NACIS 2019

The Census and the Post
Presenter: Alice Goldfarb, The New School
The post office is ubiquitous and often overlooked, both in cities and more importantly in rural parts of the United States. This presentation looks at my recent work to use the locations of post offices, and when they were established or discontinued, as a proxy for a town's existence, and what the patterns of openings and closings tell us about the expansion of colonial settlement across the continent. We will compare what can be learned from centering the post office with what can be determined from census data, and consider which situations are best for each approach.

The Ish River-Lillooet Country & the Salish Sea
Presenter: David McCloskey, Cascadia Institute
Companion to the award-winning map, Cascadia (2015), this new map shows the sheltered “inside house” of the Puget Sound-Strait of Georgia cross-border area called “The Ish River EcoRegion,” centering on “The Salish Sea,” as a natural and cultural whole. This map shows terrain, bathymetry in unprecedented detail with fjord inlets, icefields and glaciers, hydrology with fjord lakes and watershed boundaries, vegetation and land cover, with a new integrative forest formations framework, plus a new kind of Legend, for both B.C. and WA. Location is shown by an inset—the new “EcoRegions of Cascadia” map. Since repeated glaciations carved out the landscape, this map also tells “The Story of Ice”—from its source in the great Icefields of the BC Coast Range thru the paths ice-streams flowed down to create huge lobes in the lowlands, the ice divide in southern B.C., the maximum extent of the ice sheet edge, major meltwater channels, etc. A surprising discovery is that different ice-streams flowed off the east face of the same Coast Range down the Fraser and Lillooet Valleys, incurving westward to carve out the eastern side of the Puget Sound area, as well as Lake Chelan; hence, we also include this “other side” —the Lillooet Ecoregion.

The Making of a Cultural Atlas
Presenter: Ashley Nepp, Macalester College
Following in the example of Infinite City: A San Francisco Atlas by Rebecca Solnit, and Portlandness: A Cultural Atlas by David Banis and Hunter Shobe, this spring Macalester College's Cultural Atlas Production course created a cultural atlas of Saint Paul, MN in 13 weeks. The class worked as a team to create a print atlas from start to finish; choosing topics, designing the layout of the atlas, gathering data, and finally working through the publishing process. This presentation will discuss our process and offer some reflections and recommendations for instructors or groups interested in creating their own cultural atlas!

NASA GO on a Trail - Volunteer Land Cover Mapping Challenge
Presenter: Heather Fischer, Oregon State University
Co-presenter: Peder V. Nelson, Oregon State University
This summer NASA GLOBE Observer (GO) and the National Park Service's Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail (NHT) teamed up for the "GO on a Trail" volunteer data collection challenge from June 1 (National Trails Day) to September 2 (Labor Day). To assist scientists studying environmental change, volunteers used the GLOBE Observer mobile app to map land cover along the Lewis and Clark NHT and elsewhere. We will share the strengths and challenges of volunteer data collection for mapping a large area and present the volunteer-produced land cover map of the Lewis and Clark NHT.

Today You, Tomorrow Me: Mapping Sea Level Rise Exposure of Habitats Human and Otherwise in the Mississippi Delta
Presenter: Dylan Halpern, MIT
Co-presenter: Rachel Luo (MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning); Natalia Coachman (MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning); Kathryn Wicks (MIT Computer Science)