Discussion on Course Project Ideas

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

Your course project will likely involve stating some hypothesis, testing that hypothesis using data + spatial analysis, and presenting your results. You therefore need some sort of actionable hypothesis, meaning one specific enough to be addressed by a set of spatial analysis. This is an exercise to get you into that mindset.

The list below includes the responses you provided when I asked to state a project topic in the pre-course survey. I fully realize that you had no idea that what you wrote was going to show up here, and please don’t be at all discouraged if your entry is far from anything actionable – that’s totally fine! Consider this an opportunity to gaze at what others are thinking and how you might focus your interests. This is just the start of the discussion…

The Task…

  • Divide into groups of 3-5 people.
  • Choose 3-5 proposed topics below (or offer new ones, e.g. your MP topic) and discuss how “actionable” they and why. What terms used are vague , which are specific enough to be actionable? What would make the overall proposal more actionable?
  • At the end of a 15 minute group discussion, each group will share with the class their evaluation of one or two topics.
  Topics
1 I like animal behavior so I would like to analyze their movement in some way. GIS would be helpful to visually determine patterns over time and space. I would also like to use it to look distribution. If the data was long term, it would be helpful to create a geoprocessing tool to help with any analysis. I think an interactive map would be helpful to see this, especially if you get to add a time bar that allows you to look at locations at any given time.
2 I’m very interested in species distribution models and other tools applicable to wildlife conservation. Anything that builds on that framework is of interest to me. I might be interested in building models which, given info for a particular species, can predict suitable habitat for not just that species but also similar species (if given parameters for how those species differ).
3 I don’t have a clear idea yet but I am interested in doing something related to water quality - apart from just making interpolated WQ maps. I would like to dive deep into specifics like for example: what % of people (living in area X) get clean water sourced to their homes? What is the biodiversity like in this region? (past and present). I would be very much interested in developing an interactive web-map as a final deliverable..
4 Maybe land-use/land-cover change in addition to how hydrologic characteristics have changed in response?
5 I would enjoy a project that pulls together forestry and conservation. I would like to practice managing for multiple (potentially conflicting) goals on a geospatial plane. For example, the first step might be using datasets such as elevation, vegetation cover, or moisture to map a species potential range, then combining this with another dataset such as proposed trails or development potential and merging the two to rank/compare different land use scenarios. I am also open to something completely new that teaches me a new skill!
6 I want to predict species densities with presence only data from camera trap photos, likely using kernel density estimation. I would also like to analyze temporal and spatial trends based on the season and certain areas across the study region. I would love to be able to create an interactive map and plots. At this point I am not sure the best way to organize the data I have and the GIS that could be useful, particularly when it comes to the temporal aspect and time series.
7 The impact of wildfire ash/debris on coastal ecosystems on the West Coast: Do wildfires in CA have an effect on the frequency of Harmful Algal Bloom events? Do they also impact the health of kelp forests in the West Coast?
8 I would want to do something with marine biodiversity on an ecosystem scale. Not sure what that would look like.
9 I would be particularly interested in conservation-focused GIS projects, especially wildlife conservation! Anything related to habitat mapping, tracking etc would be extra interesting.
10 Pending the available data - how much organic waste is being captured in the supply chain for “proper” disposal & how much (in volume) is flowing into a landfill?
11 California and the intersection of EJ and pollution burden
12 related to policy decision making
13 I created a flood analysis for my internship but i switch between R and python and if I could facilitate the analysis and making it more accessible by doing it all in python that was something I was thinking
14 I’m very interested in deep sea larval distribution and habitat connectivity. Would be interested in working with data on that, or another topic that would help develop skills to do that kind of analysis.
15 I have exclusive research access large lidar point cloud and DEM, for the Republic of Palau. I want to calculate total mangrove carbon and species. I hope to learn to process this efficiently for future consulting work using GIS and RS. Ill need additional in-situ data and I have a grant to take field measurements of mangroves. Ill likely be publishing a paper associated with this and want to make sure I can pass off data to be verified by 3rd parties. I’m less worried about a map and more about the results but I take great care to design useful maps
16 I’m working on modeling watershed-wide flood mitigation planning through nature based solutions. I don’t really know where to start with building parcel portfolios relying on directionality (downstream/upstream).
17 Comparing census(?)/general demographic data of people in the Durham area (living along Ellerbe Creek) to exposure to metals/chemicals in the creek (or maybe just adverse behavior responses from fish). Basically, we have points along the creek with different behavior/chemical data and I want to see how/if different demographics are increasingly exposed to “bad” creek water. I feel like this is a relatively simple analysis… what other layers can I add to this?
18 doing some sort of mapping of corals or something with ocean conservation
19 I mostly don’t know yet. My main thought is just that the three masters projects that I stated interest in recently involve a GIS component. They all have to do with monitoring changes in habitat over time or assessing conservation priority. So depending on which project end up working on, it could be cool to incorporate it into this class project.
20 changing pattern (e.g. of land use or canopy or …) might need to combine with remote sensing
21 I am interested in conservation planning projects in general.
22 This is my final project idea from Conservation GIS that I never ended up doing: look at how the WUI has grown in a specific state, in the last decade or more, and what kind of development are in those new areas. Are they housing (and what kind), commercial strips, roads, etc? I’m not sure where this question would continue - maybe if housing is the big thing, then we can determine if it’s necessary affordable housing or not, how much fire damage there’s been in these areas.. leading to some policy proposal? There’s some data from HUD and https://www.southernwildfirerisk.com, as well as academic institutions. The geospatial aspect would be to help illustrate where it’s happening, if there are any patterns, and calculate how much area. I’d like to do an interactive map to show the results, which I haven’t done before. I think I’ll need to learn that and how to do that on ArcOnline, and maybe more on how to get/clean data from all these different sources.
