RESEARCH IN THE LAB FOR ADVANCED SPATIAL ANALYSIS

 

SOME CURRENT RESEARCH TOPICS

 

1) Medical geography and GIS: GIS analysis of emergency response, including cardiac arrest:

 

In this research, I work with medical researchers to explore emergency response and cardiac arrest in Greater Vancouver.   Garduate student work has focused on emergency response in the Okanagan.  Work is now expanding to explore emergency response throughout BC.

 

2) Medical geography, GIS and pathogenic species:  Cryptococcus gattii

 

In cooperation with the BC Centre for Disease Control, graduate students have focused on modeling and exploring the ecological determinents of the occurrrence of the pathogenic fungus Cryptococcus gattii in BC. 

 

3) GIS analysis of land use and species at risk in BC.

 

This project, in cooperation with the UBC Fisheries Centre, is focused on mapping land use in BC, and assessing its influence on species at risk. Species at risk work has been ongoing in the lab and has included research on endangered elephants, the endangered phantom orchid and the endangered Salish Sucker.

 

4) Volunteered Geographic Information

 

This work focuses on the social aspects of the GeoWeb, including volunteered geographic information, public participation and the GeoWeb, and volunteered biological data gathering.  It includes the ongoing development of the biogeographic atlases of BC: E-Flora BC and E-Fauna BC.  Thse two long-term citizen science projects involve more than 1000 citizen photographers and dozens of volunteer scientific experts who focus on data vetting and validating. E-Flora BC is a partnership project with the UBC Herbarium.   Exploring data vetting and validation, and public participation and the GeoWeb, has been the focus of graduate student work.

 

CURRENT and RECENT GRADUATE STUDENT RESEARCH IN THE LAB

 

  • Using Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) to analyze public perceptions of public places. (Brad Maguire, Ph.D. candidate)
  • Community engagement and the geoweb (eDemocracy) (PlaceSpeak) (Colleen Hardwick, masters student)  Co-supervisor Partick Mooney).
  • Social geography of the geoweb: engaging the public in environmental change (Alan McConchie, Ph. D. candidate)
  • Geospatial Analysis of African Elephant Movement (Jake Wall, Ph. D)
  • Spatial Analysis and Infectious Disease  (Emily Acheson, Ph. D. candidate)
  • Spatial Analysis and High Acuity Response in Public Health (Holly Buhler, master's student)
  • Object-based analysis framework for fine-scale monitoring of trees (Hossein Vahidi, Ph. D. candidate)
 

Recent  dissertations produced by students in our lab

 

Wall, Jake.  2015.  Geospatial Analysis of African Elephant Movement.  Ph. D. thesis.

Abalharth, Mahdi.  2013. Using LiDAR to detect in-stream woods : a scaled approach. M. Sc. Thesis.

Parfitt, Ian.  2013.  Citizen Science in Conservation Biology: Best Practices in the Geoweb Era.  M. Sc. Thesis.

Wootton, Claire. 2010.  A Landscape Level Analysis of Yellow-Cedar Decline in Coastal British Columbia.  M. Sc. Thesis.

 

Recent publications in our lab

 

McConchie, Alan.  Hacker Cartography: Crowdsourced Geography, OpenStreetMap, and the Hacker Political Imaginary. ACME. All revisions complete. Part of a special issue to appear in 2015.

 

Abalharth, Mahdi, Marwan Hassan, Brian Klinkenberg, Vivian Leung, and Richard McCleary.-.2015.  Using LIDAR to characterize logjams in lowland rivers.  Geomorphology. 246: 531-541. 

Wall, Jake, George Wittemyer, Valerie LeMay, Iain Douglas-Hamilton, and Brian Klinkenberg. 2014.  Elliptical Time-Density Model to Estimate Wildlife Utilization Distributions. Methods in Ecology and Evolution.5(8):780-790.

Wall, Jake, George Wittemyer, Brian Klinkenberg and Iain Douglas-Hamilton. 2014. Novel Opportunities for Wildlife Conservation and Research with Real-Time Monitoring. Ecological Applications, 24:593-601.

Wall. Jake, George Wittemyer; Brian Klinkenberg; Valerie LeMay; and Iain Douglas-Hamilton. 2013. Characterizing Properties and Drivers of Long Distance Movements by Elephants (Loxodonta africana) in the Gourma, Mali.  Biological Conservation 157: 60-68. Online 2012.  doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2012.07.019.