Workshops
We’re pleased to offer the following high-quality half-day workshops on Tuesday, April 15, 2024 from 1:30 – 5:30 PM. Thank you to the workshop organizers for their efforts to provide these additional educational opportunities with an emphasis on a specific skill, technique, or process.
W-01: Metrics that Make a Difference: How to analyze change and error with applications to Land Change Science and GIS
Overview: This workshop concerns how to measure temporal change and predictive error for a variety of applications, in particular for Land Change Science and Geographic Information Science. We discuss how to avoid common blunders and to use enlightening techniques such as the Total Operating Characteristic and Difference Components. Participants range from students to senior scientists. The workshop focuses on concepts, not on how to use specific software. Participants do not need to use computers in the workshop. This is the newest version of the workshops that Professor Pontius has presented dozens of times in 17 countries (www.clarku.edu/~rpontius/).
Intended Audience: The audience ranges from university students to senior scientists. No specific software skills are required.
Presenter(s): Robert Gilmore Pontius Jr, Clark University
W-02: Dream Play Build: Hands-on and sensory-based engagement for vibrant and resilient landscape spaces and places
Overview: In this workshop, participants will be introduced to hands-on and sensory-based methods of engagement that can be used for the effective creation and/or redesign of vibrant and resilient landscape spaces and places. Specifically, we will explore two methods developed by presenters James Rojas and John Kamp: the hands-on model-building workshop and sensory-based walking tour and site exploration. These are tools one can use for engaging diverse audiences in landscape creation and effectively leveling the playing field in the process and generating more useful and creative outcomes. We will explore the psychology of behind these methods and why they work, and look at practical applications of them to landscape spaces of a range of scales. So as to keep the training hands-on, limit how much time is spent simply sitting and listening, and to reinforce what is learned, participants will be led through an actual model-building activity (to be held indoors) and two sensory-based site-exploration activities (to be held outdoors). At the end, the reflective portion of the workshop will allow participants to start to make connections between the methods and activities and their everyday work.
Intended Audience: Students and professionals. Those interested in / working with diverse communities in the creation and redesign of landscape spaces and places.
Presenter(s): John Kamp, Prairieform; James Rojas, Place It!
W-03: Building Geospatial Models in GRASS GIS: From Python Workflows to Tangible Landscape
Overview: In this workshop, participants will be introduced to GRASS GIS, a powerful open-source geospatial processing engine, and explore how it can be used to develop models for environmental applications. Participants will learn to build Python-based workflows for topics such as hydrology, flood modeling, and trajectory routing. These workflows will be implemented in computational notebooks, highlighting the capabilities of GRASS GIS for flexible and scalable analysis. In the second half of the workshop, we will deploy these models into Tangible Landscape, an interactive, augmented reality environment that facilitates participatory science by integrating a physical landscape with real-time geospatial simulations. The Tangible Landscape environment allows users to interact with, for example, an overland flow model by carving sand with their hands and viewing the resulting water flow projected back onto the sand. Participants will gain hands-on experience with GRASS tools and its Python API while learning essential GitHub workflows for collaborative development. This workshop is ideal for those interested in applying geospatial tools to real-world environmental challenges or in fostering community engagement through participatory science.
Intended Audience: Both students and professionals welcome, no prior knowledge of GRASS is needed, beginner Python knowledge would be advantageous
Presenter(s): Caitlin Haedrich, North Carolina State University, Center for Geospatial Analytics; Anna Petrasova, North Carolina State University, Center for Geospatial Analytics; Helena Mitasova, North Carolina State University, Center for Geospatial Analytics
W-04: Telecoupling and Metacoupling: New Interdisciplinary Frontiers for Global Sustainability
Overview: Global sustainability challenges, such as biodiversity loss, climate change, and landscape fragmentation, are increasingly influenced by local and distant forces. Factors like globalization, environmental changes, disasters, natural processes, social unrest, war, and many other human activities connect humans and nature worldwide. These interconnections are made possible through various processes, including animal migration, species invasion, human migration, disease spread, sound/noise transmission, transfer of pollutants and wastes, trade of goods and products, flows of ecosystem services, environmental and hydrological flows, foreign investment, technology transfer, water transfer, and tourism. They form metacoupling -- human-nature interactions within a system (intracoupling) and across adjacent systems (pericoupling) and across distant systems (telecoupling). Metacouplings have profound implications for sustainability as they can transform landscape structure, function, pattern, process, and dynamics. For example, farmers convert forest landscapes for food production to meet demands from local populations and those in adjacent and distant places. To help integrate and understand various interconnections and feedback comprehensively and systematically, the telecoupling framework and metacoupling framework have been developed. In this workshop, we will introduce the frameworks, present applications of the frameworks, and conduct hands-on exercises. Workshop participants will have opportunities to apply the frameworks to various case studies.
Intended Audience: The target audience encompasses attendees at any career stage (e.g. students, postdoctoral scholars, professors, resource managers) and with a variety of interests, such as landscape change, climate change, natural resource policy and governance, biodiversity, ecology, and landscape patterns (e.g. connectivity) and processes (e.g. disturbance, dispersal, migration).
