CEE 6440 Term Paper Suggestions

Following is a list of potential topics you could use for term papers.  In addition to these ideas you are encouraged to review the web sites giving term papers from previous years.
  1. Something related to your own research.  If there is any GIS aspect to your research you are encouraged to do this so that the work done is useful to you.
  2. An analysis of hurricane tracks or development of a map of hurricane tracks and hits.  National Hurricane Center.
  3. An analysis of the distribution of Snow from SNOTEL sites, or from NOHRSC products.
  4. A comparison of basinwide precipitation versus streamflow to establish regional runoff ratio's.  Precipitation data sources could be NEXRAD, NCDC, PRISM, SNOTEL, Western Regional Climate Center.  Streamflow data dources could be USGS Benchmark Stations from the Hydro-Climatic Data Network or National Water Information System.  Other GIS data sources discussed in the class on data sources could also be brought in to this analysis.
  5. An evaluation of different methods for channel and watershed delineation.  Much of my research described at http://www.neng.usu.edu/dtarb involves methods for channel network delineation based on digital elevation models.  The software (TAUDEM) facilitates this.  It would be interesting to formally compare some of the methods I have developed against data for example in the National Hydrography dataset.
  6. Implementation of a visual basic extension to ArcGIS.  ArcGIS is designed to be extendable and customizable.  There is a lot of online information on customizing ArcGIS with visual basic at ArcGIS Developer online and ESRI support.
  7. An extension to TauDEM.   Things that could be added include
  8. Work with the Hydrology Object Model.  One possibility is to develop methods for putting DEM derived channel networks (e.g. from TauDEM) into the object model.
  9. Modeling of erosion, runoff and contaminant pathways.  Some of the specialized grid analysis functions in TauDEM may help with this.

Data sources

Utah Automated Geographic Reference Center, contains USGS Maps, DEM's, Orthophoto quads within Utah and Free.  Also includes if you look hard enough, liquefaction potential, Hydrography and Environmental data for certain locations.
USGS Seamless Data Distribution of National Elevation Dataset, National Landcover dataset, Shuttle Radar Topography Mission dataset.
Western Regional Climate Center
National Climate Data Center
Snotel and NRCS National Water and Climate Center.
NEXRAD Stage III Precipitation data and procedures for using it.
NOHRSC products and GIS datasets
Geodata.com.  Contains USGS Maps, DEM's, Orthophoto quads, FEMA flood data.  Unfortunately, although much of this used to be free - now you have to pay for it.
University of Washington land surface hydrology group gridded meteorological data.
Great Salt Lake Basin proposed Hydrologic Observatory data
Bear River Laboratory Watershed information system

Team projects

I will consider "team projects" (up to 3 people per team), as long as the role of each in the project is clearly written out and that when the project is presented, each presents their contribution to the overall project.  I will also consider "associated projects" that are separate but related and have been developed cooperatively.  For example one person may develop a dataset as the product of some analysis, and the other person may develop an Internet Map Server to interactively disseminate it on the web.  As another example two people may each develop custom ArcGIS tools that can be used together to achieve some result.  If contemplating a team project, you should choose team member partners carefully, as you will need to rely on them produce something your project depends on.  For team projects each team member should have material on their website that describes the overall project and their specific contribution, i.e. the material on team member websites may have overlap, but should be different in the specific contribution.

Term papers from Previous years

Texas: http://www.ce.utexas.edu/prof/maidment/giswr2008/docs/termpaperlibrary.htm
USU:  http://www.neng.usu.edu/cee/faculty/dtarb/giswr/