What:  Campus Tree Map

Who: Tim Parsons, Horticulturalist

Technologies used: Hardware: Dell Axim Handheld PC with a Bluetooth GPS; Software: Handheld PC running ArcPad; Desktop: ArcEditor, ArcPad, ArcPad Application Builder, Microsoft Excel, Access, and Visual Studio, Google Earth and Picassa 3.

Assistance Received: Tim received assistance with ArcGIS from Bill Hegman, GIS Specialist; and Katie Clagett and Chris Rodgers, former GIS Interns at LIS.  He also received some help from students in the Geography Department’s computer lab.

Courses: BIOL 1003, Trees and the Urban Forest, and other classes in the Biology Department.

Reasons for using the Technology: The tree map is used primarily as a management tool but it has been central to a number of curricular projects as well.  The map is viewable in Google Earth.  Many commercial software packages are available for urban forest management, but they cost thousands of dollars and are not open enough for sharing data.

All of the urban campus trees (trees managed as individuals) are mapped.  In classes, the map is used by students interested in finding and/or analyzing tree species.  In Facilities Management, the map is used to track tree maintenance and health issues, for example pruning and insect problems.  See Campus Tree Map Updated in The Middlebury Landscape blog for details.

In Tim’s Urban Forest class, his students took the tree population and ran it through modeling software called iTree to look at carbon sequestration, pollution abatement, etc.  Students in other classes have used the map for tree identification.  For example, a student recently contacted Tim because she was looking for Cherry trees to evaluate for a plant community ecology class.

Learning Outcomes: The tree map, at least in the Urban Forest class, turned out to be a good introduction to mapping for students without any GIS or Geography experience. In addition, Tim considers ArcPad a valuable learning resource; he sees it as ArcMap Lite, with much less of a learning curve than ArcView.

Description: The tree map of the campus was started years ago as a student project (see the Geography Department’s Student Projects page).  Tim picked up the project again in 2006. After successfully applying for an environmental grant for the hardware, Tim went out in the field to verify and correct the trees that had been identified and add more. With help from the Geography Department and LIS, Tim created a map in ArcGIS which included attributes such as sizes and health status of the trees.

Tim maintains and updates the map and accompanying file geodatabase as the campus landscape changes. Meanwhile, he also has exported the map from ArcView to Google Earth using a free ArcGIS add-on called Export to KML. He plans to revise his ArcPad  data collection forms so that they are are more specific to plant care needs.

The project has evolved through time. Last fall, Tim worked with students in a Plant Biology class. They mapped about half of the Bread Loaf campus trees, and he hopes to finish that project next fall. Tim’s future plan is to establish a virtual tree tour online, either with Google Earth or a static map.

Who: Jeff Byers, Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry

Technologies used: Hardware: GPS watch, digital camera.  Software:  Google Earth, WordPress, Garmin software (allows seamless connection to Google Earth). When posting an altitude profile, Jeff does a screen shot off of the Garmin software and pastes it into MS Word.  Then he uses a shareware program called “Doc to Jpeg Converter” and crops it with Microsoft Office Picture Manager.

Assistance received: Not much was needed!  Jeff figured this out by himself, while watching the Red Sox on summer evenings.   He has had conversations with Joe Antonioli (Manager of Web & Interactive Digital Media Technologies), and Carrie Macfarlane (LIS liaison) about getting an analytics tool installed (technical issues are still being resolved).  The Addison Independent rebroadcasts the blog from their newspaper web site.

Reason for using the technology: Personal interest

Description: Jeff created the Middlebury Trailrunner blog as a community resource for like-minded runners.  Jeff and other runners felt there was a need for a local guide; he often found himself describing his routes to his friends.  He also thought it would be fun to create the blog–he is a self-described “map geek.”

The blog tracks Jeff’s trail-running adventures in and around Addison County.  For each run, Jeff posts a map of his route, a chart showing the altitudes he reached, photos and a written narrative.

Running is just a hobby for Jeff, but these technologies have potential curricular applications, from biology and environmental studies, to writing, to art (see for example The Big Draw of the GPS Run!).

Technologies Used: website: www.SouthChinaSea.org, Google Earth, Google Map, Google News Search, CD
Course: PSCI 214 – International Environmental Politics
Number of Students: 45
Objectives: “To integrate research and teaching, to promote student-faculty collaboration.”

Summary of Poster Session: David Rosenberg and several of his students showed the website that is a resource for students in David’s class as well as the world.  Students helped identify content to link to and contributed content themselves, such as maps.

Anticipated learning outcomes: “Research project reports worth publishing beyond the  classroom.”
Actual learning  outcomes: “a  5-star internet resource on the South China  Sea .”
Conclusions and Reflections: “This is an on-going  process of building a network of interested students, scholars and  policy-makers.”
Will you use this technology again ?: Not  necessarily. If so, what would you do differently?:  Rss feeds and  blogs to facilitate dialog

Photo by Carrie Macfarlane
Text by  Chris Fastie and Carrie Macfarlane

For ten years, Chris Fastie, Visiting Research Scholar in the Department of Biology, had been laboring to map the geomorphology of a four-mile stretch of Upper Plains Road in Salisbury, Vermont. As time allowed, he would venture out to survey the landscape, and sketch his findings on aerial photos. Last summer, he used a GPS (Global Positioning System) receiver to map some newly discovered kame terraces, installed Google Earth Pro on his computer and learned that there was finally an effective way to share his findings with others. When he received a request to lecture for a Winter Term course at Middlebury, technology and opportunity had merged to give new impetus to the mapping project.

The challenge was to illustrate a geologic process that took place across a large swath of land over a long period of time. Chris wanted the students to see the extant landforms in the field, puzzle over the processes that could have created them, and then see a visualization of the glaciers, lakes, and pro-glacial rivers that shaped the land 13,500 years ago.

The incorporation of technology streamlined the project. Chris walked the margins of glacial features while his GPS recorded a tracklog, then overlaid the data in Google Earth. Using Google Earth, he traced the tracklogs to make three-dimensional polygons representing kame terraces, deltas, and the retreating glacier. Chris said, “The ubiquity and ease of use of Google Earth make struggling with traditional GIS programs unnecessary for many simple mapping projects.” The Pro version of Google Earth was required to output digital video files of flying tours of the reconstructed landscape. These video files were edited together in Adobe Premiere Pro. Later, he added camera footage from a class field trip, narration and music.

Chris believes the video allowed the students to synthesize what they learned during the field trip, and he plans to use the technology again. “Animated visualizations of complex spatial processes are increasingly easy to produce and therefore increasingly common in the classroom,” he says. “This trend should be encouraged.”

His video documenting the class field trip and incorporating the visualizations can be found here: Old, Flat, and Unconsolidated: Salisbury’s Gravelly Past