UC GIS Week

Old Train Maps: The Many Routes of California's Central Pacific Railroad

The Central Pacific Railroad was an audacious Sacramento start-up in the 1860s. An early challenge for the company was figuring out a feasible route across the Sierra Nevadas. How did the route of the Central Pacific Railroad evolve from a mere concept to the busy, as-built track it is today? We describe our QGIS workflow and the technical challenges in georeferencing 21 historical maps of varying size, scale, and accuracy, across three time periods.

Space, Place, and Linked Open Data: Digital Gazetteers and Digital Humanities

This talk outlines methods and theories surrounding digital gazetteers, and highlights the increasing use and importance of Linked Open Data (LOD) in the practice of digital spatial humanities. It explores how a variety of research projects and pedagogical approached can use LOD resources to answer basic research questions, create maps, and view spatial networks. This talk will also discuss how projects can make significant contributions to the growing spatial humanities digital ecosystem.

Variability of scale on 19th century British Admiralty Maps

An extensive study of the base year for British Admiralty charts of West Africa shows how a map purportedly on a single scale introduced measurable variations in scale. ArcGis Pro, 10.7 , & Autocad.

Teaching GIS: StoryMaps & Sustainable Development Goals

In summer 2020, with all learning moved to virtual, I taught Introduction to GIS, an upper division course required for many majors, at UC Davis.  Given the difficulties in giving tests and promoting group work, I chose to emphasize project work.  Student learned theory through lectures and practical skills using ArcGIS Pro.  I also taught ArcGIS Online and StoryMaps, with final projects worth 45% of the grade and presented using StoryMaps and focused on the Sustainable Development Goals. 

Fieldwork from Afar: Using Storymaps for Site Visits

As COVID-19 limits our ability to move freely, how can architects, planners, and others produce accessible, comprehensive site analysis documents? Using a storymap developed for a recent student pedestrian safety study, cityLAB researchers will share how storymaps made it possible to conduct informative “site walks” from afar with stakeholders and board members.

Gay migration versus person-environment attitudinal fit: A regional analysis

Gay migration is the anecdotal idea that lesbian and gay (LG) people migrate from places that are not gay-friendly to gay-friendly places to find acceptance. We used archival data to examine migration patterns based on regional gay-friendliness, personal sexuality attitudes and sexual orientation. We observed gay migration in LG people migrating based on regional gay-friendliness, while the fit or misfit of personal attitudes and regional gay-friendliness predicted migration in straight people.

Digital Documentation of Santa Cruz Cultural Heritage

The presentation includes my projects as a GIS Intern at California State Parks under the guidance of Denise Jaffke, Archaeologist at CSP, and Paul Veisze, Instructor at American River College. The first project is a historical barn, Cascade Ranch Barn, in Pescadero that was destroyed due to wildfire. As one of the historical landmarks in Santa Cruz County, Pigeon Point Lighthouse is the second project. The focus is on processing UAS imagery using Agisoft Metashape and Drone2Map.

Space and Time for the Milpa Forest Garden Cycle

As a critique of the temperate prejudice of the tropics, we embrace the hypothesis that the Maya Forest represents a domesticated landscape to examine the settlement and environmental patterns of the ancient Maya of El Pilar. Recognizing that land use is dependent on knowledge, skill, labor, and that the residential requirements of the landscape are not restricted to field crops, we consider the whole production cycle for both human subsistence and animal habitat. This includes open fields emphasizing annual crops, succession of perennial products used in homes and maintenance, and closed-canopy forests for major construction and fruits. We define the potentially cultivable landscape by excluding architecture, considering how it would cycle from field to forest and back again. Using slope as a proxy of erosion, we assess our 14sq km settlement survey around El Pilar by determining areas of cultivation with a land use cycle of 20 years. We present our results as a model of sustainable land use in the Maya Forest.

Google Places API to Create a Geospatial Dataset

City and county data portals offer useful datasets such as local farmers markets or grocery stores.  However if specialized data is not available, such as take-out food near an event location then Google Places API can be helpful in generating a dataset. Using the Google API I’ll briefly show the steps to create a customized dataset that can be read into geospatial software such as QGIS or ArcGis.

