Friday, June 5, 2020

Maps Tell Stories

BSU Geography Students in Action

The final project assignment for Dr. Boah Kim's spring 2020 course GEOG 413 Applications in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) served several purposes. Mainly, the experience of finding a problem to address, determining the data requirements, and developing an analysis model that successfully answers the original question. Students were expected to develop a project that applies analysis techniques.

Each project below is represented by a single snapshot from a much larger GIS Story page. Please click each title to see the narrative, maps, and other graphics contained in each of these projects.

As with all courses at Bridgewater State University and many colleges around the United States, this course began in the classroom, but final projects were completed under the complication of a sudden shift to online teaching and learning. We in the Department of Geography are very proud of what Dr. Kim and her students achieved!


MCAS and Special Education Graduation Rates
Samantha Cave
The Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System(MCAS) test and how it effects the graduation rates of students with disabilities


Middleborough Protected and Recreational Open Space
Joseph Osborne
Identifying local discrepancies in the MassGIS Protected and Recreational Open Space data and mapping accessibility to Open Space in the town


Food Deserts in Brockton, MA: A study in accessibility
Maria De La Fuente
Communities without local grocery stores and how demographics are related to food access


The Novel Coronavirus and Its Impact on Us
Justin Fitzgerald
The timeline of this new infectious disease and how it went from a local issue in Wuhan, China to an event affecting billions worldwide


Health & Recreation
Ally Osborne
The accessibility of natural environments and scenic landscapes throughout Massachusetts are compared to identify counties where public health would benefit from more accessible public parks


Save the Turtles, Save the World
Jesse Scopa
New threats to the recovery of  Diamondback Terrapins, the only brackish water turtle in North America


Changing Ethnic Demographic of Boston
Kosi Obi
How gentrification has impacted the demographics of Boston

Lagniappe

For centuries, geographers have used maps to tell stories and now we can use tools specifically developed to help craft those stories and share them widely. The first story of this kind that Dr. Hayes-Bohanan found was about a region with a very fraught geography in which he lived for seven years before coming to Bridgewater. Envisioning the Embattled Borderlands by Krista Schlyer is a powerful exploration of an endangered place that is often named and rarely understood.

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