Projects

Explore the fundamentals of GIS with these carefully built modules

Wind Energy

In this module you will examine the patterns and processes of wind energy expansion in Texas through a geographic information system environment.  You will examine the costs and benefits of thes new systems and assess the policy challenges that the new energy technologies pose for communities and local governments.

Urban Shale Gas

In this module you will examine the patterns and processes of urban shale gas drilling in Texas through a geographic information system environment. You will examine the costs and benefits of these new systems and assess the policy challenges that the new energy technologies pose for communities and local governments.

Urban Agriculture

In this module you will learn about food insecurity and food deserts and learn about those organizations and communities responding to these threats. You will explore urban agriculture in Houston and learn how it is organized and what are some of the challenges to growing food in a city. Then, in the final section, you learn about how geographers study urban agriculture and the type of data we use to answer our research questions.

Brazilian Livelihood

In this module you will describe the spatial distribution of resource users by farming and fishing dependent people and explain how environmental conservation policies create new territories with new rules using a geographical information system.

World Cities Samples

In this module you will explore how the cultural diversity of world cities. In this case, you will look at the cultural geography of London by calculating the segregation index, location quotient, and diversity index for different cultural groups in Greater London. You will then examine the distribution of results in a GIS, manipulate the representation of data, and answer questions.

UNDER DEVELOPMENT

Eagle Ford Shale

This module is under development.

UNDER DEVELOPMENT

Geopolitics of Google Earth

Process

Learning by immersion

Pick

Read

Explore

Direction

What we do and where were headed

Broadening Impacts of Geography and Geospatial Science (BIGGS) is a result of a multi-year collaboration among Geography faculty from Texas A&M University committed to integrating research and geographic education. We began our project with an initiative to integrate Geographic Information Science and Technology (GIST) into the introductory human geography core curriculum courses with financial support and resources from the Office of the Provost and TAMU Geoservices. Our vision is to provide a platform for the larger geography community to enhance the education mission by providing the means to directly integrate research products directly into the classroom. Ideally this would be a portal for educational modules based on federally funded research, such as the National Science Foundation. For example the Urban Shale Gas and Brazilian Livelihood modules are a direct result of NSF-funded research, while the data used in the Wind Energy module was generated from a project funded by NextERA Energy Resources. Our long-term goal is to expand our modules to serve the larger geographic education community.