Abolition Through Art

The presentation will explore the impact of the arts as an organizing tool, how this can be an instrument to deconstruct carcerality, and ultimately, how it helps us imagine liberation expansively. Using story maps, I offer two accounts from my experiences facilitating arts workshops in juvenile halls in New York and Los Angeles and how they helped shape my perspective on the intersection of abolition and the arts.

In this session we will go over common GeoAI applications and showcase how to leverage insights from computer vision techniques and end-to-end deep learning to solve a variety of geospatial problems.

Tips for getting started with the Census API

Learn how to obtain demographic data using the Census Bureaus' data API. We'll start off with an overview of the key decisions you'll need to make: (1) What product: Decennial Census or the American Community Survey, and more (2) Geography: Nation, State, County, Tract, and more (3) Variables: Population, Income, Race/Ethnicity, and more We will then describe the ways you can access the data and how to formulate an API call. See how simple API calls can be once you understand their format. Examples and discussion will be used to clarify questions. Lastly, we will wrap it up with some helpful tips and tricks.

Access Census 2020 data with ArcGIS

New decade, new data, and unprecedented times. The US decennial Census, taken in 2020, counts every person in the US once, only once, and in the right place even during a pandemic. Because census data are inherently spatial, Esri is committed to bringing this data to the community in useful ways. Learn how to access Census 2020 data. Take a deep dive into the Decennial 2020 Census data in ArcGIS Living Atlas of the World and learn how to enhance your work with census data in a spatial way.

US Census Bureau

No Abstract

Expanding Care with GIS

Improving accessibility and outreach are critical in providing effective health care services to communities of all kinds. Combining spatially-aware strategies with location intelligent technology, health organizations can achieve a clearer understanding of their work at the population level and identify areas where service gaps or potential opportunities for collaboration may exist in local communities. This project, in collaboration with UCLA’s Asian Pacific American (APA) Health Care organization, aims to demonstrate how APA can adopt and implement GIS applications into their strategies and aid in improved decision-making as well as visualize client demographic, socioeconomic, and health data.

COVID Transmission

The Geospatial Agent-based COVID-19 Transmission (or GeoACT) portal is a browser-based gateway application that allows users to simulate and compare COVID mitigation strategies for K-12 schools. Scenarios with a range of pharmaceutical and non-pharmaceutical interventions are used to generate realistic simulations of viral transmission with an agent-based model that uses school floor plans and classroom layouts.to calculate maps of infection risks. While most of the risk is attributed to aerosol transmission, the uneven spread of viral load emitted by infectious student agents requires tracking these agents’ location and proximity to others, along with the duration of time spent in shared enclosed environments such as classrooms, school cafeteria, or school buses. These environments themselves are also modeled as ‘agents’, with attributes relating to the spatial dynamics of the room, including the seats in which agents are expected to spend the majority of their time. Other environments can be modeled in a similar way with minimal changes, such as public school buses or theaters. To allow for these methods to be used for large numbers of students, along with running many simulations to account for differences in initial conditions between experiments, the gateway apps are deployed to an Apache Airavata portal configured to submit simulation jobs to the Expanse supercomputer. The science gateway portal hosts several modules. The Scenario module is used to run and compare simulations for different levels of intervention parameters, such as student vaccination rates at 0, 25, 50, 75, or 100%. The Meta-analysis module enables analysis of a series of previously-generated scenarios. The portal also features a ‘San Diego Schools and COVID-19’ dashboard, which presents case counts, infection rates, and other characteristics by zip code and in the vicinity of schools in San Diego county using spatial data services from San Diego County open data portal.

Randomforest

Utilizing hospital data, we predict risk factors for ED visits of asthma in children. To demonstrate complementing multivariate cluster analysis for random forest.

