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GIP Lab Research
As federal, state, and local budgets for environmental management and research are unable to support historically manpower-intensive monitoring and research programs, the role of technology, both in the field and in the lab, must be expanded. The GIP Lab supports research exploring and expanding the increasingly important roles that technology and technological innovations play in monitoring, assessing, modeling and managing our environmental resources and associated health issues. Using the tools of Geographic Information Processing (GIP), GIP Lab staff and students develop and apply spatial models to study the impacts of anthropogenic and physiographic influences to environmental resources. These tools of GIP include Geographic Information Systems (GIS), remote sensing and digital image processing, Global Positioning Systems (GPS), and environmetrics.
Research studies are multidisciplinary and may include researchers and students from Biology, Economics, Geology, Environmental Health Sciences, Geography, Marine Science, Exercise Science, Epidemiology, and Statistics.
The scope of our research efforts are illustrated by following projects: - developing and implementing a coastal non-point source pollution model
- modeling the cumulative impacts of regulatory permitting programs on coastal wetlands
- assessing the impacts of urbanization on localized estuaries
- developing a GIS-based logger-head turtle tracking program
- analyzing the variability in thematic content derived from remotely sensed data of varying resolution
- tracking spatial and temporal distributions of oyster pathogens
- risk assessment modeling
- biomass and chlorophyll mapping
- bathymetric mapping
- developing suitability models for invasive species (hydrilla)
- studying environmental supports for physical activity
- tracking changes in land cover over multiple years
- identifying and assessing estuarine anomalies
NOAA, NASA, CDC, NSF, EPA, NIH, DOE, USGS, SREL, SCDHEC, SCGUARD, SCEPSCoR, and Richland County represent federal, state, and county agencies that have funded or currently are funding research activities of the GIP Lab. For more information on these state and federal agencies, visit these web sites: Hardware platforms include Unix workstations, Microsoft
servers and workstations, Pentium PC's, and Macintoshes. Data
loggers, high-precision GPS units, GPS/depth sounders, survey levels,
YSI's, a spectroradiometer, and a canopy analyzer ceptometer enhance field
data collection procedures. Additional equipment includes a
digitizing workstation and high-resolution color scanners for database
development, and large-format color plotters and printers. |