23 something with climate analogs and spatial packages in R? Or tools for a reproducible invasive species model. (Both project ideas I am thinking of doing for an MP or independent project). I’d like to use more online tools as I found them to be very useful in translating ArcGIS results to wider audiences over the summer.
24 Maybe something related to my MP because I have to incorporate GIS for the certificate anyways. I will be analyzing water samples from the San Fransisco bay for toxic chemicals. A geospatial analysis to analyze the relationship between the location of the chemical and the potential areas of sources of the chemicals could be interesting.
25 I would be most interested in doing a project related to flooding and climate change which in the spatial world may be some flood maps or something similar. However, I was working on a GIS project this summer through which I identified a need that could be interesting to address through this project. My project this summer was analyzing ocean data (chlorophyll, SST, pH, salinity, etc.) to identify the best spots to site an aquaculture (specifically mussel) farm off of the coast of Maine. I worked on the project using a structure from previous labs in the coastal GIS course. After completing the project, I heard from many partners (aquaculture farmers, non profit leaders, policy folks) that a tool that did this - compiled this data and highlighted areas that were particularly good for ocean farming, would be a huge help to aspiring aquaculture farmers which is an important resilient livelihood in the era of climate change. Thus, my idea for the project would be to create a dashboard where you may be able to select a species (likely only between sugar kelp, blue mussels, oysters) and it would highlight the areas that are most ideal for farming and to maintain the dashboard someone would just have to replace the input datasets as new data becomes available. I have an idea of how to do this but strongly believe that with the help of python this would be much easier.
26 I am doing a Bass Connections project this year that is doing a community based climate resiliency plan and think it could be cool to incorporate GIS to understand which neighborhoods in Durham are most vulnerable to floods, heat, EJ issues, etc and use these to make recommendations for climate resiliency. I would need flood data, census data, temperature data and I think doing an interactive map could be nice or just basic maps that could be like “if we enact this recommendation this neighborhood will look like this in x years or if we don’t do anything this neighborhood will look like this in y years (if that makes sense). I think it is interesting to look at things spatially and that it can make a larger impact when writing a resiliency or climate action plan. I feel like I know some pieces to figure this out, but it seems like a lot and not sure how to connect everything together.
27 Maybe something to do with flood resiliency using flood data in combination with restoration data (if that is even available anywhere)
28 I would like to focus on topics directly related to my master’s project which is on coastal climate change discourse analysis (surrounding sea level rise, resilience, and flooding). My group and I are looking to see how discourse in coastal North Carolina has changed over the years. Potential geospatial analysis could include mapping out changes in flooding patterns.
29 A mapping of where oysters are being used in living shoreline work in Bogue, Back and Core Sound, NC. Would probably be too much work for a project? The data likely lives in various data formats with various different organizations and companies around the area.
30 I hope to work on marine mammal data with a machine learning aspect. I want to be able to apply geospatial data science to wildlife conservation.
31 I am not sure, but since I am a birder and want to do bird-related stuff after I graduate, I think looking at bird migration data would be helpful. I am (trying) to help students from CSU with a bird radar project but have no idea what I am doing so maybe I could weave this class project in with this. Essentially, the project is figuring out the discrepancies between ebird checklist data and radar data such as a bird might be spotted by a human but not picked up by radar. GIS would be helpful spatially to make maps of these discrepancies. I think I would need to understand radar more but also try and figure out what codes I can run in GIS to make this happen. The data I have now is a lot but it includes dates, observation locations, and other information about the species and location. I think I need to have someone else look at it. Probably a plot or several maps would be helpful.
32 I think it would be super helpful to use this assignment to trouble shoot some road block that I will inevitably face in my MP (I will be working on an offshore wind energy project with MGEL).
33 ’- Question: What are the major climate change related risks in a given urban area? In a neighborhood? - Role of GIS: modeling flood risks, wildfire areas, temperatures, storm frequency, landslide potential using soil and slope data, using weights and the raster calculator to calculate “total” climate risk - Skills I lack: Using real-time/cloud-based data; translating this into a user-facing tool; etc, etc, etc - A lot of data would be needed because the question is so broad. The data do exist. Off the top of my head: geographic boundaries, surface temperatures, population data, hydrological data, wildfire location history, land cover, surface permeability, and more - I would report these findings through an interactive map/web app that would allow the user to select a city, town, or HUC and view not only a “total” climate risk, but also individual risks (I looked this up after writing this….and it already exists. Cool.)
34 My MP partner (not in this class) and I want to look at the spatial relationship between submerged aquatic vegetation (SAV) and living shorelines to tease out any relationship that may (or may not) exist between their distribution. From this analysis, we hope to infer something about the potential water quality benefits that living shorelines might provide by mitigating runoff and filtering nutrients. SAV is sensitive to nutrient concentrations, so we think the SAV distribution could serve as a proxy/indicator for water quality. This is, roughly, the idea, but we are very flexible in our approach. We believe the datasets do exist for living shorelines and SAV in coastal North Carolina, and another dataset is supposed to be released this year, however, the accuracy and extent of the SAV data is not certain at this time. From a geospatial lens, perhaps we could demonstrate some kind of spatial correlation between the two data layers (or lack there of)?
35 I want to compile many LULC rasters from Peru Mapbiomas Project to develop my master’s project.