GIS Blog: Melanie A. Sutton

Design strategies employed while making this map included the following: Typology: Tahoma font was selected with the sizing scaled from 36 pt for the title to make it the most prominent, to 10 pt for the map supplemental information in the bottom right corner (to make it less prominent). Neatline : The neatline was drawn around the entire map area instead of the map frame to reduce whitespace overall when placing the remaining essential map elements. A border around the map frame would have made such placement less possible, with more whitespace overall around the east side of the plotted area near the jagged terrain. Color: Nonforested areas were colored gray to make them less prominent. Shades of green were selected for the Pine family of land cover, with the largest area (Lodgepole Pine) selected with lighter shading to be of sufficient visual contrast with the white background, while still falling within the hierarchical organization overall to indicate all landcover categ

The State of Wisconsin is shown above to demonstrate the appropriate selection of a coordinate system before analyzing additional attributes for a map. The State of Wisconsin falls with 3 state planes and 2 UTM zones, and thus requires the use of a custom coordinate system. The NAD 1927 Wisconsin TM (Meters) coordinate system was selected for this reason. It would not be appropriate to use either the state plane nor the UTM-based coordinate systems for this state because at best these coordinate systems would be optimal for only 33% (state plane-based) to 50% (UTM-based) of the state.

Recreational Areas near Austin, Texas This map highlights the importance of five design features that improve map communication: visual contrast, legibility, figure-ground organization, hieararchical organization, and balance. Visual contrast was created in this map by decreasing the shade of the Travis County area relative the symbology for main features noted in the legend. In addition, the shade used for Travis County is visually distinct from the white background used for the overall map. Legibility was achieved by carefully choosing border widths for the symbology of golf courses and hydrography. This makes most of the golf courses appear as solid areas and allows for both larger and smaller waterways to be visualized on the map. The symbol for the recreation centers was then selected to demonstrate this as a center of activity by using a circular choice for the symbol. Figure-ground organization was achieved in the inset map for the U.S. by using shading

  Expanding Community Engagement and Diversity in Clinical Trials in Birmingham, Alabama The success of clinical trials can be improved when a diverse population representative of the population at risk for the disease being studied is engaged in the ongoing research related to that disease (Clark et al., 2019). Barriers to enrollment include distrust of being a research subject and logistical challenges, including travel time (Nissen, 2019). The urgency of addressing outcome disparity associated with new medical advances is particularly concerning in fields such as immunotherapy where knowledge of predictive biomarkers can guide optimal treatments (Nazha, 2019). Including ethnic and cultural diversity in clinical trial research can also help to address costs associated with inequitable care and better inform service planning for impacted communities (Low et al., 2019). The purpose of this final project was to examine current community engagement trends in clinical trial site

Locating Potential Beachrock Shelves in Dry Tortugas National Park Using Unsupervised and Supervised Classification Techniques on Aerial Imagery This final project specifically examined how unsupervised and supervised classification methods available in ERDAS Imagine could be used to locate potential beachrock shelf areas near Loggerhead Key in Dry Tortugas National Park, Florida. Near-shore beachrock shelves in this region serve as important habitats for juveniles of some fish species tolerant to the extreme conditions in these formations compared to adjacent coral reefs (Rummer et al., 2009). Monitoring of these sites is therefore relevant to understanding their importance as nurseries within reef ecosystems (Speaks et al., 2012). Automatic identification of these areas from satellite or aerial imagery avoids disturbing these sensitive habitats and can also be used for path planning the acquisition of lower cost imagery useful for continued management ( Casella et al., 2017).