Deadline for speaker response: November 10, 2026.
This intermediate-level workshop is meant to extend basic knowledge of QGIS by exploring common plugins. By the end of this workshop, participants will be able to use plugins to
Familiarity with GIS is prerequisite for this workshop.
This workshop is taught by a graduate student in Geography with expertise in GIS and cartographic methods.
QGIS is a free and open source desktop geographic information system (GIS). It can be installed on Windows, MacOS, and Linux using the download instructions here: https://www.qgis.org/en/site/forusers/download.html.
Before attending, please download the most recent QGIS Long Term Release and review the Research Commons’ Introduction to QGIS.
Thursday, June 26, 2025
10am – 12pm PST
ONLINE via Zoom
Register Here: https://libcal.library.ubc.ca/event/3898142
This workshop is a gentle introduction to creating StoryMaps using the ArcGIS Online platform designed for those new to mapping projects. StoryMaps offer a low-barrier way to visualize spatial narratives that can be shared with your friends, community, or stakeholders. The StoryMaps interface is quite intuitive, with drag and drop options that result in an aesthetic output. No prior experience necessary. This workshop makes use of the free account option, though you are welcome to work within a personal or organizational account if you have a paid subscription.
By the end of this workshop, you will:
Prior to the workshop, please create a free ArcGIS Online public account. If you have a paid account with Esri, you can choose to use your regular sign-in or create a separate free account to follow along.
While we will be providing workshop data that you are welcome to use, you are encouraged to prepare at least 4 images from your daily commute or a walk you recently went on to incorporate into your project.
ONLINE via Zoom
Tuesday, May 13, 2025
1 – 3pm PST
Register Here: https://libcal.library.ubc.ca/event/3898119
Are you working on a GIS or digital spatial project and looking for support? Join the GIS Team at UBC Library and other researchers working on spatial projects for a collective drop-in working session. These sessions are meant to offer a collegial environment to share knowledge and ideas, dedicated time for you to work on your spatial projects and an opportunity to connect with other researchers. Feel free to drop by at any time during the session.
Where: Koerner Library, Presentation Room 548/552
When: 1 – 3pm PST
Thursday, February 27, 2025 (Register HERE)
Thursday, March 27, 2025 (Register HERE)
Thursday, April 24, 2025 (Register HERE)
This introductory workshop is targeted toward scholars, practitioners, and researchers who are interested in finding ways to represent their data and research materials spatially. Rather than focusing on a single software or technical workflow, participants will be introduced to a variety of methods, tools, and platforms to create maps or spatial representations. Participants will also be walked through key questions to manage research projects, and learn how to evaluate tools and workflows for their applicability to their projects.
Think of this workshop as a wayfinding tutorial for navigating what questions to ask yourself at the beginning of a project comprising spatial data. By the end of this workshop series, participants will be able to:
Though there will be an example project, participants are invited to bring their own projects/datasets to work through together.
Not sure if this workshop is for you? Non-geospatial experts are welcome, especially those interested in spatial approaches to humanities research and data.
This workshop is taught by a graduate student in Geography with expertise in GIS and cartographic methods.
Thursday, May 8, 2025
10am -12pm PST
ONLINE via Zoom
Register for PART 1: https://libcal.library.ubc.ca/event/3898102
This intermediate-level workshop is focused on common tools and workflows in QGIS. By the end of this workshop, participants will be able to set up a QGIS project, find and load data onto a basemap, edit vector data from inside the GIS interface, perform joins and selections, and answer spatial questions using basic vector analysis. Familiarity with GIS is prerequisite for this workshop.
This workshop is taught by a graduate student in Geography with expertise in GIS and cartographic methods.
QGIS is a free and open source desktop geographic information system (GIS). It can be installed on Windows, MacOS, and Linux using the download instructions here: https://www.qgis.org/en/site/forusers/download.html.
Before attending, please download the most recent QGIS Long Term Release and review the Research Commons’ Introduction to QGIS.
