GIS Portfolio
A brief summary:
Phase I and II Environmental Site Assessments
Environmental site assessments include acquiring accurate data from within the field using applications like Collector or Field Maps, within the Esri product line. After data is collected, my job consisted of taking the data and performing quality assessments (QA), ensuring the most relevant data was being shown, and create a map that accurately and succinctly displayed the information needed. Phase II assessments included a much more in-depth look into the environment, drawing on state and federally provided data as well as field work verifications.
Habitat Assessments
Included within many Phase I and II assessments, habitats have to be evaluated and studied to determine the presence of both listed species as well as endangered and exotic species. This means analyzing data, photo observations, as well as verified site inspections to display accurate data on a map. Properties can range from a few square miles to over 5,000 acres!
Volunteer & Community Work
Sometimes having the skills to create maps and use data means that you can give back to places or people that need some help. It is important to me to help those that could use some extra information about a property or place and even assist in making it a safer place for visitors and staff.
Dynamic Marine Reserves
- Thesis Project
Abstract : Analyzing pelagic shark behavior is an ongoing challenge due to the highly migratory nature of these animals, as well as outside threats such as overfishing and climate change. Increased protection of vital habitats is essential in combating declining species numbers. Although some shark species, like the shortfin mako (Isurus oxyrinchus), have made a steady comeback in the last decade, there is still significant room for improvement. Comprehending the connection between how sharks use their environment and move between protected territories can benefit our understanding of shark behavior and conservation as a whole. By analyzing shark movements over time and creating visual representations of core habitat use areas, an assessment can be made on the potential for implementation of seasonal dynamic marine protected areas (DMPAs) in New Zealand’s waters to aid in pelagic conservation. Starting with a large spatio-temporal dataset of tagging data collected for 13 mako sharks over five years, these data points were first cleaned and filtered in order to create individual shark track lines for visualization of the data as a whole. Next each shark’s track was divided into seasonal chunks and these were buffered to a 32km wide zone, which, based on the data, accounts for an average day’s movement of a mako shark. This collection of seasonally tagged polygons represent the areas used by each shark in each season. The next step was to intersect and count overlapping seasonal polygons to identify the “high use” areas. The result is a map showing areas where seasonal closures might benefit overall conservation, the areas to consider as the core for future DMPAs.