Enhancing Route Data for Paul Salopek's Out of Eden Walk

Since 2013, two-time Pulitzer Prize Winner (and UCSB alum) Paul Salopek has embarked on a 24,000 mile journey following the path our ancestors traversed from Ethiopia, through the Middle East, down to Southern India, Eastern Asia, and eventually crossing the Bering Strait into the Americas. The journey in its entirety has been logged by Paul Salopek, himself, and is known as the "Out of Eden Walk". This summer, as an REU Research Fellow with NSF and the Center for Geographic Analysis (CGA) at Harvard University, I used GIS to perform a multitude of calculations, interpolations and tools to enhance the some 7,500 miles that Salopek has currently traveled. A few of these calculations included finding the the true distance of Paul's route (accounting for changes in elevation and projection differences), enhancing each of the ~1.5 million GPS points with data on the surrounding population density, nearest village, land cover type, and more. In addition to this, I geo-referenced and digitized route sketches created by Paul throughout sections of his voyage where his GPS was untraceable, and interpolated time values for the missing route portions. Once the data is published to National Geographic's Out of Eden Walk map, it will provide site users with enhanced and accurate data related to the path's surroundings at each step of Salopek's journey, and help us make connections between the current state of our urbanized world and its past.

dis-Orienting the Map: Alternative Cartographies for Alternative Futures

Academic debate around whether or not it is possible to decolonize through mapping has dominated recent scholarly discourse in critical cartography (McGurk and Caquard, 2020). Arguments for or against often weigh the emancipatory, anti-colonial power of Indigenous mapping (Lucchesi, 2018; Hess, 2021) against the capitalist realities of making and maintaining mapping infrastructure, the proprietary nature of geographic information systems, the inaccessibility of open source alternatives to non-coders, and the dependence of digital maps on colonial web standards. Through a cartographic collaboration between Sogorea Te and studio.geo?, it has become markedly clear that every option for Indigenous and other communities interested in “decolonizing the map” (c.f. Akerman, 2017) requires unacceptable compromise. Furthermore, neither option offers any deep adherence to principles of decolonial thinking and Traditional Knowledge beyond superficial data or the aesthetics of the cartographic. Opportunities for decolonisation, or even anti-colonial resistance at the level of the computational system - the software itself - are thus limited to software engineers and computer scientists, who are rarely trained in decolonial politics. In this presentation, we will cover our progress on this pursuit of disorienting the map - from the cartographic, theoretical, and material conflicts which sparked this effort, to the map so far, to plans for the future.

The Homelessness Hub at UC San Diego: Turning Data into Action

The mission of the Homelessness Hub at UC San Diego is to advance research, education and policy on housing and homelessness. Our portal is powered by Esri’s ArcGIS Hub with a focus on supporting and assisting policymakers and researchers through the use of spatial data, maps and analysis. We started in the spring of 2020 and recently received private funding to expand and continue for 5 years. In this presentation, we will provide an overview of the Homelessness Hub and highlight a couple of our projects. H-Hub has a service agreement with the San Diego Eviction Prevention Collaborative (EPC) to construct a database where EPC can collect, store, and analyze the information about outreach and services provided by their partner organizations. The work includes developing streamlined surveys to obtain public records and through Jupyter Notebook, transferring the data collection to dashboards for displaying the reports, stats and maps. The fundamental workflow is to connect ArcGIS Survey123, ArcGIS Online Notebook, and ArcGIS Dashboard together to maximize the usage of different products. People experiencing homelessness are often associated with public transit, especially in the  cities in California. We recently completed a research synthesis, funded by the UC Institute of Transportation Studies. This study aimed to humanize people experiencing homelessness as active, rather than passive, users of transit. As part of our work, we mapped the spatial accessibility of people experiencing homelessness and homeless shelters in relation to various forms of transit. Our analysis shows that many people experiencing homelessness are within close proximity to transit. This may either be a cause or an effect of the phenomenon of people experiencing homelessness being associated with transit.

To Zero or Not to Zero? Reactions to a Deforestation Ban by Farming Systems in Paraguay

In December 2004 Paraguay passed the Zero Deforestation Law after years of high deforestation rates. This law banned deforestation in the Eastern region of the country. However, the law did not bring deforestation to zero, as the name suggests. High levels of forest loss continued. If deforestation continued, what did change? Forest loss in this region is driven by agriculture. Small subsistence-oriented farmers and large-scale commercial farmers coexist in Eastern Paraguay. In this work I bring together global spatial datasets on forest cover and land characteristics to look at how these different farming systems reacted to the Zero Deforestation Law. I use a variety of sources, including the widely used layers on forest cover loss from the Global Forest Watch dataset and from the Tropical Moist Forests dataset. I also generate my own spatial data layers from these and other spatial datasets. I use the resulting dataset, compiled from these diverse spatial data sources, in regression analysis. Preliminary evidence shows that the Zero Deforestation Law’s ban on deforestation in Eastern Paraguay had a larger impact on larger scale farms, who slowed deforestation more than their smaller counterparts after the ban came into effect. 

