Celebrating 30 years of GIS at ISU today on GIS Day! We also celebrated the 50th anniversary of Landsat and were able to hand out playing cards, refreshments, posters, and other educational materials. This was a great opportunity for our staff in the GIS facility to share the work that they are doing, and teach others about GIS.
February is Black History month, and as part of that celebration IowaView would like to highlight a new story map that was recently released by the Tracing Race at Iowa State University. The Tracing Race project funds digital projects that reveal the under-documented history of accomplishment and experience of people of color, and engage with the history of race, inequality, racism, and student, faculty and staff activism at Iowa State University.
The Tracing Race project recently released a Story Map by Gloria Betcher, Ph.D.; Ted Grevstad-Nordbrock, Ph.D. & Jeanne Beck, Ed.S. called Mapping the Black ISC (Iowa State College) Student Housing Experience. It shares the stories of black students as they overcame challenges to find housing in Ames in order to pursue their education at Iowa State College.
“Since its founding in 1858 as Iowa Agricultural College & Model Farm, Iowa State University has allowed Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) to enroll as students. Iowa State’s first Black student, George Washington Carver, enrolled in classes in 1891. At that time, the question of where Black students could live while enrolled at the college became a concern, but it was left largely unaddressed by the institution until after World War II. Prior to that time, BIPOC students at Iowa State College (ISC) were kept from rooming on campus by an unwritten policy that required Black students to room together. This requirement was difficult to meet when so few Black students attended the college at any given time. As late as 1926, ISC had only 13 Black students and had just graduated its first Black woman, Willa Juanita Ewing, according to The Crisis: A Record of the Darker Races (“A Record,” 1926).
The housing situation of most BIPOC students at Iowa State in the years before it became a university remains unstudied in any systematic way. This ESRI Story Map project is an initial step toward addressing that research gap. It is also intended as a means of illuminating just who the Black students at ISC were and what contributions they made after leaving Iowa State.”
– From the Project Introduction: Mapping the Black ISC Student Housing Experience
This story map is a treasure. It explains the challenges of Black students in the early days of Iowa State College in finding housing and how they overcame those challenges. It provides a map showing many of the early residences of the students around Ames, many of the homes are still there today.
Another exciting feature of this story map is how the authors pay tribute to each of the Black students enrolled in at Iowa State College during this period of history. The authors provide a biography of each of the students and information about their time at the college and life after school as well as picture of the students. This is a great way to remember these students.
Take time to explore this wonderful Story Map: https://storymaps.arcgis.com/collections/8c704f644e3f46a3b6b7442f702aa586?item=1
Students in grades 4-12 are invited, with their teachers, to participate in this year’s mapping contest sponsored by Esri, the Iowa Geographic Information Council (IGIC), and William Penn University. This year’s theme is Mapping Unique Iowa Features.
Contest Website: https://sites.google.com/site/iowamapcontest/home
Story Maps Website: https://www.esri.com/en-us/arcgis/products/arcgis-storymaps/overview
How to participate: Use the Story Map application to tell a story about a unique feature site using a map and pictures.
There will be $100 cash prize and a certificate for the top five middle school (grades 4-8) and top high school (grades 9-12) map entries. The top entry from each state will be submitted to the national competition hosted by Esri.
Schools must submit their winners to the state for judging by 5 p.m. on Wednesday, May 12, 2021. Iowa GIS professionals will judge the entries so Iowa awards may be announced, and send winning entries on to Esri for the national competition.
Over the past few years the ISU GIS Facility has hosted a number of mapathons. Most of our mapathons have a time set aside for mapping in Iowa and then a time where we focus on international projects.
It is amazing what even a small group of mappers can do to add to the OpenStreetMap basemap in a small town in Iowa. Below are three examples of demonstrating how a mapathon event can add to the OpenStreetMap.
As a way to celebrate GIS Day and OpenStreetMap, we are encouraging everyone to go online either during this week or on GIS Day and contribute to the OpenStreetMap basemap. You may consider improving the basemap in your own community. Here are several projects to consider:
Public Lab Mongolia – https://tasks.hotosm.org/projects/9560/
Public Lab Mongolia (PLM), a local non-governmental organization in Mongolia, is leading the Mongolian chapter for volunteer mappers through the HOTmicrogrant COVID-19 project, as part of their mission to promote open data and disaster preparedness. This mapping will also help with COVID-19 response efforts. This project is to map Ulaanbaatar capital city of Mongolia, is organized by PLM in collaboration with the Mongolian Geo-spatial Association and local universities.
Hurricane Eta – Nicaragua – https://tasks.hotosm.org/projects/9765
Hurricane Eta brought wind, rain and storm surge to the coast of Nicaragua. This project is to finish the basemap of Bilwi (Puerto Cabezas) by digitizing buildings from MAXAR imagery. Available to beginners, there may be tricky tasks in this project as some areas have been partially mapped with older imagery and vegetation can often hide parts of structures. Make sure to review the instructions for tips on how to overcome these challenges and provide high quality data.
Explore your own project: https://tasks.hotosm.org/explore
Let’s kick off Geography Awareness Week with some trivia:
https://treasurehunts.storymaps.esri.com/pioneers/. Test your knowledge of some of the pioneers of geography and GIS. Good luck! Learn something new!
Happy Wednesday! Here is a map from the Iowa State University Extension Community and Economic Development showing the percent of absentee ballots returned in Iowa by county. There is also a layer that shows percentage of absentee ballots returned by party. This map will be updated regularly as we move towards the election.
https://isugisf.maps.arcgis.com/apps/View/index.html?appid=10a34b747f0f409a8c613ff869c933c9
