This National Science Foundation Major Research Instrumentation Award enables Syracuse University to acquire thirty specialized, networked computers and associated peripherals for its new Integrated Spatial Dynamics (ISD) Laboratory. Twenty-six workstations will be housed in the main lab and will be available for advanced research training in Geographic Information Science (GISci) and Remote Sensing for graduate and undergraduate students, as well as for short courses for faculty and community members. The ISD lab will be open for interdisciplinary geospatial research by students and faculty from across Syracuse University and the State University of New York's college of Environmental Science and Forestry. Four workstations will be housed in an intensive research room and will support highly specialized one-off licenses for high resolution remote sensing; these computers will be networked to those in the main ISD lab.
The computers purchased with this grant will support advanced research and training in the analysis of the spatial dynamics driving significant landscape and community change - and the interaction between the two. The ISD Laboratory and its facilities will allow for the development of research at the nexus of society and environment and for the examination of community dynamics as they intersect with environmental dynamics. Research and training planned for the laboratory includes (but is not limited to) analyses of environmental and ecological transformations, and human-environment interactions from the Brazilian Amazon to the Arctic; water resource and climate change dynamics in Upstate New York, California, and Bolivia; geomorphological dynamics in North America; environmental change and racial dynamics in the Mississippi Delta; and urban change, social justice, and public health in Syracuse, Central New York, and beyond.
Research-based training conducted on the computers in the ISD Laboratory will include basic and advanced techniques in geographic information technologies and their applications in a range of disciplines (geography, public administration, sociology, biology, environmental engineering, etc.); GISci-based environmental, land-use, and ecological modeling; and GISci-based analyses of social, economic, and cultural dynamics. Importantly, the ISD Lab is designed to foster research with and training in public participation GISci, including training of community members, particularly from underrepresented groups, in geographical information techniques and collaborative spatial analysis. Together, the advanced training and public participation components will prepare students and community members to join what Nature calls an expanding "worldwide geospatial [labor] market" and to conduct advanced, community-rooted research in a range of settings. The instrumentation purchased through this award will allow Syracuse University to become a leader in research and research training on environmental dynamics and a pioneer in the developing area of community geography.
