Major: Geography (Environment and Sustainability)
Minor: Sociology
- Languages: Portuguese (fluent), English (fluent), Italian (basic)
Lab 2
You must make one post on your portfolio website that responds to the following issues:
- Review your answers to question 2 and 5 to answer the following: for general audience, describe how to fix misaligned and improperly referenced spatial data, including taking into consideration project properties.
- Review your answer to question 10 and discuss the advantages to using remotely sensed Landsat data for geographic analysis.
- To fix misaligned and improperly referenced spatial data, one might choose to change the coordinate projection of the map display. Different projections are better suited for different map types; hence, some projections preserve shape and distance but distort angle, while others preserve angle and distance, but distort shape, and some preserve distance, but distort shape and angle.
- Remotely Landsat data takes aerial imagery for analysis every 16 days since 1972. Therefore, advantages include constant updates on aerial imagery and review of scenario. For example, if one wanted to analyze how the forest cover has changed over the Amazon rainforest over the years, one could gather Landsat data for decades and be able to have a vivid picture of the geographical locations most affected by deforestation
Lab 3 lab3hospital mylab3
Create a post for your portfolio that includes your completed maps (Question 8 and Question 9) and text that responds to the following question.
- List the healthcare and educational facilities within the Vancouver danger zone, if any, and explain how you came up with your answer.
- Provide a one or 2 sentence discussion of any potential risk to the new site for St. Paul’s Hospital.
- There are 8 educational and health facilities within the Vancouver danger zone:
- False Creek Residence
- Villa Cathaway Care Home
- Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design
- Henry Hudson Elementary
- False Creek Elementary
- Anthony of Padua
- Ecole Rose des Vents
To find these facilities, through ArcGIS, I went into ‘Selection’ and ‘Select by Location’, with the Source layer being ‘Vancouver_Danger’. I then created a layer from the selected features and merged them so they would be symbolized equally.
- The new proposed location for the St. Paul’s Hospital is still within a certain area of flood risk, in the case of a tsunami occurrence. Moving the propsed location further inland would ensure patient and staff security 100%.
Lab 4 housecostVO affordability
Housing affordability
Create a post for your portfolio that includes your map comparing housing affordability in Vancouver and London (Question 9) and text that responds to the following questions:
- What is affordability measuring, and why is it a better indicator of housing affordability than housing cost alone?
- What are the housing affordability rating categories? Who determined them and are they to be ‘trusted’? (You have seen in the previous map how different classification breaks produce very different visual impressions).
- Is affordability a good indicator of a city’s ‘livability’?
- Affordability measures the mean level of income in an area normalized the median average house cost of that area. It is a better indicator than just housing cost alone because it includes the dimensions of social and economical class of citizens that live within that area, and so, upon such analysis, we see if the targeted social group that is designated to live in such areas can actually afford the housing based on their incomes.
- Rating categories include natural breaks, equal intervals, and standard deviation. Personally, I believe that standard deviation is one of the best classification ratings for housing affordability because they emphasize deviation from the median cost and income of each Census Tract (CT).
- Affordability is a very good indicator of livability. Such indicator exposes the level of financial prospects that an area’s population has, besides paying for housing. Thus, if affordability is low, most people will not have finances for other activities/material goods.
Lab 5 q8map (2)
Create a post for your portfolio that includes your completed map (question 8), your memo (question 9), and text that responds to the following question:
- When working on environmental projects, you sometimes become involved in proposals that you do not ethically believe in. Do you personally think the project should be allowed to continue? Does this differ from what you wrote in your memo?