Soil Suitability to Crop Rotation in California's Rice Country

Rice is an important global cereal crop for human nutrition and agricultural livelihoods. Most rice cropping systems are continuous rice, supporting one, two, or even three rice crops per year. While these systems can be highly productive, they face sustainability challenges including water use, greenhouse gas emissions, and increasing weed pressure. California’s Sacramento Valley is home to one of the most productive rice growing regions in the US, and most of the region has been in continuous rice for multiple decades due to consistent high yields and high market prices. This region also has unique soil attributes including high clay content, high salinity, and cemented subsurface layers and there is a long-standing assumption among farmers, extension agents, and policy makers that these soil features are not suitable for production of crops other than rice. We use satellite derived land cover data, soil maps, and a random forest model to test this assumption across the entire region. Our analysis shows that only a small portion of the current rice area is under some form of rotation (6%). Soil pH, salinity, and water infiltration were the most important soil features in predicting a rice field’s suitability for rotation. Finally, we estimate that only 15-20% of the total area could accommodate rotations based on soil properties. This work highlights the difficulty of diversifying modern high yielding cropping systems. There are many barriers to adopting sustainable agricultural practices including market prices, access to markets, and access to equipment. Soil biophysical properties should be considered in ongoing efforts to overcome these barriers. 

Practical GIS in Forestry

Forest and natural resource managers in California are under increasing pressure to manage larger landscape areas with a declining workforce. Furthermore, modern resource management has evolved to include extremely complex suites of objectives, necessitating managers to become proficient in a wide variety of disciplines. GIS is the key intersection of these needs, being a tool that crosses multiple boundaries and combines many types of data to drive the planning, analysis, and implementation of resource management.

Traditionally, geospatial analysis in management planning has been siloed to a select few who are responsible for the analysis needs of an entire organization. Beginning in 2018, UC Cooperative Extension began offering GIS trainings to forest practitioners with an emphasis on dissolving barriers of entry for technology-averse managers, while introducing post-graduate natural resource professionals to newer, more efficient cartographic and modeling tools. Participation from state regulators, natural resource agencies, and forest managers identified a need for this type of education and highlighted the various applications of GIS in forest planning and management.

Comparing GIS-Based and WUDAPT Approaches for Local Climate Zone Mapping: A Case Study in Denton County:

The Local Climate Zone (LCZ) classification scheme offers a standardized framework for characterizing the local thermal environment, revolutionizing urban climate studies by moving beyond the traditional urban-rural dichotomy. This method classifies the landscape into 10 built types and 7 land cover types to provide a better representation of the urban fabric and morphology. While machine learning approaches using satellite imagery have gained tremendous popularity in LCZ mapping, they often require high-quality training samples and can introduce uncertainties depending on model performance and data quality.

In this study, we applied a GIS-based approach to map LCZs in Denton County, TX at a 100-meter resolution. Utilizing 1-meter resolution land cover data and LIDAR-derived products, we extracted key indicators such as building height, building surface fraction, and impervious surface fraction, as outlined in the LCZ framework. Our approach highlights the benefits and trade-offs of using selective indicators to optimize the mapping process. This work contributes to a more comprehensive understanding of LCZ classification and further benefits urban climate research.