Thursday, June 12, 2025
10 – 12 pm PST
ONLINE via Zoom
Register Here: https://libcal.library.ubc.ca/event/3898140
$2000 award + software & training • Deadline Tuesday, May 7, 2024 • Open to current UBC students
Esri Canada GIS Scholarship is open to currently enrolled undergraduate and graduate students at UBC. Successful applicant(s) will receive:
Each ESRI Scholarship applicant should provide 1) A poster demonstrating a project or research in which Esri technology was used. The poster submission should be creative, display an appropriate colour scheme and hold the dimensions of 24 inches wide by 36 inches high. You must include your name, the name of your department/faculty and an appropriate title. 2) A written report that is less than 1000 words or an ArcGIS StoryMap (preferable) or an app (include information about its purpose and use) that goes together with your poster expanding on the project.
You may find more details about the required formats are available here:
Submission deadline is on Tuesday, May 7, 2024.
To apply:
GIS day 2023 is coming soon! Join us on November 16th, 2023 at the Dodson Room, Number 302, Third Floor, of the Irving K Barber Learning Centre at the University of British Columbia Vancouver campus.
GIS Day is an annual worldwide celebration of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technology and community, with a goal to promote geospatial literacy, education, and awareness. Target audiences for GIS Day include students, educators, and researchers with interest in academic areas touching on geography, cartography, geographic information systems/science, maps, etc. Everyone is welcome!
An investigation into the different sensors and indices that can be used to track and measure the progress of reforestation projects in western Madagascar. Comparing Planet and Sentinel data through a number of indices, and attempting to identify if/when the Google Earth Engine Mangrove Mapping Methodology can be used by forest managers to monitor projects.
Mangroves are distributed in tropical and subtropic areas near water in more than 120 countries (The World’s Mangroves 1980-2005, n.d.). They provide crucial biodiversity values to the ecosystem and provide building materials and fishing environments to the local communities (Jones et al., 2016). Moreover, the mangrove ecosystem’s carbon dioxide sequestration capacity helps mitigate global climate change (Donato et al., 2011). Given the diverse ecosystem and economic values, mapping how mangroves change over time is crucial for mangrove management and protection.
In 2020, the Google Earth Engine Mangrove Mapping Methodology (GEEMMM) was introduced to accessibly map and monitor mangroves (Yancho et al., 2020). The mapping task may be complex if the study area is large given its accessible features (Yancho et al., 2020). The module in GEEMMM automatically gives the result of mangrove dynamics using multi-data maps (Yancho et al., 2020). GEEMMM can be used to map sub-national mangrove dynamics to demonstrate the change of mangrove species as well as deforestation and recovery status in Saloum Delta, Senegal.
I’m a graduate student in UBC’s MGEM program. I have field experience in forestry, marine biology, and environmental monitoring.
Selecting a location for a restoration project is like standing in front of a fire with a few buckets of water–we have limited resources and need to optimize our efforts. Hotspot analysis is an optimization approach for deriving the most suitable project location. We can leverage spatial datasets to analyze areas of interest against the criteria guiding the restoration efforts. This lightning talk outline a subnational level hot-spot analysis for the NGO Blue Ventures to determine the most suitable location for their next mangrove restoration project.
Tom Koch is an adjunct professor of medical geography at the University of British Columbia. He is the author of a number of books on the history of medical mapping and papers in which he has demonstrated its utility in understanding both local outbreaks and pandemic events
This brief talk reviews some of the ways in which mapping serves not only descriptively but in the analysis of bacterial and viral events and the policies we promote to contain them.
In this workshop the UBC GIS club will teach users how to manipulate spatial data to build fictional worlds. In doing so, users will learn to use a suite of geoprocessing tools in the unconventional way of creating a fictional space using real-world data. This event is suited for people with beginner to advanced GIS skills alike and can be done on both ArcGIS and QGIS.
Paul Pickell is an Assistant Professor of Teaching in the Faculty of Forestry at the University of British Columbia and a Faculty in Residence at the Emerging Media Lab. He primarily teaches GIS and remote sensing across multiple professional graduate programs. Many of the lab assignment materials he teaches with are also available as Open Educational Resources (OER) from his GitHub (pauldpickell). His research looks at the use of immersive virtual reality and augmented reality in teaching spatial reasoning. Various projects he has worked on include the construction of an augmented reality sandbox, publishing an interactive OER geomatics textbook, and the development of Minetest Classroom for teaching in a voxel-based sandbox video game.
