AI Help on Project Ideas

ENV 859 - Geospatial Data Analytics   |   Fall 2025   |   Instructor: John Fay  

A great use of ChatGPT, and perhaps other AI ChatBots is helping craft a project idea for this class. Here’s an example I tried on coral reef protection. I can’t vouch for the the validity of the concepts, as I know very little about coral reefs myself. However, this appears to be a great start on some analyses to strive for in a course project.

Feel free to give it a try! And also to share your prompts on Slack (in the project-ideas-chat channel).

Me:

What’s a good GIS project that deals with coral reef protection? Ideally this would include development of a tool or Python notebook that establishes an interesting and useful workflow but also demonstrates expertise with GIS and Python.

ChatGPT:

Great question! A GIS project on coral reef protection is perfect for combining spatial analysis, remote sensing, and Python workflows. Below are a few project ideas that would both demonstrate technical expertise and yield something valuable for reef conservation:

🌊 Project Idea: Coral Reef Vulnerability Assessment Tool

Objective: Develop a Python-based GIS workflow that identifies coral reef areas most at risk from climate change and human activity, and outputs interactive maps for conservation prioritization.

🔑 Core Components

  1. Data Sources
    • Coral reef maps: UNEP-WCMC Coral Reef distribution dataset.
    • Satellite imagery: Sentinel-2 or Landsat 8 (coral reef extent, turbidity).
    • Sea surface temperature (SST): NOAA Coral Reef Watch datasets.
    • Human impact layers: Global shipping density, fishing activity (Global Fishing Watch), coastal development.
    • Marine protected areas (MPAs): World Database on Protected Areas (WDPA).
  2. Workflow Steps (Python + GIS)
    • Data acquisition & preprocessing
      • Use geopandas, rasterio, sentinelsat (for Sentinel-2), and xarray (for SST).
      • Clip datasets to reef extents.
    • Environmental stress analysis
      • Calculate degree heating weeks (DHW) from SST anomalies (bleaching risk).
      • Extract turbidity/NDWI from satellite imagery.
    • Anthropogenic pressure scoring
      • Normalize and weight human activity layers (shipping, fishing, urban runoff).
    • Vulnerability Index
      • Combine stress + anthropogenic pressure using a weighted overlay.
      • Score reefs from “low vulnerability” to “critical risk.”
    • Protected vs. unprotected reefs
      • Overlay results with MPAs to highlight high-risk reefs outside protection zones.
    • Output
      • Interactive web map (e.g., folium or leafmap).
      • Notebook generates risk heatmaps, time series plots, and shapefile/GeoJSON outputs for managers.
  3. Deliverables
    • A Jupyter Notebook that can:
      • Download and preprocess remote sensing + vector datasets.
      • Perform spatial analysis and generate the vulnerability index.
      • Output both static maps (matplotlib, cartopy) and an interactive map (folium, ipyleaflet).
    • Optional: Export results to a simple dashboard (e.g., panel or dash) for non-technical stakeholders.