Open Scholarship

My project concept focuses on open source software, open source data, and shared hardware. Over the past several years I’ve taught a mediocre intro to GIS lab session – a scant 2 hours dedicated to the introduction of the concept and utility of GIS, with a canned walk-through of ArcGIS using years-old data. The students hated it, though I insisted it was important to know, AND it made for a reasonable indoor lab session in the cold days of February.

Fast forward to this year and the underutilized GIS lab is gone, but I still strongly believe knowledge of GIS is a skill set my students should be familiar with. A conversation with Ben Carter led to my introduction to QGIS – a “free and open source geographic information system,” and a shared purchase of a portable GNSS (global navigation satellite system) for data collection. I like to think there is already an air of openness in the basic act of two different departments buying something together.

In its simplest form, my project is to figure out how to use the GNSS in conjunction with QGIS, so I can pass on the knowledge to my students. What that looks like, today at least, is to collect physical, chemical, and geospatial data to generate a soil map of campus. In turn, this information would be shared with plant ops so they have a better idea of some of the soil parameters they are dealing with. (A big one – why is it so hard to get things to grow in front of Moyer?)

I hope this will be a jumping off point for more adventurous projects.