Last summer I wrote about my project concerning the Emerald Ash Borers in Sandy Hill- mostly how Jon pimped me out to a prof and his student to look into the situation (because of my mapping expertise). I spent some time hitting the pavement, plotting out where the ash trees were, and locating spaces to plant new trees to replace the canopy cover that would be eliminated by this pesky invasive species. After identifying the areas, we went door to door and spoke to residents about planting a tree on their property with the help of a City grant. It went pretty well, I had some neat conversations with residents, I was able to breathe some fresh air, and I had a change of scenery from the office. It was great to be done with that project, knowing that the Action Sandy Hill community group had my finalized map in their hands. Effectively they could go about informing more residents and even inoculating trees that were significant to the community and had shown no signs of infection. Ino...

Photo credit: http://etap.com/gis-map/gis-map.htm Recently our department had a progress meeting to get an idea of how our summer projects are coming along. It was great to share with my coworkers all the things I have been doing, since sometimes we’re very discrete and have no clue what the person next to us has been assigned. I was happy to report that most of my projects were nearing to an end, waiting for translation or for various responses from different people on campus. However, I realized that a massive chunk (I doubt you could even call it a “chunk” because it is so huge) of what I have done this summer was not even asked of me back in May. Yes, I am talking about mapping. If you don’t recall from way back in January when I started working here, I am in Geography and Environmental Studies here at the University of Ottawa. This Geography stuff includes the use of Geographic Information Systems software such as ArcMap 10. In plain English, I map things digitally because answer...