As GIS Day 2017 concluded on the afternoon of Wednesday, Nov. 15, Geospatial Information Librarian Janet Reyes reflected on a successful community event at UC Riverside to celebrate Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Day and Geography Awareness Week.

“What I found most gratifying about the day was seeing all the interactions and networking taking place, between and among UCR community members and our off-campus guests,” Reyes commented. Many people interacted with the poster contestants as they explained their entries, and visited the information tables outside Rivera Library to talk with representatives from UCR Extension and Esri.

The first place winner in the poster contest was Dion Kucera (above, center) for his poster on Decadal resistance and resilience of the Los Angeles urban forest in response to drought and temperature stress. Second place went to Peter Ibsen (above, right), whose poster depicted regional and local climate drivers on the NDVI~Air Temperature relationship in urban areas. Third place was awarded to Brianna Chew (above, left) for her StoryMap on Academic Success Factors in K-12 Education: a quantitative analysis.

Presentations highlighted both academic and practical applications of GIS to advance work and research, with topics including the link between environmental features and behavioral health, climate change and biodiversity, looking at problems from a spatial perspective, the use of GIS in crime analysis, and more.

Patty Spurlock, Esri Human Resources Manager, shared information about careers in GIS.

“GIS Day went very well,” Reyes said. “The success was due to the collaboration of the Planning Committee, in addition to support from departments throughout the Library.”

Related events spanned multiple days, including a craft workshop on Nov. 14 sponsored by the Creat’R Lab, where students made map-themed ornaments; and a talk on Nov. 16 by Manuel Urrizola, Head of Metadata and Technical Services, titled “Is California an Island?” Urrizola brought archival maps from his personal collection, with supplementary materials provided by UCR Library’s Special Collections and University Archives.

“We tried several new things this year and will build on our experiences in planning for next year,” Reyes said.

GIS Day 2017 was co-sponsored by the UCR Library, the Center for Conservation Biology, the Departments of Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, and Psychology, UCR Extension, and Capital Asset Strategies. The GIS Day Planning Committee included Hoori Ajami, Jennifer Campbell, Robert Johnson, Karen Jordan, and Paige Trubenstein, with Reyes as committee chair.