Presenter(s): Jianguo Liu (Michigan State University); Logan Hysen (Michigan State University); Nan Jia (Michigan State University); Nick Manning (Michigan State University)
Overview: This workshop concerns how to measure temporal change and predictive error for a variety of applications, in particular for Land Change Science and Geographic Information Science. We discuss how to avoid common blunders and to use enlightening techniques such as the Total Operating Characteristic and Difference Components. Participants range from students to senior scientists. The workshop focuses on concepts, not on how to use specific software. Participants do not need to use computers in the workshop. This is the newest version of the workshops that Professor Pontius has presented dozens of times in 17 countries (www.clarku.edu/~rpontius/).
Intended Audience: The audience ranges from university students to senior scientists. No specific software skills are required.
Presenter(s): Robert Gilmore Pontius Jr, Clark University
W-02: Dream Play Build: Hands-on and sensory-based engagement for vibrant and resilient landscape spaces and places
Overview: In this workshop, participants will be introduced to hands-on and sensory-based methods of engagement that can be used for the effective creation and/or redesign of vibrant and resilient landscape spaces and places. Specifically, we will explore two methods developed by presenters James Rojas and John Kamp: the hands-on model-building workshop and sensory-based walking tour and site exploration. These are tools one can use for engaging diverse audiences in landscape creation and effectively leveling the playing field in the process and generating more useful and creative outcomes. We will explore the psychology of behind these methods and why they work, and look at practical applications of them to landscape spaces of a range of scales. So as to keep the training hands-on, limit how much time is spent simply sitting and listening, and to reinforce what is learned, participants will be led through an actual model-building activity (to be held indoors) and two sensory-based site-exploration activities (to be held outdoors). At the end, the reflective portion of the workshop will allow participants to start to make connections between the methods and activities and their everyday work.
Intended Audience: Students and professionals. Those interested in / working with diverse communities in the creation and redesign of landscape spaces and places.
Presenter(s): John Kamp, Prairieform; James Rojas, Place It!
W-03: Building Geospatial Models in GRASS GIS: From Python Workflows to Tangible Landscape
Overview: In this workshop, participants will be introduced to GRASS GIS, a powerful open-source geospatial processing engine, and explore how it can be used to develop models for environmental applications. Participants will learn to build Python-based workflows for topics such as hydrology, flood modeling, and trajectory routing. These workflows will be implemented in computational notebooks, highlighting the capabilities of GRASS GIS for flexible and scalable analysis. In the second half of the workshop, we will deploy these models into Tangible Landscape, an interactive, augmented reality environment that facilitates participatory science by integrating a physical landscape with real-time geospatial simulations. The Tangible Landscape environment allows users to interact with, for example, an overland flow model by carving sand with their hands and viewing the resulting water flow projected back onto the sand. Participants will gain hands-on experience with GRASS tools and its Python API while learning essential GitHub workflows for collaborative development. This workshop is ideal for those interested in applying geospatial tools to real-world environmental challenges or in fostering community engagement through participatory science.
Intended Audience: Both students and professionals welcome, no prior knowledge of GRASS is needed, beginner Python knowledge would be advantageous
Presenter(s): Caitlin Haedrich, North Carolina State University, Center for Geospatial Analytics; Anna Petrasova, North Carolina State University, Center for Geospatial Analytics; Helena Mitasova, North Carolina State University, Center for Geospatial Analytics
W-04: Telecoupling and Metacoupling: New Interdisciplinary Frontiers for Global Sustainability
Overview: Global sustainability challenges, such as biodiversity loss, climate change, and landscape fragmentation, are increasingly influenced by local and distant forces. Factors like globalization, environmental changes, disasters, natural processes, social unrest, war, and many other human activities connect humans and nature worldwide. These interconnections are made possible through various processes, including animal migration, species invasion, human migration, disease spread, sound/noise transmission, transfer of pollutants and wastes, trade of goods and products, flows of ecosystem services, environmental and hydrological flows, foreign investment, technology transfer, water transfer, and tourism. They form metacoupling -- human-nature interactions within a system (intracoupling) and across adjacent systems (pericoupling) and across distant systems (telecoupling). Metacouplings have profound implications for sustainability as they can transform landscape structure, function, pattern, process, and dynamics. For example, farmers convert forest landscapes for food production to meet demands from local populations and those in adjacent and distant places. To help integrate and understand various interconnections and feedback comprehensively and systematically, the telecoupling framework and metacoupling framework have been developed. In this workshop, we will introduce the frameworks, present applications of the frameworks, and conduct hands-on exercises. Workshop participants will have opportunities to apply the frameworks to various case studies.
Intended Audience: The target audience encompasses attendees at any career stage (e.g. students, postdoctoral scholars, professors, resource managers) and with a variety of interests, such as landscape change, climate change, natural resource policy and governance, biodiversity, ecology, and landscape patterns (e.g. connectivity) and processes (e.g. disturbance, dispersal, migration).
Presenter(s): Jianguo Liu (Michigan State University); Logan Hysen (Michigan State University); Nan Jia (Michigan State University); Nick Manning (Michigan State University)