From asphalt to ecosystem: Spatial data creates a story

Have you ever wondered how a hydrologist might monitor water availability? How an ecologist might track the presence of an endangered species? How a city planner might decide where to build a park, and how they’d determine the public transportation route to get there?

Modern-day problem solving is built off the questions “who,” “what,” “when,” “why,” and, now more than ever, “where.” Where is the water flowing? Where do the endangered animals live? Where should the public park go—where are the most families in need of extra green space? 

All of these questions can be answered with data points that are tied to locations. Spatial data are data attributed to precise locations within a landscape. Can you put a datapoint on a map? Can you relate it to another datapoint through distance, proximity, or other boundaries? If yes, then it’s spatial data. 

These kinds of data can be gathered with the help of several kinds of modern-day technologies, such as Global Navigation Satellite Systems—satellite systems like GPS—and Geographic Information Systems (GIS), which collect, map, and analyze spatial data in order to uncover hidden patterns from the environment.

One of the most well-known uses of GIS is its ability to map and visualize data. Its graphical output helps researchers communicate large amounts of complex information. Maps made through GIS are “kind of like Google Maps completely on steroids,” says Michal Laszkiewicz, graduate student in the Environmental Observation and Informatics (EOI) program at the University of Wisconsin–Madison (UW-Madison). “[GIS is] completely customizable, so you can make measurements, you can add things, you can take away things. You have complete control,” he says. 

Last year, Laszkiewicz and other EOI graduate students helped a UW-Madison undergraduate Soil and Environmental Science (SES) capstone class attach soil health data—such as soil pH, soil nutrients, and soil moisture—to specific areas of the property where the ASA, CSSA, and SSSA headquarters is located, in order to analyze spatial patterns of the site and potential suitability for green infrastructure. 

The suburban office space in Madison, WI is actively undergoing a student-led project to turn the conventional landscape into a functioning ecosystem—and that all starts with the property’s soil. 

The undergraduate students collected soil samples, took those samples to the lab, and assessed the soil’s physical and chemical properties. Meanwhile, the EOI graduate students analyzed this data to see how soil metrics changed across the office’s landscape, says Dr. Edward Boswell, environmental scientist and teaching faculty at UW–Madison. 

Boswell, who teaches classes in GIS and Geodesign, mentored the EOI students throughout their portion of the project. Since most graduate students in the EOI program already have a background in some kind of spatial data analytics, Boswell tries to structure his classes with practical experience and community-based learning instead of lectures. Working with the SES capstone class was the perfect opportunity to hone his students’ skills.  

Before the work really began, the graduate students sat down with the SES students to see what needs the capstone class had and how GIS could support their analysis. “The things that we often talk about in lecture—about deciding which type of data you want to collect, how you want to collect the data, what data are necessary to answer your questions—those are sort of easy to discuss in the classroom, but they come to life when you sit in a room like we did,” says Boswell. One tool that helped the SES students was created by Brittany Juneau, who led efforts to create a smart form for easy data analysis and mapping using ArcGIS Survey123. The survey allowed the field workers to record sampling locations where a piece of data or photograph were taken. 

The EOI students drafted the initial StoryMap, which later translated into the current version, designed and updated by Dr. Janet Silbernagel of Silvernail Geodesign. Concurrently, landscape architecture student Jayita Burman, under the guidance of Dr. Silbernagel, designed potential landscape plans based on the findings of the two student groups. Both the fall analysis and spring design processes have been documented in the most recent version of the StoryMap, which explains the project background, current results, and future directions.