Hello everyone, my name is Edem Yevoo.
I'm from the University of Maryland College Park and I'm majoring in environmental science and technology
with a minor in GIS and I was a lucky participant in the Ecology Plus program.
So first up, I'm gonna talk about some of my findings during my project.
And so for my project, I basically created a model to predict how the landscape of DC
is going to change over a hundred years.
I was always interested in urbanization and the whole aspect of increase in human populations and transitions
from rural to urban societies.
And so I used the USGS, the US Geological Survey, data set in which they predict, create a predictive model
for how different urban areas are gonna change over time across the United States.
So I reclassified their 17 codes into five different categories,
which I used to create my data set and created a visual in the in ARC GIS software.
This is basically the animation I created.
So I looked at different radiuses from the center of DC.
So I used 10 mile radius, 25-mile radius, 50 to 100 mile radius.
And this was from a span of 2005 to 2095 and in the 10 mile radius you can see that wild areas are
and in the 25 mile radius you can see that wild areas percent change is over a hundred percent,
which should tell you that, already the already minimal amount of green spaces in wild
areas are disappearing even more than they should be,
where they should actually be protected and not given to expansion of urban development.
And in the 50 mile radius we can see that the percent change is also reducing,
in which we're losing over 56% of urban areas, over 56% of protected green spaces.
And in areas where these green spaces are actually not disappearing is because
there are some federal mandates such as the Patuxent Wildlife Preserve in which
these areas are federally protected.
And so this inspired me to continue using GIS to ask more questions as to how different wild spaces
should be protected, especially since urban areas are prone to different
environmental impacts such as the urban heat island effect in which when there's
a loss of tree canopy, some different vegetation,
it increases the Sun's rays and that direct impacts on human health and benefits in that area.
And I'm gonna talk about my experience in the remote internship.
And so part of the training in Montana, we took a tour of Yellowstone National Park,
which was my first experience ever being in the National Park, so that was amazing to be out in the field.
And we learned about the foundations of GIS in which,
even though I had taken a few courses since I was a GIS minor,
it never really clicked to me about how I could apply them in an ecological setting.
And also learning from the local scientists who worked at Montana State University was also a big
impact because I could actually see where I could apply my GIS skills and
experiences into doing my own research project in the future.
And the remote collaboration process also very beneficial.
I would have a weekly or bi-weekly meetings with Travis,
depend on my class schedule for the week and tests and stuff,
and I also looked into how my data sets and how I was organizing my data in ArcGIS was assessing
the different spatial relationships, cleaning up my data, learned how to extract data was a big part.
I always had a list of questions for Travis.
I'll text them like, "Hey, check this out. We're gonna answer this tomorrow." [laughs]
And the big part of this was also the analysis.
It's always nice to have to really gather your data and have it all set and stuff,
but what happens after you have all those final numbers?
You're supposed to have to interpret them to make them more beneficial and just answer some type of question.
And also gave me the opportunity to actually use some programming languages.
Travis showed me how he could use R to extract different areas of interest from my data sets
in which if I use Excel would be very tedious to extract all those numbers one by one.
And finally again the opportunity to present my findings was also very beneficial
because it opened up myself being comfortable to speak in front of larger audiences
and being able to actually make sure my research makes sense and people actually understand it
and can ask questions and I can be able to answer those questions as well.
And I'm gonna talk about some of my key takeaways from being a part of this
really cool remote internship program and which is that there's data everywhere.
Federal agencies publish huge data sets on their websites as well as nonprofits as well,
so it's very easy to kind of ask the question and find a data that can help you answer it.
And it's also very complimentary to my GIS minor in which I'm able to actually apply the things I learned
in class into a product that's beneficial to not only my academic career both of my professional career as well.
And the programming languages I now think are a very big asset
because something that could take me a week in Excel could be done easily in like an hour in R or using Python.
And the mentor-ship expert was also great since I was also applying to grad school during that time.
Travis provided a lot of input from that and I've actually been accepted into my top four choices
and I'm happy about that.
[cheering and clapping]
And so after I make that choice I'll be pursuing a graduate research
using GIS and learning about different changing landscapes in our urban society.
And some of the areas for improvement or really areas to take into effect would be the software access,
making sure you have the ArcGIS software,
being able to use a remote data set as well as project collaborations,
having group meetings to make sure you're on task and on track and make
sure like you're accountable for your actual project and you're not slacking off,
and also increased opportunities to present findings.
We only had to present at the TWS, which is The Wilderness Society headquarters in DC,
so I have opened it up to going to more conferences would have been great as well.
Thank you so much.
[clapping]