodland: Undergraduate Update

Anonymous — Thu, 20 Apr 2023 21:54:00 +0000

Matthew Woodland: Undergraduate Update Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 04/20/2023 - 15:54

Recently, I was awarded an Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP) Individual Grant for the Summer 2023 term to work on the project, “Characterizing Spatiotemporal Changes of Wildland Urban Interfaces in the United States.” Under the mentorship of Dr. Guofeng Cao, this project aims to characterize the spatiotemporal distribution of WUIs by taking advantage of computational resources, the availability of massive geospatial data, and advances in machine learning. This project also will understand the spatiotemporal trends of demographics, damages to communities, and climatic measurements. The findings can help advance the understanding of the changing wildfire risks posed to WUI communities, and provide insights for migration policies. Although this project will prove challenging, I feel confident in the GIS, remote sensing, and data science skills I’ve learned through department classes.

I came to CU as a Geography major in the Fall of 2021. Originally brought here through the multidisciplinary nature of Geography, I was quickly drawn to GIScience and the intersection between the social and natural sciences. While only in my second year, I am firmly on track to graduate a year early, in May 2024, with a GIS emphasis and minors in both Geology and Atmospheric & Oceanic Sciences.

Geography is my passion and so given my limited time at CU, I attempt to do as much as possible. During my first semester here, I was hired by the National Snow & Ice Data Center (NSIDC) as a technical writing assistant and have happily worked there for the previous 18+ months. The following spring, I looked to get into some undergraduate research, so I reached out to faculty and began working with Dr. Cao on our now UROP grant-funded project.

To contribute back to the department, I have been a Lab Assistant for the introductory GIS class and worked as an ArcGIS Student Technician helping to rewrite labs. I also serve on the Undergraduate Committee as a student representative where I help to review curriculum issues and set policy for undergraduate studies.

I am now a mentor for Earth Explorers, a science outreach program for middle school students interested in Earth science research. I work to support the students throughout the semester as they meet with CU scientists and make a film on their research.

This summer, in addition to the UROP research, I will be completing an internship with the geospatial software company, Esri, in Charlotte, North Carolina. I look forward to returning to 51�Թ�� in the fall where I will be starting my final year of undergraduate studies. Post-graduation, I plan to advance my education through a graduate degree program.

I would like to thank the 51�Թ�� Geography Department for its supportive and motivating environment in which students thrive. Finally, a special thanks to each of my instructors and also my undergraduate research professor, Dr. Guofeng Cao, all of which encourage me to be the best I can be. 

Off

Traditional

White

Daniel Sweeney: Earning a Fourth Degree!

Anonymous — Thu, 20 Apr 2023 21:48:32 +0000

Daniel Sweeney: Earning a Fourth Degree! Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 04/20/2023 - 15:48

I’m Daniel Sweeney. I’m an adult learner now (I think that’s what we call it), getting a Bachelors’ in Geography on the GIS Track. I have a college degree in Languages and Literature, and a Masters’ degree in Library Science, and another Masters’ degree in Computer Science, and have studied some Math and Statistics in between the other things. Originally, I was going to get a certificate, or just study GIS a little bit, but things kind of snowballed, and I wound up coming back to get a full Bachelors degree. 

It has been two years since I started studying in the Geography department, in the very end of the Covid pandemic. I did some work on spatial databases years ago, and have always been interested in GIS. Originally, I was thinking about a certificate but things sort of snowballed. The first class I took was Environment-Society Geography with Phurwa Dhondup Gurung, over the three-week May term. That was really eye-opening–it was three hours a day of a lot of things that I had thought about a lot in the past but needed a new framework to reason about. Population Geography with Fernando Riosmena in the fall also remixed a lot of things that I thought I knew into a new shape. 

A lot of my education is pretty technical, because I was a computer nerd, and I studied Languages and Literature way back when. I knew I had some gaps in the social sciences. I’m glad that CU Geography helped me fill in some of those gaps while I also studied how to make maps and analyze spatial data. A lot of my TAs were physical geographers. Being able to work with them as I studied gave me another perspective on space and scale. You can tell from how I have written this that the interdisciplinary nature of geography has been really valuable for me. 

Since I was a transfer who already had a college degree, a lot of my general requirements were satisfied. So, a large proportion of my coursework has been in Geography in the last two years (I did not look up the exact proportions, which usually I make people do when they engage in the rhetoric of data analysis). I think normally if you took a lot of classes in a single department, you would expect to have a lopsided education, but I feel like my relatively brief return to higher education in middle age has been very well-rounded for me. 

