Topics on
Geographic Information System

GOAL: This is an introductory course in GIS, aiming to provide a solid foundation for students who will utilize GIS in their research or future employment. Students with no GIS experience are encouraged to enroll. You will learn the following from this course: 1) How to work with ArcGIS, 2) How to show your data with thematic maps, 3) How to manipulate the attribute table of vector files, 4) How to manipulate vector files by various operations, 5) How to work with raster files, and 6) How to automate GIS operations by Model Builder and Python.

COURSE LEVEL AND REQUIREMENTS: This is a graduate-level course. There is no prerequisite. Students should be able to access the university portal (iSchool). All grades and announcements will be available there. Students are responsible for keeping up to date with all announcements.

EVALUATION: 10% Submission of project topic and summary by the end of the sixth week 20% Literature Review Presentation 30% Final oral presentation (5% slide design, 5% choice of problem, 10% GIS techniques utilized, 10% presentation skills) 25% Final written report (15% content, 10% conforming to journal format) 15% Attendance In-class Exercises: After each lecture session, the professor will provide a "challenge question" designed to utilize the operations just taught. Students finish the challenge question in class. The first student who answers it correctly will be given 1 point bonus (in the final grade!). The second student will be awarded 0.75 points, and the third will get 0.5 points. For the rest of the students, as long as you finish the question in class, you get 0.3 points. Discussions are encouraged. Literature Review: Each student team will provide two presentations on GIS-related studies (one presentation per paper). Project: Each student team is free with topic choices. There is no limit in the field of the topic. Topics in fields like zoology, geology, pedology, agriculture, social science, meteorology, or hydrology are all welcome. However, the project should clarify a long-standing debate or fill a gap in our understanding of the selected field. The allotted time for each oral presentation is 15 minutes. Peer-grading on oral presentations will be utilized. The written report should utilize formal journal formats. You need to declare clearly the journal format that you are mimicking. There is no limit on the number of words or pages, but you are responsible for delivering everything clearly with sufficient details. The deadline for written reports is 11:59 PM on the last day of the university final exam week.

TENTATIVE SCHEDULE: Week 1: Ice breaker, explanation of the syllabus Week 2: Definition of GIS, how to make thematic maps Week 3: Map digitization Week 4: Attribute table Week 5: Join and relate, spatial join Week 6: Classification Week 7: Vector manipulation Week 8: Raster and DEM Week 9: Model Builder Week 10: Introduction to Python Week 11: Installation and working with Python IDE Week 12: Conditional statements in Python Week 13: How to use the GIS library in Python Weeks 14-15: Using cursors to manipulate data entries in attribute tables Weeks 16: Final presentations