Author: Andrew Berens

Recreating Alabama Avenue

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The SIF project I have been working on most recently have involved geotagging digital scans of photos from the Atlanta Fulton County Public Library collection of glass plate negatives. The geotagging itself was relatively easy. After one of our SIFs, Alexandra Orrego, georeferenced old Sandborn maps of downtown Atlanta, myself and 3 other SIFs used the addresses associated with each photo to find the photos’ longitude and latitude. On its own this project is pretty straight forward. The content of these photos made this project a bit more interesting. The photos we were geotagging were of storefronts that would be covered by the construction of the viaduct downtown. Some of these stores are open today in Underground Atlanta. These photos might be the last time any of these stores were photographed above street level. Better still, many of these storefronts were photographed one after the other, with just a bit of overlap between each. A little work by another member of the team, Saif Ali, and we had a program we could use to stitch the overlapping photos together into one panorama. I was tasked with stitching together Alabama Avenue. While difficult, some of the pictures can be brought together. It gives you a sense of what the street would have looked like in totality. While it will likely take much more work to get the photos to all line up (the edges of many of the images have distorted over the last 89 or so years since they were taken), the potential to see an entire block of Atlanta as it was before the city buried beneath the viaduct makes any difficulties worth it. Hopefully, in the near future, the combined work of the 5 SIFs on this project will allow us to see what Underground Atlanta would look like in the light of day.

New Map Posted

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Having been some time since I posted a map, I decided this month was a good time to share one of the best maps in my collection: a world map published in December of 1935 by National Geographic. This map is unique not only in projection (it isn’t a Mercator projection) but also in content. The amount of information tucked into every corner of the map is astounding. As such I have not only posted the map itself, but also close ups of four different parts of the map. To see the photos and a discussion of why I like the map and its various parts head over to the map page of my site.

Historical Photos: Why It’s Nice We Can’t Always Geotag Them

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Recently I met with two of the heads of the SIF program, Joe Hurley and Brennan Collins, concerning the photo geotagging project. The photo geotagging project involves determining the location where various photos from the GSU Digital Collections were taken from. The meeting focused on what collection should be tagged; we decided on using the Lane Brothers Photographs. This collection consists of over 15,000 photos of people, places , and events from all over Atlanta. Photos range in time from the 1930s to the 1970s. As an Atlanta transplant (I was born and raised in Phoenix, Arizona where I lived until about two years ago) these photos provide interesting snapshots of Atlanta history, which is all the better for a city not known for preserving its historical landmarks.

Two photos stuck me as particularly interesting, but for very different reasons. The first was from downtown Atlanta in the late 1930s (shown below). In the photo you can see basically every form a transit used today. You see the old streetcar, cars, bikes (in the center background), and pedestrians walking. Were it not for the cars and the streetcar (and general lack of development) you’d hardly know the photo wasn’t from today. However, when you compare the Lane Brothers Photo to the same spot from today (Google Street View, just search 101 Marietta St and it’s the building across the street from the State Bar) you can see a striking difference. The cars and building all have a more angular, modern feel. This juxtaposition shows us how the city and our tastes have changed. Being able to look at the same location at two very different points in time can give all Atlanta residents an interesting perspective on their city’s development over time, which is why this photo geotagging project is so worthwhile.

The other photo we looked  at from the collection that I found so interesting was taken somewhere in Atlanta, in either the 1940s or 1950s. The photo (shown below) is of an alley. You can see what appears to be an early to mid-century truck of some kind in the background. The buildings have a distinctly pre-war feel to them: brick constructions, small windows, unpaved alleyways, et cetera. But what struck me about this photo was all the things that we don’t know about it. We don’t know where this photo was taken, what the buildings are (business or homes or whatever), or even what decade the photo is from. We will not be able to geotag this photo. There are no street signs and the likelihood that those buildings even still exist are pretty low.

This photo is not very interesting to look at but the idea that we have no conception where this photo is from strikes me. Today if you take a photo with a connected device (and let’s be fair if you are reading this you almost certainly take all your pictures with your phone) the photo is automatically geotagged via a GPS. While there is value in that, now we will always be able to locate where a picture was taken, I think we’ve lost something too. I find something captivating in this photo. This notion that in this photo you get to see a place that you will never be able to find is oddly romantic to me. With this photo I get to see a part of my newly adopted city. A part that can show me a simpler time in the cities history. A part that I can’t compare with today because I can’t find it now. I know there is value in knowing where historical photos come from spatially (that’s why I’m glad SIF will be starting on the geotagging project next semester) I think there is also value in seeing snapshots of history that we can’t quite place. I fear that mystique will be lost for future generations when they look back on pictures we take today. Maybe only I’ll care, but I genuinely think we might just be losing something. So maybe next time you see a beautiful scene, or even a mundane scene you think is worth capturing, turn off your phones GPS. Maybe, just occasionally we should let future generations look back on the picture we leave and think, “Huh, I wonder where this picture is from?”

Up and Away: the Power of Interdisciplinary Work

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Recently the SIF Web Editors highlighted the project that will be one of my main focuses during my time with the SIF program: the climate lab weather balloon. This project will deploy a moored weather balloon as a way to collect real-time data about the troposphere for use in an intro level lab. This project is part of an ongoing active learning project that aims to increase interactivity in the most popular general science lab on campus (Geography 1112 – Intro to Weather and Climate). The move to make Geography 1112 an active learning environment is motivated by two goals. The first is to hopefully increase the on campus presence of the department responsible for the labs: the Department of Geosciences, of which I am a part. The second is simply to improve the quality of the lab through the application of active learning. As explained in a post by my SIF colleague Monica Cook, switching classes from a lecture format to a more active format will likely increase student performance, especially among minority and first generation students.

