Humanity's history in the air and space is documented in millions of images looking back at Earth. Apollo 8's iconic Earthrise probably is the best-known example.
Many of those prints, film reels, slides, and digital files represent an important visual record—more than a century long—of mankind's effect upon the planet. Immersive learning students at Ball State now analyze some of that material to reconstruct land use patterns in Delaware and Randolph counties in Indiana, helping the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and Indiana Department of Environmental Management (IDEM) hypothesize about their impact on portions of the White River watershed.
Not far from the birthplace of Wilbur Wright, the students from geography professor Matt Wilson's geographic information systems (GIS) workshop pore over historical aerial photos of the area taken as far back as 1961. They also examine period maps, some found in Farm Service Agency (FSA) and county assessor offices, as well as legal studies and other georeference documentation.
Coupled with modern digital orthophotos made on five occasions between 1999 and 2010, the archives give the "30,000-foot view" of Middletown's most recent economic and environmental tides, information of great interest to the White River Watershed Project (WRWP), a citizen partnership with the Delaware County Soil and Water Conservation District dedicated to improving water quality through conservation and best management practices.
"A comparative analysis of industrial and commercial activity and expansion, farming practices, ditching methods, and riparian zone (the interface areas between land and water) morphology can provide tremendously helpful data about what's getting into our water and how," says Colby Gray of FlatLand Resources, LLC, and project coordinator for the WRWP.
Many Partners, Fewer Dollars
Not only has development encroached upon once mostly rural landscapes, natural forces such as sediment accumulation—albeit often human-influenced—also are forever changing how the river and its tributaries interact with their surroundings and all within them. The critical question is: in what direction do the signs point?
Already, Wilson's Ball State colleague Melody Bernot, a biology professor, has reported on pharmaceutical pollution of some local rivers and streams as well as the growing threat of greenhouse gases such as nitrous oxide emanating from a growing number of river networks. The emissions result from nitrogen loading of the waterways caused by farm field runoff; nitrogen is a principal ingredient of many fertilizers.
Using information supplied by the USDA in both electronic and hardcopy, students will document the evolution of land use along Buck Creek to hypothesize sediment impacts to the creek over time.
The problems and consequences could not be more real for Gray. Organizations such as the WRWP survive on small grants from a mix of private and public groups that must be able to show results for the increasingly precious resources invested.
"Although we have many partners, we don't have a lot of dollars," says Gray. "That's where Ball State can play a really important role in helping stretch those funds by assisting in some of this basic research.
"But, the university's participation is about so much more than stretching dollars. The real net gain here is that we, as practitioners, get to work side-by-side with students—our future practitioners. Very often new techniques for watershed planning and land management techniques spring from the bright young minds of Ball State students working on projects such as this."
Convincing Dad
For Ryan Cooper, '09, "getting that hard proof" of stream bank degradation in the watershed area was a major attraction of the project. In his graduate studies in geography at Ball State, Cooper—already an undergraduate veteran of one of Wilson's previous workshops assisting the United Way of Delaware County better plan its delivery of services—is interested long-term in demonstrating how GIS "can serve everyman" in determining the future course of a community and its shared resources.
He'll wade into the project, literally, during spring 2011, taking with him a digital camera synced with a handheld GPS device in order to pinpoint exactly where and how the stream bank is being impacted. He wants to identify possible negative trends, things happening now that might still be mitigated.
"It's not just government agencies figuring out funding allocations that should be using this data," says Cooper, who hails from Brownsburg, Indiana, but through his years on campus has come to appreciate living in Delaware County and east central Indiana. "I want to develop GIS so that the layperson can use it to get a better idea about some of these issues affecting his or her community."
And already there is promise. Although not from farming stock himself, Cooper says a close colleague in the Department of Geography comes from a farming family. As a result of their conversations about the stream bank survey, he confides, "she's already trying to change her dad's view about maybe adopting some new land management techniques."
It's a hard sell, says Cooper. American agricultural practices often extend through generations. "But I think having real data, getting that hard proof, can help make a compelling case.
"So, we need to continue to justify or make the argument for these kinds of studies."