Assessment of Multivariate Drought Impacts on Agriculture in Central Chile for the Enhancement of Sustainable Adaptation:

Over the past decade, Chile has suffered under “Mega-drought” conditions placing significant pressure on agricultural production. In response to the crisis, the Chilean government has moved to promote sustainable agricultural practices to increase agricultural resilience in a changing climate. This research focuses on multivariate drought impacts on agriculture in Chile’s Región Metropolitana de Santiago and Región O’Higgins in order to spatially characterize priority areas for sustainable adaptation based on overall vulnerability to drought. To address this topic, I pose the following sub-questions: 1) How have meteorological conditions, streamflow levels, and vegetation conditions in agricultural areas changed from non-drought years (2000-2009) to drought years (2010-2020)? 2) Based on meteorological, streamflow, and vegetation condition factors, which agricultural areas are most susceptible to drought conditions and where should Chilean sustainable agricultural development be focused? The Palmer Drought Severity Index, the Standardized Streamflow Index, and the Vegetation Condition Index were used to calculate changes in meteorological, hydrological, and agricultural drought severity respectively from 2000-2020 derived from the Catchment Attributes and Meteorology for Large Scale Studies, Chile Dataset and from Landsat 5, Landsat 7 ETM+, and Landsat 8 satellites in the Google Earth Engine platform. Index values were compared by running a suitability analysis in ArcGIS Pro. Overall, the results suggest that high vulnerability agriculture is located primarily in the Región Metropolitana de Santiago and did not correspond to areas identified by the Chilean government as being in severe drought. This research will help improve our understanding of the potential of combining drought indices to determine agricultural vulnerability and inform the implementation of sustainable adaptation in Chile.

A Recipe For Health Disparity: Quality of Neighborhood Grocery Stores:

Access to fresh, healthy food is a crucial component of adopting and maintaining a healthy diet that may offset aging-related diseases such as Type 2 Diabetes. Supermarkets and grocery stores consistently serve as a mainstay for Americans’ main food source, particularly in urban settings. Classifying supermarkets and grocery stores based on factors such as cost and quality could be an important consideration in understanding health impacts across regions and within cities. This study offers classification of grocery stores and supermarkets across the United States based on the overall cost and quality of food. We performed network analysis within ArcGIS Pro to elaborate on access to these food sources by census tract in major urban areas. Regression models of many large urban areas across the United States showed positive associations between the presence of low-quality grocery stores and Type 2 Diabetes rates, whereas presence of higher-quality grocery stores was associated with lower Type 2 Diabetes rates. In many urban areas, these associations were still significant even after factoring in overall socioeconomic factors. Future analysis aims to further parse apart quality metrics, socioeconomic factors (i.e. income and vehicle access), as well as the impact of overall cost of these grocery stores and supermarkets. This study can offer insights into public health policy on reducing the incidence of aging-related diseases exacerbated by a poor diet and compounded by lack of access to higher quality, affordable food sources.

GIS and Remote sensing for Wildfire and Coastal Monitoring:

Dr. Bo Yang from UCSC will discuss the integration of multi-source remote sensing data, UAV mapping, and spatio-temporal modeling to monitor critical environmental changes. Covering applications from California wildfire tracking to coastal ecosystem assessment, this presentation highlights the use of drones, LiDAR, and high-resolution satellite data to enhance detection, prediction, and management of wildfire behavior and seagrass health. Discover how cutting-edge GIS tools and data fusion methods provide actionable insights, driving more effective environmental monitoring and resilience planning.

UC San Diego Campuswide Construction Alert: GIS Application:

Provide an overview of UC San Diego’s new Construction Alert Process. Easy-to-learn and use construction alert applications, within ArcGIS Enterprise, for use by Project Managers/Specialists in Construction Program Management and Facilities Management, were created. These GIS products provide the ability for PMs/Specialists to directly edit construction alert layers to facilitate:

• Improved efficiency for the campus construction alert process, as it pertains to geospatial layers/graphic creation/modification, and

• Standardization of campus construction alert maps for use by the campus community

Enhancing Campus Life: ArcGIS Indoors for Smart Space Management:

This presentation will introduce ArcGIS Indoors and its impactful applications in university campus facility management. ArcGIS Indoors offers a comprehensive platform for effective space management, enabling universities to optimize facility usage and track occupancy trends.

We will explore how its powerful data analysis tools enhance navigation and wayfinding for students and staff, while also improving asset management through monitoring. Case studies will highlight successful implementations, showcasing how ArcGIS Indoors fosters a more efficient, responsive campus environment. By leveraging this technology, universities can enhance operational efficiency and create a better experience for all campus users.