But SIF wasn’t where I first learned of or started thinking about the balloon project. The idea was first pitched to me by the professor in charge of the Geography 1112 labs: Dr. Jeremy Diem. You see, before I was a SIF program fellow, I was a teaching assistant with the Department of Geosciences. I taught two lab sections of Geography 1112 and worked with (and still work with) Dr. Diem as my thesis advisor. We had discussions about how he wanted to improve the 1112 labs. He mentioned the balloon idea and it got me thinking. I immediately thought it would be a really cool way to showcase how science works. I could even conceive of how to build the apparatus necessary to launch such a balloon. But Dr. Diem’s vision was more ambitious than a balloon. He wanted weather data collected by the balloon to be displayed in real time. He wanted the exercise seamlessly integrated into the labs. He wanted a balloon that could go high above downtown and return without incident.

I knew how to build a mooring system to send and return the balloon, but I had no conception of how to transmit the data in real time, much less integrate the whole thing into one of the labs. That is where the SIF program has come in. While I have the knowledge to work the mechanics of the balloon and the background on how it fits in with the labs, the project needed others to actually work. Another SIF program fellow, Megan Smith, is using her computer science expertise to create the instrumentation and make a system for getting the data in real time (you can see an update of her work on this and other projects on her blog). An instructional designer from the Center for Instructional Innovation, Taylor Burch, is also assisting by helping integrate this activity into the lab it is meant to support.

This is why the SIF program is so important. By collecting motivated people from so many different fields, the program can take a project that seems too difficult to achieve, and makes it happen. The program takes ideas and improves on them by bringing in different perspectives. This happens with all sorts of projects. 3D Atlanta combines technical knowledge of 3D modelling with archival research. The GSU growth map brought together SIF program fellows from several fields to produce something that has become a part of the university’s capital campaign. This interdisciplinary focus leads SIF projects to create such high quality product, and those products are valuable, not only to the GSU community, but to the Atlanta and Georgia community as a whole.

Why are geographers a thing?

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I am in the first half of my 6th semester studying geography. Despite my short time with the field I have a BS in geography, an undergrad certificate in geographic information sciences, and am less than one school year away from an MS in geosciences (geography concentration). This is true of most geographers, I think. Very few people start as geography majors. Most people don’t even realize geography is a major in college. The things geographers study are often also studied by other scientists, so much so that some geography departments are combined with other science departments. Here at Georgia State geography has been, at one time or another, combined with anthropology and geology.

This overlap has been further reinforced by my course work. I have never taken a geography course that didn’t have at least some students from a different discipline. Worse yet, the rapid proliferation of GIS into other fields means that most academics have some working knowledge of spatial analysis. Even my older brother, who is a religious studies major and lawyer uses GIS almost every day.  All this has lead me to wonder why geographer exist at all. Why not just be a different kind of scientist who happens to study things spatially?

With the massive increase in work I’m experiencing I think I may finally know why geography is a distinct subject. With SIF, my thesis, course work, and GTU (I’m president of the geography honors society on campus) I’ve finally figured out why I took all those geography course on all those different topics. Having been forced to see any number of different subject areas in terms of how they function spatially, I have found that I now process all my information spatially. My route to school, the space in my backpack, the memory on my computer, the time in my schedule, all of it is a 3D spatial analysis problem to me. This realization has made me more efficient and less stressed. I’m not great at managing time, but I’m good at maximizing space. If the time in my schedule is simply space to be filled, I’ll fill it in the most efficient way I can. Suddenly scheduling is easy and straightforward.

This ability to see anything and everything as an issue of space was honed by learning about myriad topics all from the perspective of space. This is how geographers can contribute to sciences in unique and valuable ways. By being able to take a given set of variables, think of them spatially, and then disaggregate their effects, geographers can get at the causes of phenomenas in ways other scientists might not. Most academic geographers will take this skill and focus it on one general topic: climate, surface water, the oceans, people. This is why many geographers can be referred to by their field: climatologist, hydrologist, oceanographer, demographer.

In the end the thing that defines geography for me isn’t any one knowledge set, it’s a tool set I’ve learned. Geographers fundamentally study how we understand and interact with space. As my work this year continues to intensify, I hope to use this skill set to keep me going. Moving forward in the semester I’ll try to let you know how these skills help me contribute to the various projects I find myself working on.

New Map Posted – September 7, 2015

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Under the map page is my first map post. The map is from National Geographic and of the United States from 1947. You’ll notice that neither Alaska nor Hawaii is present on the map because neither will be a state for another 12 years. Instead the inset maps in the left and right lower corners show the proposed UN area and Nova Scotia respectively. My blog’s header image is a cropped and edited version of this map.

Welcome to my blog! – First Post

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Hello, my name is Andrew Berens. I’m a masters student in the Department of Geosciences at Georgia State. I started at GSU in January of 2015 and joined the Student Innovation Fellowship Program in August of 2015.

At GSU I am focusing on geography and GIS. I’m currently working with Dr. Diem on my thesis. Together we are gathering gamma emission data throughout DeKalb County in the hopes of determining if gamma emission can function as a proxy for radon potential.

With the SIF program I will be working with the mapping and digital pedagogy groups. I am especially looking forward to working with the archival maps and photos in the ATL mapping and Atlanta photo projects respectively.

Throughout my time with SIF I will be posting general things, things specific to my SIF work, and various maps I have in my collection or that I create. Hopefully this blog will give you an insight into my work and geographic work in general.