Utah Tech Capus Temperature Mapping with GIS

Authors: Grace Harang, Avery Hansgen
Mentors: Zhenyu Jin
Insitution: Utah Tech University

Title: Utah Tech Capus Temperature Mapping with GIS

Authors: Grace Harang and Avery Hansgen, Advisor: Zhenyu Jin

Abstract: Across America, college campuses are re-evaluating their landscaping decisions to better support the environment. Utah Tech University, in the Mojave Desert, has a large amount of grass across the campus which is extremely water-consuming, non-native, and expensive to upkeep. However, removal of grass would result in lower humidity and even higher temperatures on campus. Our research will quantify how the temperature may be affected based on land-cover. This will be essential to any future decisions by the school board. Our method will be to map out 45 evenly spaced points across Utah Tech campus, 15 grass land-cover, 15 xero-scape cover, and 15 bare concrete (parking lots). At both 10am and 9pm. At each point, we will record the humidity and air temperature. To ensure that the sun rays and wind-chill are not also being read, we will use an umbrella to shade the measuring device. The purpose of this project is to determine the temperature difference between the three different surfaces, and to use GIS spatial interpolation to make campus temperature maps.