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How to plan a field study and conduct environmental/geoscientific surveys for academic research and consulting projects (e.g., habitat or natural hazard assessment or mapping).
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What equipment to deploy to characterize landscape characteristics (e.g. streamflow, sediment, topography, subsurface structure, and vegetation cover) and how to operate that equipment?
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How to combine the collected data with data available from other sources, and analyze them all to generate a technical report?
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This interdisciplinary field course will aim to equip you with practical skills needed to answer these questions. These skills will be developed through hands-on experience. The course is designed primarily for junior and senior undergraduate and graduate students at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Freshmen and sophomores are encouraged to contact the instructors to discuss their eligibility.
Because this course is specifically intended to develop skills needed for project planning, data acquisition, and analysis, we recommend it especially to students interested in pursuing careers in academic or applied research in earth and environmental sciences (e.g. government agencies such as US Geological Survey, US Forest Service, US Fish and Wildlife Service), environmental consulting, etc. However, such project planning and communications skills will be valuable in any career.
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The course is open to students from all academic units, although priority will be given to GGIS students. We believe it is likely to be particularly relevant for students from GGIS, GEOL, NRES, PEEC, CEE and SIB,
but we encourage anyone interested to contact us. We anticipate no specific pre-requisites.
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The course will involve five main components: (1) reading of background material in preparation for the course; (2) pre-trip training in field methods, equipment operation, and data handling; (3) guided tours at the location; (4) derivation of research hypotheses and data collection protocols, and data acquisition through hands-on, student-led fieldwork projects (5) data analysis (e.g., GIS, statistics) and technical report writing, together with short group presentations.
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(A)
(B)
Images: selected equipment available for use in the field course. (A): terrestrial LiDAR system [TLS]; (B): TLS scan results [raw point cloud) showing channel morphology, riparian vegetation, and large wood jams;] (C): Ground Penetrating Radar [GPR]; (D): Unmanned Aerial Vehicle imagery showing channel morphology, riparian vegetation, and large wood jams.
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Guided tours will introduce students to geomorphically, hydrologically, and ecologically distinct domains of the Pacific Northwest Coast: headwaters, slopes, river floodplains, lakes and estuaries. We will discuss water and sediment transfer from mountains to the sea and how these processes shape various aquatic and terrestrial habitats. We will also discuss human activities (logging, mining, hydropower, urbanization and transportation network development) as well as natural phenomena and hazards (earthquakes, volcanism, landslides, floods, deglaciation) relevant for watershed processes and management.
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Training will prepare students to use a range of modern measurement technologies and methods to survey physical and biological elements of the landscape.
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Fieldwork (completed in small groups under the supervision of the instructors) will provide you with the opportunity to acquire practical experience in devising research hypotheses, planning field projects, obtaining relevant data from existing public sources (e.g. remote sensing or geospatial), and using both simple and sophisticated measurement equipment and methods for primary data collection. This student-led research will contribute to ongoing real-world watershed restoration (e.g. salmon habitat, eelgrass beds, and riparian forest), as well as geomorphological research projects.
Data analysis, involving the integration of all gathered data, will be carried out partly in groups but each student will interpret the data and produce an individual final report.
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Budget / Course fee - tentative cost estimate will be discussed in informational meeting(s). Please attend or contact Dr. Cienciala via email.