A Future Campus Map:

I am currently developing a GIS-based campus map to replace the current, non-spatially aware Concept3D platform. The goal is to create a dynamic, user-friendly map that enhances the campus navigation experience on a data-driven, spatially aware platform. The project is currently in the prototype stage, but we aim to incorporate key features such as interactive points of interest, wayfinding and directions, and precise ground-level layers. In addition, live transit information will be integrated through API connections, offering real-time locations of buses and campus shuttles.

This presentation will provide a look into the prototype, demonstrating how we will leverage GIS to improve the campus map experience. Looking forward, this will also pave the way for future integration of 3D and Indoor GIS.

National Park Service:

This panel session is aimed at undergraduate students to learn more about opportunities to get involved with geospatial data while still in school. Hear from several colleageus about opportunities through the National Park Service, a County GIS Program, and more.

Solano County GIS:

This panel session is aimed at undergraduate students to learn more about opportunities to get involved with geospatial data while still in school. Hear from several colleageus about opportunities through the National Park Service, a County GIS Program, and more.

NASA Develop:

This panel session is aimed at undergraduate students to learn more about opportunities to get involved with geospatial data while still in school. Hear from several colleageus about opportunities through the National Park Service, a County GIS Program, and more.

Chasing the Sun: Mapping Solar Geometry and Radiation with Sun Compass app

Sun Compass is a web-based geospatial application that visualizes solar position, radiation, and atmospheric geometry across space and time using live and historical NOAA datasets. Designed to make complex solar-radiation modeling more intuitive and accessible, the tool enables users to explore how sunlight interacts with geographic features, weather conditions, and temporal factors such as time of year or day. By integrating meteorological, astronomical, and topographical data, Sun Compass creates interactive carpet plots and SVG-based solar diagrams that dynamically represent changes in azimuth, elevation, and irradiance throughout the day.

Being developed as part of an independent research study at the University of California, Santa Barbara under the mentorship of Professor Diba Mirza, this project brings together computer science, GIS, and data visualization to promote environmental understanding through open-source technology. The presentation will cover the system’s architecture, including the data ingestion pipeline, computation of solar geometry, and real-time rendering process, as well as the design principles used to make scientific data approachable for both researchers and the general public.

Planned development of Sun Compass aim to incorporate machine-learning-based irradiance prediction models, terrain-based shadow analysis, and API endpoints for integration into renewable-energy and sustainability workflows. By bridging scientific rigor with intuitive visualization, Sun Compass serves as both a pedagogical tool and a prototype for how web technologies can democratize environmental data access, supporting climate research, urban planning, and renewable-energy analysis.

Community Knowledge Exchange for Future Air-Taxi Integration

MATLAB model that graphs prospective air-taxi routes onto a map of the Irvine area, and calculates important factors for consideration like distance, energy, and cost of flight. The map has an adjustable zoom, and the user input is in the form of clickable or typeable waypoints that the UAV will fly over in its path. The user can also adjust the altitude of the UAV at each waypoint to mimic take-off and landing, for more precise estimates, and there is an optional flight animation in the perspective of the UAV to get a better idea of the path and any obstacles that might be on it. This model is designed to be equally accessible to researchers judging the efficiency of a flight path and communities that want to become more informed on the functionality and limitations of air-taxi flight.

Making Autonomous Vehicle Crash Data More Accessible

Autonomous vehicle (AV) manufacturers testing in California are required by the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) to obtain either an Autonomous Vehicle Tester (AVT) or Autonomous Vehicle Driverless Tester (AVDT) permit to operate on public roads. As part of these testing programs, manufacturers must report their monthly and annual miles traveled, as well as any crashes resulting in property damage, injury, or death. UC Berkeley SafeTREC has analyzed these datasets to create two interactive dashboards that make AV testing data more accessible and provide insight into AV operations in California. All crashes reported through August 26, 2025, have been geocoded, and summary charts have been developed to visualize crash trends over time. In addition, SafeTREC has compiled statistics and visualizations summarizing monthly and annual mileage by manufacturer. Together, these analyses are presented in the AV Safety Dashboard, two user friendly, point and click tools that allow users of varying technical abilities to access the AV crash data and AV mileage data in a simple way. The dashboards aim to increase transparency of and public access to AV testing data so that users understand where, when, and how AVs are operating in California.

