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Associate Professor (Teaching), USC, Spatial Sciences Institute
Jennifer Swift has developed and taught novel courses in the USC Undergraduate and Graduate Programs in GeoDesign and Geographic Information Science and Technology and teaches several programming-focused courses. She oversees Master’s theses and graduate research projects and was... Read More →
The American West is home to vast landscapes still capable of supporting long-distance ungulate migrations. In Wyoming, herds of big game traverse rugged topography, covering distances of up to 150 miles to reach vital seasonal habitats. These migrations pose significant conservation challenges, as they require animals to cross multiple-use lands, some of which are rapidly changing. Our ability to study ungulate migration has been greatly advanced by high-resolution tracking data, coupled with remote sensing of large landscapes. This presentation will explore how these new GIS tools have deepened our understanding of ungulate migration ecology and led to more effective conservation strategies. While it has long been recognized that ungulates migrate to optimize access to forage, recent tracking studies provide compelling evidence that ungulates “surf the green wave” of forage as it moves along elevational and latitudinal gradients. In fact, evidence suggests that the movements of ungulates are finely tuned to various aspects of the seasonally changing landscapes they inhabit. Amid this new understanding of migration ecology, researchers have identified numerous factors that threaten existing migrations. A pervasive threat is linear infrastructure and other forms of development that constrain the free movement of animals. Several studies demonstrate that development within migration corridors can reduce their functionality, impacting the ability of ungulates to surf the green wave, with likely demographic consequences. Fortunately, as new threats have been identified, innovative methods to map migrations based on empirical tracking data have been developed and widely implemented across the West and globally. New GIS tools, used in various digital atlases, have enabled the sharing of detailed migration maps for the first time and provided a proactive way to support effective conservation and sustain ungulate migrations.
Presenters: UCSB Center for Spatial Studies, USC Spatial Sciences Institute, Esri
How would you teach spatial thinking in a general education course to post-secondary students with no formal training in geography? If geographers and GIScientists wish to foster spatial literacy in society this is a question that must be answered. We invite colleagues to contribute to an interactive discussion about how to teach novice learners the central elements of spatial thinking – concepts of space, tools of representation, and processes of reasoning.
An intermittently updated literature discussing concepts and questions related to spatial thinking already exists. Many of those concepts and questions remain the same. However, as new environmental and social challenges emerge and geospatial technologies change, which of those concepts and questions should be prioritized in post-secondary education merits revisiting. Moreover, the existing literature tends to offer abstract, academic treatments of these concepts that are removed from the experiences of non-specialists. This session will draw from and extend that literature by restarting a practical discussion about how to teach spatial thinking with the goal of fostering spatial literacy. Colleagues will be invited to share their own conceptions of spatial thinking, the geographic questions they use to teach key concepts, their pedagogical approaches, and their classroom successes.
Devon Borthwick: Identifying Post-Disaster Damages in Anna Maria Island, Florida, With Aerial Images and Volunteers Zhijie Zhou: “How Much Can We Trust Your Habitat Maps?” – Uncertainties in Multi-scale Spatial-Explicit Conservation Planning from the Area-of-Habitat (AoH) Mapping Approach Purna Saud: Time Series Analysis of Delay-Induced Stochastic Oscillations in COVID-19 Case Dynamics Tianci Guo: PHYIELD: Phenology-integrated Yield Estimation Leveraging Physics Knowledge and Deep Learning
This session will compare practices and discuss methods for teaching introduction to GIS and other geospatial courses, bringing together a diverse group of faculty. The participants will share their experience teaching the course, their format for the course, and what does and does not work in the classroom (projects vs. exams, teaching both lecture and lab vs. teaching lecture with TAs teaching labs, types of projects, working with/around AI, etc., ESRI software vs. others, hybrid vs. face-2-face vs. online, etc.).
This session will also focus on the future direction of GIS and teaching it, and how we are instructors of GIS courses prepare our students to work within today’s geospatial world while also discussing how our methods have changed over time. Anyone interested is invited to also share their experiences in teaching the course, along with ideas on how to give students the best experience concerning learning GIS.
