Semester Project Introduction
Introduction
We will be working on a semester-long project in this course. The goal of the project is to apply the skills and concepts we learn in class to a real-world environmental issue that you care about.
We already collected several potential environmental issues in class, and we will be building on these for the semester project.
| Potential Research Topics | Notes/ Group |
|---|---|
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From discussion: Reference to skiing and potentially the Massanutten ski area |
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From discussion: Potentially including social/ tourism impacts at Key West |
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From discussion: Question about routes, counts, depending on data |
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This is a modification from the topic about carbon released from fires. There are some good datasets about CO$_2$ exchange in forest ecosystems. There are also good data about land-use change. So this could evolve into a fire question as well. |
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Based on a group suggestion. There are quite a few datasets available, at least for ocean catch in Atlantic and Pacific. There are probably a lot of other smaller datasets available as well. |
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My potential suggestion. There is a lot of data available for this in many formats and a lot of potential questions to tackle. (i) Potentially ozone and NOx levels in cities (ii) Potential health impacts/ disparities (iii) Climate impact |
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There are my potential extreme events, disaster with dataset that could be connected to many other things as well |
There were some other suggestions mentioned: e.g. the ongoing sewage spill, data centers, batteries. For these, I am not sure whether it would be easy to get data that can actually be analyzed well. I’d be happy to consider these topics, if a strong case (with data were to be made).
Activities
Activity: Select a topic and form groups
- Form groups of 3-4 people. We are looking for a total of 6-7 groups.
- You can form groups based on shared interests in a particular topic, or you can form groups based on complementary skills (e.g. some people are good at coding, some are good at writing, etc.).
- Once you have formed your groups, please share the topic you are interested in with me.
Next Steps
- Problem formulation
- Formulate a problem statement that outlines the issue you want to address, identifies the affected people and ecosystems, and identifies specific harms that are occurring or could occur. This should be a clear and concise statement that captures the essence of the problem you want to address.
- Formulate at least two specific research questions that you want to answer with your project. These should be specific and focused, and they should be answerable with data.
- Identify potential datasets that you could use to answer your research questions. You can start by looking at the datasets we have used in class, but you will need to find additional datasets.
- The datasets should be publicly available and should be relevant to your research questions. You can use datasets from government agencies, research institutions, or other reputable sources.
- You will need to document how you acquired the datasets and what they contain.
- At least one dataset should be a tabular dataset that you can analyze with Python.
- The tabular dataset should contain at least two dimensions beyond time (e.g. two or more locations, variables, etc). This means you might have to download several files and combine them into one dataset.
- The other dataset can be a geospatial dataset – e.g. satellite , gridded climate data etc – (we will learn how to analyze these types of datasets in class), a time series dataset, or any other type of dataset that is relevant to your research questions.
Activity: Formulate a problem statement and research questions
The problem statement should provide a clear and concise description of the issue that will help guide your research and analysis. It should include the following components:
Based on your topic:
- Name the core problem you want to investigate.
- Provide context for the problem
- Who is affected by this problem? This could include specific groups of people, ecosystems, or other stakeholders.
- What are the specific harms that are occurring or could occur as a result of this problem? This could include health impacts, economic impacts, environmental impacts, etc.
- Why is it important to address this problem?
- Formulate at least two specific research questions that arise from the problem statement and that you want to answer with your project. These should be specific and focused, and they should be answerable with data. This means there should be a quantitative aspect to the question that can be addressed.
- Identify what data you would need to answer these research questions.
- What types of data would be most useful?
- What variables would be needed?
- What coverage, resolution, and temporal coverage would be needed to address these questions?
Next steps
A draft of the semester project requirements on the page linked below. I will be updating this document as we go along, but it should give you a good idea of what the project will entail and what the expectations are.
For now, these are the next steps for you to take:
- Create a shared repository for your group (on GitHub) where you can share code, data, and other materials related to your project.
- Create a draft of your problem statement and research questions, and share it with me for feedback. We will discuss these in class and I will provide feedback to help you refine your problem statement and research questions.
- Place the draft in the shared repository.
- Begin identifying potential datasets that you could use to answer your research questions.
- Document how you acquired the datasets and what they contain. You can place this documentation in the shared repository as well.
- We will discuss your potential datasets in class and will provide additional guidance on what kinds of data might be useful for your project and how to acquire it.