Evaluating Harmful Algal Blooms and Sediment Plumes on the South Florida Coast using Satellite-Based Remote Sensing to Inform Management and Conservation Efforts

Harmful algal blooms (HABs) are common occurrences on the South Florida coast and lead to environmental repercussions which harm the local ecosystem. HABs in Florida Bay, the shallow lagoonal estuary between Florida’s peninsula and the Florida Keys, are commonly caused by Synechococcus, a prominent unicellular cyanobacterium. To address local community concerns regarding the increasing occurrences of HABs, this study utilized satellite remote sensing data from the Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem (PACE) Ocean Color Instrument (OCI), the Sentinel-3-derived Cyanobacteria Assessment Network (CyAN), as well as collections from Sentinel-2 and the Harmonized Landsat and Sentinel-2 (HLS) project. Using these datasets, we calculated common water quality indices (Normalized Difference Chlorophyll Index and Normalized Difference Turbidity Index) to identify areas of HAB and sediment plume conditions. Both indices were found to have similar seasonality between 2019–2025, with the highest values concentrated in the western part of Florida Bay during the summer. We combined CyAN and the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) Reanalysis v5 (ERA5) data from 2016–2025 to provide monthly cyanobacteria forecasts with three modeling approaches: an autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) model, ARIMA with exogenous variables (ARIMAX), and integrated nested Laplace approximations (INLA). ARIMA and ARIMAX provided temporal forecasts which showed moderate bloom activity for July 2025, while the INLA method produced spatiotemporal forecasts which predicted high cyanobacteria activity concentrated in the north-central region of Florida Bay for the same month. These forecasts will be used to inform future in-situ monitoring and protection of marine species in partnership with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission and the Bonefish and Tarpon Trust. This project was conducted as part of NASA's DEVELOP program in the summer of 2025.

Dune restoration enhances coastal resilience on an urban beach

Coastal dunes are globally recognized as natural features that can enhance coastal resilience and protection from wave events, storm surges, coastal flooding, and sea level rise. We evaluated a pilot restoration of coastal dunes on an intensively groomed urban beach in southern California (Santa Monica Beach, Los Angeles County) after grooming was discontinued. Restoration actions were minimal and included installation of three sides of perimeter sand fencing, cessation of mechanical grooming, and the addition of native dune plant seeds. Sediment accretion, elevation, and geomorphic complexity increased over time in the restoration site, largely in association with sand fencing and dune vegetation. A foredune ridge (maximum elevation increase of 0.9 m) and vegetated hummocks developed, along with a general increase in elevation across the restoration site (0.3 m). After six years, an estimated total volume of approximately 1,730 m3 of sand had accreted in the restoration site and 540 m3 of sand had accreted in the foredune ridge. Over the same period, more than a meter of sediment (vertical elevation change) accumulated along the perimeter sand fencing. Groomed control areas remained flat and uniform. The total cover of vegetation in the restoration site increased over time to a maximum of 7% cover. Following an extreme wave event in December 2023, we compared the performance of the dune restoration to the adjacent groomed control site. We used total water level (wave setup, tide, wave runup) as a proxy for flooding potential. The average wave runup distance was 13.6 m farther inland on the groomed control site compared to the restoration site. Our results demonstrated the potential for restored dunes to enhance flood protection and the potential for increasing coastal resilience using nature-based solutions on urban beaches and provided new insights on the opportunities for restoring dunes as nature-based solutions for climate adaptation.

Dynamic Cities, Dynamic Housing Policy: How BuildSD broke down SB79

This lightning talk would be an overview of the work I do with BuildSD (buildsd.org), specifically our project to combine open-source transportation data (GTFS) with housing production and zoning data to understand 2025's SB 79. SB 79 mandates upzoning near major transit stops, allowing for increased housing production across California, but only in narrow cases so as to not disrupt local control. The talk would discuss some of the challenges inherent in understanding and integrating GTFS, zoning, historical, etc... data from a variety of transit agencies and municipalities, and our work to create a single comprehensive SB 79 upzoning map for San Diego County, where dozens of transit stops are potentially eligible.

