Volume 2. No 4 Information Technology News of the University of California, Davis Summer 1994

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GIS Incorporated Into UCD Curriculum

Problem: Trace the history of property ownership in Sacramento shortly before the Squatters' Riot of 1850.

Problem: Determine whether legislation regulating the disposal of rice straw is causing an increase of methane release into the atmosphere.

Problem: Select highway and freeway lanes in Sacramento that are suitable for conversion to carpool lanes.

Solution: GIS. What is a GIS? It's a Geographic Information System, which allows you to enter, store, manipulate, analyze, and display spatial information. Although GIS was first made popular by geographers and land management planners, it is now used by biologists, ecologists, hydrologists, sociologists, and other researchers who work with data that can be expressed spatially. "I began using spatial analysis techniques in graduate school, and they continue to be indispensable in my hydrology research," says Wes Wallender of Hydrologic Science and Biological and Agricultural Engineering.

The three problems listed above are projects that students in UCD's new GIS class (Introduction to Geographic Information Systems, EBS/HYD 198, team-taught by Wallender and Paul Grant of Information Technology), were able to solve by creatively applying GIS's spatial analysis techniques. Assisted by Tim Allis of IT (who also helped teach the lab portion of the class), students used Arc/Info Software in Information Technology's workstation-based Visualization laboratory. While Grant has been teaching short courses in GIS use for the past two and a half years, this is the first time that GIS has been incorporated into UCD curriculum as an academic class. He feels that the class was very successful, and Wallender agrees: "Students performed better than anticipated - their projects were thoughtful and more ambitious than originally intended."

Grant feels that both the short course and the full-length academic class serve a particular need on campus: while many of the people come into the short class for an overview of the system and an understanding of how GIS works, the full class gives students an opportunity to apply the information they've learned to a real-world problem. The class is split into two sections - during the first half of the quarter, students learn how to use Arc/Info's many functions; during the second half, they must apply what they've learned to a project of their choice.

Students Eric Sanderson and John Dale chose to apply spatial analysis techniques to track the evolution of Sacramento property boundaries as social constructs. Examining the years shortly before the Squatters' Riot in 1850, Eric and John compared property boundaries as defined by speculators (who bought large lots of land and then resold them piece-by-piece for large profits) and squatters (who defined property boundaries by usage rather than by deed of ownership). GIS allowed them to transform huge amounts of historical data into several graphical representations, which could then be subjected to further analysis.

Glen Fitzgerald, an Agricultural Ecology student, found a very different use for GIS analysis. Looking at data on rice paddies in Yuba County, he focused on the link between land management methods in rice production and methane emission from rice fields. Since rice production contributes approximately 25% of the world's methane emission (one of the contributing factors to the greenhouse effect), Glen wanted to determine whether new legislation regarding methods of rice straw disposal would increase or decrease methane emission from rice paddies. He used GIS analysis to create topological representations of fields using both the old method of disposal (burning the rice straw) and the new method (incorporating the rice straw back into the soil). Glen found a significant increase in methane emission in fields where rice straw is incorporated back into the soil, indicating that the impact of this legislation should be studied in greater detail.

Illustrating one of the more traditional uses of GIS, John Gard and Raghu Kowshik were able to select ideal sites for conversion of traditional highway lanes into HOV (carpool) lanes, considering such diverse factors as traffic flow, peak driving hours, and support for an increase in carpool lanes among both local residents and freeway users.

Other students found equally creative applications for GIS. Lindsey Swope examined the causes of deforestation in the areas surrounding four Chinese villages. James Juenger and Kayleen Keller were able to locate optimal areas for a new wildlife preserve in Costa Rica. Pauline Low and Tracy Pon examined the correlation between urban development and water quality in the Lake Tahoe area. One very enterprising student, Eric Jarvi, far exceeded the original assignment, creating a graphical interface for the GIS system. To demonstrate the power of his interface, he used data from the Housing Viewpoint's annual survey to create overlays which a user can combine to find the apartment complex which most closely matched their preferences: the user chooses the features that they want in an apartment, and the system displays a map of Davis, highlighting all the apartment complexes which offer these features.

Hoping to increase the prominence of GIS on campus, Grant and Wallender are already working to improve the class for next year. "For the next offering, we will increase the lecture/discussion from one to two hours per week to allow for more discussion of concepts, and to have campus and off-campus GIS users share their experiences," says Wallender. "Paul will assign additional computer homework exercises that go beyond the tutorial. Finally, students will continue working individually or in teams of two, but will choose from two or three projects we design. ...Next year, a follow-up course in GIS will be taught using the visualization laboratory; ... we will have a two- course sequence. This sequence will be the capstone of a Minor in GIS and Spatial Analysis, [which] the Campus GIS Committee is preparing."

For more information about GIS, you can call Wes Wallender at 752-0688 (email address: wwwallender@ucdavis.edu) or Paul Grant at 752-8266 (email address: pwgrant@ucdavis.edu).

If you are interested in IT's short course on Arc/Info, you can call Paul Gutierrez at 752-0141.