GIS day

 This year GIS day was the 18th of November.  Because of the global pandemic, we could not celebrate it in person but the organization I am currently conducting my internship with - the Office of Surface Mining and Reclamation Enforcement - held GIS day online through Microsoft Teams.

For GIS day we had an array of different GIS professionals within the organization give short presentation.  This ranged from coming to terms with a client who wants you to make an ugly map to writing a Python program to interface with ArcGIS Online's API.

My favorite presentation that was given that day was using GIS to help figure out if contaminated water from a mine was seeping out into the stream and hurting a population of endangered crawfish that had an extremely small habitat area. If it was the mine causing this problem, then it would be the Office of Surface Mining and Reclamation Enforcement's fault for not properly enforcing the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act (SMCRA) and they would be found liable within the lawsuit.  That area of West Virginia is also where there is a lot of ATV traffic going through the streams.  They wanted to see if they could definitively prove if it was the pollution from the mine water or the ATVs hurting the crawfish population. They did they by placing devices at various points within the stream that would measure things like water turbidity and rainfall.  The more the water was churned up, the more hostile the environment is to the crawfish.  When it rained, there was some turbidity presumably from the mine water.  However, when it wasn't raining there were also turbidity spikes, especially on weekends when people are most likely to be riding ATVs.  The results were mapped so that this information could be presented in court. It was very enjoyable to see how other people used GIS in their jobs in ways that I had never thought of before.