Digital Earth 2

Course manual 2018/2019

Course content

This course prepares for the field course 'Desertification and Land Degradation' in Southeast Spain.
During the Digital Earth II course students collect, organize, analyze and visualize environmental datasets which will be used in the ‘Desertification and Land Degradation’ course.

The topics to be covered in DE-II include:

• Preparation of a geodatabase in ArcGIS.
• Digitalization and classification of Land Use / Land Cover (LULC), through analysis of high resolution ortho-photo imagery.
• Calculating a Digital Elevation Model (DEM) from a contour line dataset and to extract selected Land Surface Parameters such as slope gradient and aspect maps.
• Application of geospatial analysis techniques to find relations between environmental information layers.
• Apply cartographic design / (3D) visualization and printing of maps for use during the Spain fieldwork.
• Writing a technical GIS report in which the geodatabase design, the geospatial datasets, the methods used and the output results are presented.
• Prepare print-ready pdf field maps.

Study materials

Software

• ArcGIS Pro 2.2

Objectives

The objectives of this course are:

• To prepare geospatial information layers relevant for fieldwork by integrating existing thematic information and newly prepared data layers into a GIS geodatabase.
• Learn how to digitize concept geomorphological, land use and hydrological maps and add relevant attribute information based on remote sensing imagery and surface pattern analyses.
• To understand the theory behind and to analyze remote sensing imagery, with emphasis on the Spain fieldwork area.
• To prepare a technical GIS-report in which the workflow used, the geospatial metadata, the used methods, and the output are described of the fieldwork area.

Teaching methods

• Hoorcollege
• Laptopcollege
• Zelfstudie
• Lecture
• Computer lab session/practical training
• Self-study
• Working independently on e.g. a project or thesis

Three lectures on SE-Spain. Three self-tuition assignments. 
Spain geodatabase project. Writing a GIS project report. Pepare pdf maps and print them.

Learning activities

Attendance

Programme's requirements concerning attendance (OER-B):

• In case of practical sessions, the student is obliged to attend at least of 90% of the sessions and to prepare himself adequately, unless indicated otherwise in the course manual. In case the student attends less than 90%, the practical sessions should be redone entirely.
• In case of tutorials/seminars with assignments, the student is obliged to attend at least 90% of the tutorials/seminars and to prepare himself adequately, unless indicated otherwise in the course manual. In case the student attends less than 90%, the course cannot be finished

Additional requirements for this course:

Attendance at the lectures is strongly recommended.

For tutorials ('practicals') there is a strict attendance rule: when you’ve missed 2 tutorials, you’re attendance at tutorials will be graded with NA. This results in a NA for the course.

Absence needs to be communicated in advance to the course coordinator.

Assessment

During the Digital Earth II course the following deliverables must be handed in that together account to your final mark. All deliverables can be handed in via Canvas.

1. The answers to the first practical session of Friday  March 8 2019 23:59 h.
2. The answers to the second practical session of Friday  March 15
3. The answers to the Google Earth practical of March 15
4. The answers to the Collector App practical of March 15
5. The results of your Spain GIS project, on Sunday March 31

1.  A technical GIS report.
2.  A geodatabase with all relevant GIS files including metadata.
3.  All ready-to-print pdf files – A3 format, 1:10,000 scale.

In the table these deliverables have been listed, together with the hand-in-date and the weighing factor that applies for each deliverable.

If deadlines are exceeded without substantial demonstrable reason, re-examination is possible at the re-examination date.

Re-examination date will be set by the course coordinator in cooperation with the FPS curriculum coordinator.

Your final mark must be 5.5 or higher.

N.B. If there are special reasons why you are not able to complete a specific obligatory component in the course, contact the study advisors studieadviseur-iis@uva.nl before the examination date (or deadline when it concerns a paper). In the case of special circumstances, the study advisor, student and course coordinator can search for alternative solutions.

Assessment diagram

Students that were enrolled in the course in previous years

There are no exemptions for resit students for this course.

Inspection of assessed work

Contact the course coordinator to make an appointment for inspection.

Up to 30 days after the announcement of the result students have the right of inspection of their work (all forms of assessment). Please come to the course coordinator for inspection of your work and grades on Canvas. Please note: you lose the right of feedback from the examiner when you don’t react within 30 days from the end of the course (April 1st 2019).

Assignments

Practical 1 with laptops

• A refresher for ArcGIS Pro in which basic techniques and procedures will be illustrated from the mainland of Spain, in ArcGIS. You will work with a digital elevation model (DEM) and a hill shade map, use bookmarks, recognize various file types, use symbology to distinguish map properties, query you data, handle attribute tables, clip raster data, use masking, use multiple data frames and will prepare a final map, to be exported as a .jpg file. You are introduced to a method for data management.

  Test & answers directly via Canvas, similar to the tests of Digital Earth 1.

Practical 2 with laptops

• A basic dataset for hydrological modeling is a digital elevation model (DEM). Delineation of watersheds and sub-catchments and extraction of the hydrological stream network is necessary before modeling can start. Based on a hydrological network, various hydrological parameters can be calculated and flow tracing can be carried out. You will: 1. Extract the stream network using a DEM, 2. Delineate a watershed and divide it into different polygons,

  3. Calculate the drainage density of the watershed. If not already installed in your version of GIS, you can download the Arc Hydro Tools for ArcGIS from Canvas.

  Test & answers directly via Canvas, similar to the tests of Digital Earth 1.

Practical 3 with laptops

• A practical session on air-photo interpretation, geological data extraction and landscape interpretation in the vicinity of the fieldwork area in Spain (Mula), by using historical black and white air-photos in combination with recent imagery on Google Earth. Land use (change) is another issue.

  Test & answers directly via Canvas, similar to the tests of Digital Earth 1.

Practical 4 with laptops and smartphone (1 per group)

• A session on the ESRI collector App. Make sure you download the Collector App before you start this tutorial. See www.gis-studio.nl. In this session you learn to prepare the collector app by downloading maps, and getting familiar with the basic tools of the app. In the second part of the session the collector app is tested outdoors. Assignments are performed around the Science Park with the collector app. Tests via Canvas.

Practical 5 with laptops

• You will, in teams, be appointed an area in the fieldwork area in Spain. You are responsible for assembling spatial datasets from the available raw data, such as contour line maps. Assembling means managing and storing your data in a geodatabase, which has the correct coordinate system, is perfectly georeferenced, and has adequate metadata. A project tutorial with guidance on how to prepare datasets will be published on Canvas.

Practicals 6 – 8 with laptops

• Continuation of the team project and individual project - you have time to further analyze your GIS data, add metadata and write a technical GIS-report.

Fraud and plagiarism

The 'Regulations governing fraud and plagiarism for UvA students' applies to this course. This will be monitored carefully. Upon suspicion of fraud or plagiarism the Examinations Board of the programme will be informed. For the 'Regulations governing fraud and plagiarism for UvA students' see: www.student.uva.nl

Course structure

Timetable

The schedule for this course is published on DataNose.

Additional information

Digital Earth I or a comparable GIS course is mandatory.

Last year's course evaluation

In order to provide students some insight how we use the feedback of student evaluations to enhance the quality of education, we decided to include the table below in all course guides.

Contact information

Coordinator

• dr. W.M. de Boer