Geography 4427
 
Advanced Geographic Information Systems II
 
- Spring 2009 -

Geography 4427, Advanced GIS II is the capstone undergraduate GIS course at Texas State University-San Marcos.  In this course students worked as teams on real-world GIS projects. These projects were designed and conducted by the students under the direction of Dr. Giordano and Nancy Tian. This course helped students develop and demonstrate competence in applying GIS techniques to actual geographic questions. Click on the links below to find detailed information about each of the groups and their projects.

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The overall purpose of this project is to create web-accessible public interest maps for the GBRA’s web site.  The benefits of this project are three-fold. First, we are providing the GBRA with additional public interest maps to be included on its web site.  Second, the addition of a GIS component allows the maps to have an interactive content, which lets the maps to be viewed over the internet via user-driven software.  Third, developing the maps with a GIS component allows the datasets that were used in the project to be made available on the GBRA’s web site for download.

The purpose of this research is to utilize a geographic information system (GIS) to identify and analyze the spatial distributions of historically-recorded flood and flash flood events resulting in fatalities in Texas. Events will be analyzed at a variety of scales temporally and compared with population growth trends throughout the region in order to establish whether there is a distinct relationship or pattern. Other indicators such as gender, age, and type of incident, along with damages to property and crops, will be also examined. It will determine areas of greatest vulnerability and potential danger.

PAKK's objective was to employ GIS capabilities for illustration and measurement of land area identified by stream buffer guidelines expressed in the Regional Water Quality Protection Plan (RWQPP). The intended use of this data is to present stakeholders with a first order of protection through depiction of setback buffers around streams. The cartographic output provided by PAKK in addition to data and analysis results, will be utilized by HCA and future GIS analysis teams in continuing to gather and aggregate stakeholder input that will prepare them to embark on a full build-out landuse map. The goal of our project was to construct general overview maps to assist in facilitating discussions of the many criteria to consider in urban and rural growth planning. The geographic scope in regard to the stream buffer analysis and land area calculations, is a 17 county area of the central region of Texas called the Hill Country. The geographic scope in regard to the web GIS maps will be 6 counties of interest to HCA including Hays, Comal, Blanco, Kendall, Bandera, & Medina

The Texas Hill Country is facing inevitable growth during a time when preserving environmental resources is critical.  The projected water demand increase and limited water resources will continue to be the primary factors in this sensitive issue. 

This project will specifically determine which groundwater and surface water areas are most vulnerable to non-point source pollution, taking into account various hydro-geologic and geographic criteria.  The results of the analysis will be used by the HCA to influence responsible growth of the Texas Hill Country in an effort to preserve the natural resources and heritage of the region.

The City of San Marcos has asked our firm to conduct a geographic study of the affordability and availability of housing with the city limits of San Marcos. This study will provide the City of San Marcos information regarding zoning, household income, and types of occupancy to help develop a comprehensive housing policy that promotes particular types of single-family housing and homeownership