Cautions to GIS Professionals in Context of California Statutes Defining the Practice of Surveying

Navigating the boundaries between land surveyors, engineers, professional geologists, and geospatial professionals is crucial for maintaining the integrity of each field. Although land surveying and geospatial work complement each other, they differ significantly in scope and focus. In California, surveyors are licensed by the California Board for Professional Engineers, Land Surveyors, and Geologists and the activities exclusively reserved for Professional Land Surveyors are defined by the Professional Land Surveyors’ Act as codified in Section 8700 - 8805 of the California Business and Professions Code, specifically Section 8726 (a). GIS practitioners are at risk of being fined if their mapping work strays into the Surveyors’ domain. The California Geographic Information Association (CGIA) and the California Chapter of the Geospatial Professional Network (CalGPN) have launched an effort to inform GIS Professionals of this risk, to engage with the Surveying Community, and to advocate for clearer regulations. The speakers will focus on the recommendations document that was published in April 2025, and the current status of the work of the joint ad hoc committee led by CGIA and CalGPN.

Rural Atlas highlights differences in cancer incidence, proportion late stage, and survival using two different definitions of rurality

Background: Use of different measures of rurality has made it challenging to identify differences in cancer patterns and direct cancer control efforts toward rural regions. The UCSF Rural Atlas allows users to dynamically visualize differences in cancer epidemiology across the rural–urban dichotomy, specifically within the UCSF Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center (HDFCCC) catchment area. Methods: Percent rural and Rural Urban Commuting Area (RUCA) codes were selected to explore cancer rates within the catchment area for the five most common cancer sites (female breast, prostate, lung, colorectal, and melanoma). Relevant area-level demographic and cancer risk factor data were sourced from the American Community Survey (ACS) 2015-2019 and CDC Places (2023 release). California Cancer Registry 2018-2022 data were used to generate incidence rates, percent late stage, and 5-year overall survival. Results: The Rural Atlas (https://cancerregistry.ucsf.edu/rural-atlas) allows users to select measure of rurality, sex, and cancer site and explore the corresponding maps, tables, and figures. Using the Rural Atlas, we observed some regional differences between rural and urban areas. Prostate cancer incidence is lower in rural areas compared to urban areas in the Central Coast using the RUCA definition but higher using the percent rural definition. Male and female melanoma incidence was higher in rural areas using the percent rural definition, but using the RUCA definitions, lower rates of melanoma in rural areas of the Central Coast were observed. Proportion of late-stage prostate cancer was higher in rural areas of the San Francisco Bay Area, especially when using the percent rural definition. Male lung cancer survival was higher in rural areas using the percent rural definition, but lower using the RUCA definition, especially in the Central Coast. Conclusion: The Rural Atlas is a flexible tool for highlighting disparities in cancer patterns by rurality across regions and informing cancer control efforts.

How to use Health Atlas: A Visualization Tool and Data Resource for Place-Based Drivers of Health

Where we live, including the physical and social environments that surround us, influences our health in both positive and negative ways. Examining factors that vary across time and space such as access to food and housing, air quality, and social support can help reveal the specific effects environments have on health and inform neighborhood-based interventions. We designed and developed Health Atlas (healthatlas.ucsf.edu) to help users explore place-based factors that might influence health. Health Atlas is a curated public repository of data aggregated at different geographic units (e.g., census tracts, zip codes, counties) and across a wide variety of domains (i.e., demographic; socioeconomic; built, social, and structural environments; environmental exposures; health behaviors; healthcare access and use; and health outcomes). Most data are available across all 50 states in the U.S., plus D.C. and Puerto Rico. Health Atlas provides user-friendly tools for mapping and visualization, and a data download feature to support use of the data by researchers, community organizations, government entities, and public health professionals. We propose a virtual workshop to teach potential users of Health Atlas how to use the tool for their work. We will include content on: - Health Atlas 200+ variables - Selecting variables - Visualizing data - Selecting custom areas - Downloading data - Tips and tricks on how to explore data