UWF Student Has Map Featured for Thousands by ESRI's President

UWF MS in GIS Administration Student has Work Featured During ESRI's Users Conference

University of West Florida Master's of Science in Geographic Information Sciences online student Amanda Clayton's map was featured during the 2021 ESRI User Conference in San Diego. Jack Dangermond, President of ESRI, showcased Clayton's map on "European Wine Consumption" during the Plenary Session. The ESRI UC is a showcase of all things related to geographic information science and GIS professionals from all over the globe, with more than 50,000 people attending the annual conference. The conference runs from July 12-15.

Clayton created the "European Wine Consumption" map while enrolled in UWF's online Computer Cartography course. "It is crazy how far my GIS skills have come in the last two years," said Clayton. "UWF offers a top-notch program in MS GIS Administration."

Clayton worked at the university as a graduate assistant on several projects, including a Marine Science mapping project for Washington Hight School (funded by Gulf Power's Amplify Grant) and work with UWF's Alumni Relationtions and Development Office. Clayton recently accepted a full-time internship with ESRI in their Professional Services Division. 

Everyone at UWF's Earth and Environmental Sciences Department is extremely proud of Amanda and wants to congratulate her for this big achievement!

GIS 4035 - Remote Sensing and Photo Interpretation - Student Spotlight

Module 10: Supervised Classification

The blog postings for Week 10 illustrated that a number of students had a good understanding of how to use Erdas Imagine to perform a supervised classification on multispectral satellite imagery.
However, Ashlee Malone's blog was especially good and stood out from the rest.  This week, we would like to highlight her excellent work!

In this lab, students were instructed to create spectral signatures and AOI features, produce classified images from satellite data, and recognize and eliminate spectral confusion between spectral signatures.  

Ashlee's blog description was well written, easy to read and outlined all the steps . She covered all the crucial steps required to conduct a supervised image classification in Erdas Imagine, including the development of training sites (using AOI layers), evaluating the training sites to limit the amount of spectral confusion, and ultimately the choice of spectral bands to include. She also included  an excellent description of both (a) the spectral distance file, which can be used to evaluate the accuracy of the classified image, and (b) the chosen classification method (maximum likelihood).  In addition to her well written blog description, Ashlee's map was well designed and easy to interpret (we especially liked her color choices for the different LULC classes). She also included the distance image itself as an inset so readers can evaluate the effectiveness of her classification. Her resulting classified image, was also once of the best we have seen. Differentiating "roads" and "urban" from using images with this level of spatial resolution (30 meters) is very difficult but her final map does an excellent job differentiating these often confused classes.  Overall, Ashlee's blog posting was excellent!

GIS 5935 - Special Topics in GIS - Student Spotlight

Module 8: Surface Interpolation

Lab 8 in Special Topics had students carrying out different surface interpolation techniques in GIS, including the Thiessen, IDW, and Spline. Also required was a critical interpretation of the results from surface interpolation techniques where students had to compare and contrast different surface interpolation techniques. This lab and the subjects is one of the more analytically rigorous topics that we cover. Comparing multiple interpolation techniques is an intermediate-to-advanced topic in GIS. Most of the student did great in this lab and were able to interpret comparative results within the context of map interpolation techniques.

In this spotlight, we would like to recognize Stuart Boyd! We have recognized Stuart’s work before, and he continues to set an example for his fellow students in the quality of work he produces.  One of the students’ final deliverables was to create a map layout of the difference between the two DEMs derived by the spline and IDW surface interpolation methods. Stuart’s map highlights his careful cartographic design choice and ability to capture/represent the analytical rigor of the methods utilized.  Notice the effective use of map insets and hue in his thematic mapping here.  Great work, Stuart!

GIS 5935 - Special Topics in GIS - Student Spotlight

Module 8: Lab 3

Lab 3 in Special Topics (GIS5935) had students comparing the quality of two different road networks. They used standard methods determine the completeness of road networks according to an ad-hoc methodology. There is no standard for completeness, but the methodology used here is like the one used in several of the assigned readings (e.g. Haklay, 2010). One of the students’ final deliverables was to illustrate their findings within a single map, which required some creativity and advanced cartographic techniques such as a diverging color ramp.

This week, we would like to recognize Joanne Starr! Joanne comes to UWF GIS with a BA in archaeology from the University of Evansville and an MA in anthropology from the University of Arkansas. Along with the effective use of a divergent color ramp, Joanne’s map also utilizes two different insets to highlight and give context to her map. Follow her progress on her blog at http://joannesgisblog.blogspot.com/.

Online GIS 4043 Lab - Introduction to GIS - Student Spotlight

Module 3: GIS & Cartography

The goal of this week's lesson in Introduction to GIS is to present some fundamental cartographic design principles that will help you produce more accurate and aesthetically pleasing map products using a GIS.  Fundamental map design elements are described that can lead to high-quality cartographic products (e.g., layout, balance, use of color and symbols, the figure-ground relationship, north arrows and compass roses, scale bars, metadata). Detailed information about mapping point, line, and area features using a GIS are presented with examples. Students created three maps of Mexico this week, implementing cartographic design principles. 

This week, we would like to highlight the outstanding work of Jason Lewis! 

Jason created a nice set of maps this week that combined everything we've covered in class so far. We really like his color choices and labels that all easy to read and understand​.