Off

Traditional

White

Mike Tran: Participating in Multiple Research Projects

Anonymous — Wed, 07 Dec 2022 19:05:16 +0000

Mike Tran: Participating in Multiple Research Projects Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 12/07/2022 - 12:05

My name is Mike Tran and I am currently a senior double-majoring in Geography (General Track) and International Affairs. This semester I am studying Arabic abroad under the Boren Scholarship. I plan on returning in the spring to finish my last semester at CU.

I started my time at CU as an International Affairs major, but I loved my Geography classes, so (with strong backing from Dr. Abby Hickcox in the Geography department) I decided to extend my time at CU, adding Geography as a second major this past spring.

Since then I have been able to work on a couple of research projects within the Geography Department. These included helping Professor Colleen Reid with her research on the effects of wildfire smoke on children’s health. I was also part of Earth Lab where I was able to learn data science and programming skills and then apply them to a research project aiming to find the correlation between snowpack and streamflow levels of the upper Colorado River.

Off

Traditional

White

A Student's Journey: Ally Fitts

Anonymous — Thu, 09 Dec 2021 23:39:14 +0000

A Student's Journey: Ally Fitts Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 12/09/2021 - 16:39

Allyson Fitts

I entered college as an undeclared major in hopes a general elective would spark interest for my future studies. I was quick to find inspiration within an introductory geography course where the professor presented his research pertaining to his work in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. As a snow hydrologist, his fieldwork included backcountry skiing, and I was instantly intrigued. Driven by the desire to get involved, I reached out to the professor and his graduate students to learn more about their discipline and ways to get involved as an undergraduate student. Over the past three years since meeting with this professor, I have been fortunate enough to deepen my understanding of mountain hydrology and remote sensing through various courses and experiences. I am a senior in the Geography and Environmental Studies departments pursuing a concentration in Geographic Information Sciences, as well as a certificate in hydrology.

During my sophomore year at CU, I participated in the undergraduate snow internship program at the CU Mountain Research Station on Niwot Ridge. I engaged in weekly snow pit profiles and collected data for the NASA SnowEx campaign and Long-Term Ecological Research(LTER) Program. Through this position, I developed an attentiveness for both fieldwork and snow hydrology. After expressing curiosity, I was invited to attend weekly meetings with the CU Mountain Hydrology Group. In addition to advancing my knowledge pertaining to hydrology and research techniques, joining this group exposed me to the collaborative workspace that lies within the research process. Interested in merging my skills with community-based research, I sought out guidance from Dr. Keith Musselman, a member of the group and INSTAAR Research Associate. Our discussion led me to hold an outreach internship position with Arctic Rivers Project during the summer of 2021.

The Arctic Rivers Project is a five-year project funded by the NSF, with the objective of converging western science and Indigenous knowledge to improve understanding of the changing Arctic. My participation in the project involved working collaboratively with other undergraduate students to develop a multimedia presentation in ESRI’s StoryMap as a way to outline the project’s goals and objectives. Furthermore, I look forward to attending the project’s conference, the Arctic Rivers Summit, which will take place in Anchorage, Alaska in March of 2022. My participation in the conference will be supported by funding I received through the Undergraduate Community-Engaged Scholar Grant, awarded by the CU Office for Outreach and Engagement. This opportunity will allow me to communicate and connect with Indigenous and First National leaders. Learning through new perspectives, I look forward to further broadening my scope of challenges that communities are facing due to climate change.

In addition to fieldwork and community outreach, I harbor an interest in data science. Through multiple statistics and GIS courses, I developed statistical and spatial analysis skills in R Studio, ENVI, ArcMap, and Google Earth Engine. Led by my desire to broaden my programming skill set, I held a remote sensing and data science internship position in collaboration with Earth Lab at CU and the U.S. Geological Survey from March through August of 2021. Over the course of this position, I participated in multiple workshops to mature my programming skills in Python. Additionally, I assisted faculty at Earth Lab to improve documentation of open source packages used to retrieve USGS hydrological data.

My coursework and experiences at CU have cultivated my passion for both science and community. After graduation, I look forward to continuing my education through a graduate degree program in the Fall of 2022.

Relevant Links:

Arctic Rivers Project
Niwot Ridge LTER-51�Թ��
Earth Lab-51�Թ��
Undergraduate Internship Opportunities
Office for Outreach and Engagement
Mountain Hydrology Group at CU

Off

Traditional

White