Associate Professor (Teaching), USC, Spatial Sciences Institute
Jennifer Swift has developed and taught novel courses in the USC Undergraduate and Graduate Programs in GeoDesign and Geographic Information Science and Technology and teaches several programming-focused courses. She oversees Master’s theses and graduate research projects and was... Read More →
As we focus on “Navigating the Geospatial Frontier: Future Directions for Academia and Its Partners” for UCGIS 2025, it is essential to discuss building robust infrastructures to support future GIS applications. The rapidly advancing fields of geospatial big data science and GeoAI require scalable, cost-efficient, and high-performance infrastructure. This panel will explore the design and implementation of infrastructures that integrate critical components such as data acquisition, storage, processing, analysis, visualization, and security. Featuring use cases from academia and industry partners, the discussion aims to empower researchers to execute Geospatial AI and Data Science projects across diverse applications by strengthening Geographic Information Systems (GIS) infrastructure and services for next-generation GIS applications. The panel will also address strategies for managing diverse datasets—including social media, climate data, and WebAI—while encouraging the use of open-source geospatial datasets for broader academic impact. Emphasis will be placed on high-performance infrastructures that support both vector and raster big data, leveraging scalable storage systems, distributed computing frameworks, and cloud-based solutions. This session intends to highlight community initiatives, fostering a collaborative exchange of ideas and experiences. Through case studies and demos, we aim to provide actionable insights and strategies for designing, implementing, and managing cutting-edge infrastructures tailored to the evolving demands of future geospatial analytics. Panelists:
William Jones Small-scale land change prediction with imbalanced training data - Impacts of sampling methods on model accuracy Ramachandra Sivakumar Living campus plan – Custom GIS tools for stakeholders Katie Slack Urban biodiversity geospatial patterns revealed through a strategic integration of citizen science and geovisualization: A case study of Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States Ivan J. Ramírez Mapping Multi-hazard Health Risks to Climate Disasters: An Ecosyndemic Approach
Regular paper: Chen Xu Modeling Wyoming Population Mobility Dynamics with a Graph Neural Network
Poster presentations will take place adjacent to the opening reception. Shuttle vans will run from the Conference Center from 5:15-8:30.
Presenters: Erin D. Dascher "Where the Streams Should Be: Digitally Mapping the Spokane Watershed’s Urban Stream Deserts" Oluwatosin Oluyemisi Ayo "The analysis of lava flow paths using GIScience and remote sensing techniques: the case of Fagradalsfjall volcano eruption in Iceland" Jin Xu Time Series Analysis for OpenStreetMap Co-Editing Behavior Carlie Niemitalo Reimagining the TNC IndiaSiteRight Tool: Accessing Cloud-Enabled Data-stores to Increase Usability Sirwan Salimi Analyzing the Impact of Urban Block Typology on Noise Propagation Using Ray Tracing and Voxel-Based Simulation Ellie Birge Visual Mapping of Human Trafficking Workshops Manasa Kuchavaram GeoAI for Smarter Mobility Management: Enhancing Urban Transportation Systems Taylor LaForce Analyzing the Tourism Impacts of the 2022 Yellowstone Floods Keenon Lindsey A Digital Framework for Analyzing Gentrification from Cross-Domain Multimodal Data Alisha Khan Characterizing anomalous human-mobility patterns during the 2021 Texas winter storm Zhongying Wang High-Resolution Estimation of Daily Surface-Level Ozone Concentration in the Contiguous US Using CNN-LSTM Ellie Birge Experiental Learning and Disaster Assessment Mapping Imma Mwanja Lake County Covenants Map Madhukar Kuchavaram Optimizing Urban Mosquito Trap Placement Using MGSurvE and Citizen Science Observations Yen-Yi Wu Climate Change Impacts on Precipitation and Flood Events Across U.S. Inland Cities (1996-2023) Sean KraemerReconstructing Glacial Lake Outburst Floods at Mammoth Glacier, Wyoming