Join Prof. Pickell on a virtual journey and explore campus in a free and open source software video game using free geospatial data from OpenStreetMap. You will see and interact with campus as no one has before. Prof. Pickell will discuss how geovisualization can be reimagined with the use of video game engines. You will learn how to create and play your own digital twin worlds in this feature release frenzy of the Minetest Classroom game, developed here at UBC.
Dr. Everhart is a sociospatial scientist, health geographer, and theorist. Her work bridges geographic information science, public health, demography, and critical data studies. She draws from feminist and critical race theories, intersectionality, and transgender studies to better understand the life chances, health, and lived experiences of marginalized communities. Dr. Everhart has published in journals from a diverse array of fields including Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy, Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, and Spatial & Spatio-Temporal Epidemiology. She also co-founded the non-profit academic organization the Center for Applied Transgender Studies.
While the extant literature has established that transgender people face significant barriers to accessing healthcare, no studies to date have offered an explicitly spatial analysis of their access to trans-specific care. This study aims to fill that gap by providing a spatial analysis of access to gender-affirming hormone therapy (GAHT) using Texas as a case study. We used the three-step floating catchment area method, which relies on census tract-level population data and location data for healthcare facilities to quantify spatial access to healthcare within a specific drive-time window, in our case 120 min. For our tract-level population estimates we adapt estimates of the rates of transgender identification from a recent data source, the Household Pulse Survey, and use these in tandem with a spatial database of GAHT providers of the lead author’s creation. We then compare results of the 3SFCA with data on urbanicity and rurality, as well as which areas are deemed medically underserved. Finally, we conduct a hot-spot analysis that identifies specific areas where health services could be planned in ways that could improve both access to GAHT for trans people and access to primary care for the general population. Ultimately, we conclude that our results illustrate that patterns of access to trans-specific medical care, like GAHT, do not neatly follow patterns of access to primary care for the general population and that therefore trans communities’ access to healthcare warrants specific, further investigation.
Technical Support Specialists
Discover the exciting potential of integrating FME with GIS through local success stories. This presentation will share how real clients have employed FME to tackle spatial challenges, optimize workflows, and drive innovation in their respective fields. Get inspired to envision how you can harness FME’s robust capabilities in your future GIS endeavors.
Zane White has a BSc in Environmental Geoscience and Geomatics from the University of Guelph. He has an immense passion for GIS and remote sensing, and tries to apply his education and training to solve problems that often lack spatial context. He currently operates as a GIS Specialist at Candrone, creating a wide array of high-quality LiDAR and photogrammetric deliverables, typically captured by RPAS. When he is not working on an immediate deliverable, he enjoys developing small software packages that assist in automating repetitive GIS tasks.
From spatially modelling GPS-denied caves and tunnels, to assisting in serious global conflicts via GIS, the world of remote sensing has a lot to offer. Many students and young professionals experience uncertainty regarding how they can apply their knowledge to solving real challenges in our spatial environment. This presentation aims to provide context to the world of geomatics and how one GIS professional uses their day to solve spatial problems with new and innovative solutions.
Workshop: Building Distorted Worlds With GIS
This is not required, but recommended as we can notify you of any changes to the event.
This workshop offers an introduction to georeferencing historical maps with QGIS. Georeferencing is the process of taking a digital image or map and connecting it to a real world geographic coordinate system, allowing you to overlay historical and current maps, and to analyze relationships between them using GIS tools.
Thursday, February 1, 2024
1 – 3 pm
Koerner Library 216 – Staff Classroom
Detail from Nick Mantegna’s Ecological Connectivity Map Tool
Nick Mantegna, a fourth year Urban Forestry student in the Faculty of Forestry has won the 2023 Esri Scholarship.
His research examines how the topics of biomimicry and ecological connectivity can inform UBC’s Climate Action Plan.
View the winning submission and find out more about his project.
Congratulations to Nick for his winning submission.