MEMO:
In order to assess the environmental risks related to the installation of a ski resort at The Garibaldi in Squamish, one must consider its vast spectrum of potential adverse effects to local biodiversity and ecological workings, and if such project does proceed into approval, extremely cautionary steps must be taken in order not to disturb the natural cycle of resource production and allocation. According to background information on the project proposal, the project’s original logistics and mechanisms were proposed in 90’s, and if approved, would take around 20 years to be completed in totality. Such a long period of preparation and construction may also provide additional threats to biodiversity and local habitat interaction; furthermore, with growing rates of greenhouse emissions and climate change increasing exponentially, one is forced to question whether such a locality will in fact be suitable to sustain winter sports activities in the future. Because of these concerns, my role as an Environmental Assessment GIS analyst was to map out the radius of the project’s extent and to highlight the potential sites for disturbance that the project may cause, with the objective of mitigating any possible consequences of the project’s progression. In order to provide such analysis, the use of ArcMap was vital to pinpoint the areas of greater risks, and that should therefore, not be meddled with. For example, through the software, and with the available data on the local species inhabitance, I was able to identify the areas in which there was a considerable concentration of endangered species (mostly along the northern part of the project, as labeled ‘FalseBox’). Furthermore, I divided the mountain area under analysis into two parts based on elevation: one part below 555m and on above 555m, enabling me, EIA agents and project proponents to get a better sense of where the most appropriate sites for ski-runs were located (based on snow availability due to elevation). Another type of analysis that was conducted with the use of ArcMap and GIS was the identification of areas that were at a certain distance from the various river stripes that are prevalent in the area. Such analysis is important because through such identification, project proponents are able to conduct construction in areas that will not affect the interaction of aquatic stakeholders, like the fish that carry their livelihoods along these rivers’ streams, as well as the surrounding areas of old-growth forest. The identification process was done through buffering all the lines (rivers) within the project area, and setting such buffers as a zone of no interference. My results included: proportion of the area that is composed by old-growth forests (6.77%), total proportion of habitat area of Mule Deer and Mountain Goats in the area (7.89%), as well as total percentage of area that is below 555m elevation (42.7%) and total percentage of the protected areas within the designated project site (14.32%). In my opinion, as mentioned above, the two greatest concerns associated with project developments are the potential adverse consequences to local biodiversity’s’ livelihood and interactions, which are vital to maintaining a healthy ecological system, as well as the uncertainty associated with the nature of this particular project, which is one of long-term duration and great-scale investment on a rather unstable period of time, climatically and financially speaking. One way to mitigate adverse effects on local biodiversity is through conducting thorough and precise Environmental impact Assessments through all levels of project analysis, which may include extensive biological research into the areas fauna and flora, as well as conducting surveys with encompassing communities (either First Nations or not) to get a sense of their opinion into the matter, which would both entail a feeling of being included in the consideration of new projects, as well as helping authorities and project proponents to get a better sense of the areas of public concern.
– Personally, I do not believe that this project should continue any further. Given the facts that river flow and biodiversity are in danger of being altered with the progression of this project, I believe that Garibaldi is in a state of delicacy, and should be observed and studied to enhance conservation projects, rather than the construction of another ski resort. Furthermore, give the site’s low altitude and the rising temperatures due to global warming, it is not far-off to suggest that in around 20 years time there will not be enough snow to practice winter sports, even during the peak of the season.
Final Project GEOB-270-final-V1 (1)
For the GEOB 270 final project, my group and I were very interested in assessing how ‘livable’ the city of Vancouver really is. To do so, we created a ‘livability index’ which of different weighted factors to be analyzed through a micro-level perspective of the city’s neighbourhoods. Our indexes included housing affordability, crime rates, density of community areas, greenspaces, bikeways, parks schools and libraries and proximity to them, as well as proximity to express transit lines.
Our group consisted of four people, and basically, everyone was in charge of a unique job. While some focused on the design elements of the map and how to best present our findings, my main job was to observe and take note of each step in order to produce a concise and accurate flowchart to represent the steps we took to obtain our maps. Furthermore, I was in charge of analyzing results for the crime and housing affordability data, two variables which amount to 35% of the weight of our index.
What we learnt from our project and results is that Kitsilano is that Kitsilano, Fairview, and Mount Pleasant are the most livable districts according to our index; by contrast, the least livable districts are Arbutus Ridge, Shaughnessy and Kerrisdale.
Although I am quite familiar with the basic workings of GIS, I very much enjoyed being a part of this process right from the start. I could see from a close perspective how a simple idea about assessing livability turned into a rather complex and large-scale project, which involved a lot of cooperation, team work, communication, and the best show of skills from each of our group members.
Reflection on GEOB 270
Overall, my experience with UBC’s GIS course was fairly positive. Although computing is not one of my strengths, and I did struggle throughout the assignments, I believe that at least being familiar with the basic workings of ESRI’s ArcGIS is fundamental for any geography major. Furthermore, having GEOB 270 coupled with GEOB 372 in the sam term, as I did, provided a complete insight on the nature of map representation and their power to transmit data.