Spring NEARC 2026: Full Schedule

10:15am EDT

Leveraging AGOL Applications for Climate Adaptation

Tuesday May 26, 2026 10:15am - 10:45am EDT

The City of Cambridge is committed to climate change resiliency and sustainability. The City recently hired a Chief Climate Officer, created an Office of Sustainability, and launched the Sustainable Cambridge Website. GIS has been an integral part of the City’s new Sustainability Division. This presentation will explore some of the more innovative projects focused on how GIS is used to help inform planners and decision makers on city policies, especially those focused on zoning and heat impacts. We will take a look at various AGOL (ArcGIS Online) apps configured to support projects related to buildings, urban forestry, flooding, heat, open space, and transportation, utilizing both 2D and 3D environments to deliver comprehensive perspectives.

Speakers

Jeff Amero

GIS Manager, City of Cambridge

Jeff Amero is the GIS Manager in the Information Technology Dept. for the City of Cambridge, MA. Jeff has over 30 years of experience in the GIS field, and has been with the City for the past 25 years. Jeff’s latest challenge in municipal GIS is to bring 3D GIS and emerging technologies... Read More →

Katie Grillo

GIS Web Technology Specialist, City of Cambridge, MA

Katie Grillo is a GIS Web Technology Specialist. Her mission is to empower data owners to understand how they can visualize their information through maps and digital storytelling. She provides hands-on trainings, presentations, live demos and support, all designed to help educate... Read More →

Tuesday May 26, 2026 10:15am - 10:45am EDT
Room 174

Climate Resilience

10:45am EDT

Equitable Climate Resilience: A GIS Approach to Protecting Vulnerable Communities with NbS

Tuesday May 26, 2026 10:45am - 11:15am EDT

Room 174

Rapid urbanization and climate change are increasing exposure to environmental hazards in urban areas, including flooding, reduced air quality, water pollution, and urban heat island effects. Vulnerable communities, such as those with lower socioeconomic status, face greater risk due to limited adaptive capacity and exclusion from mitigation strategies. Historically, efforts addressing climate change have lacked equitable implementation. Nature-based Solutions (NbS), such as bioretention, urban tree canopy, and parks, offer low-cost, sustainable strategies to address environmental hazards. This research develops an equitable approach to NbS implementation in Providence, Rhode Island, scalable to major U.S. cities. Using GIS-based suitability analysis, it maps locations of need and opportunity based on various criteria and overlays results with a social vulnerability index. This research aims to identify priority sites in vulnerable neighborhoods to support equitable climate resilience.

Speakers

Cate Arnold

Graduate Student Research Assistant, University of Rhode Island

Cate Arnold is a graduate student obtaining her MS in Biological and Environmental Sciences at the University of Rhode Island. She specializes in Earth and Environmental Science and is pursuing graduate certificates in GIS & Remote Sensing and Coastal Resilience. As a Graduate Research... Read More →

Tuesday May 26, 2026 10:45am - 11:15am EDT
Room 174

Climate Resilience

11:15am EDT

From Mandates to Maps: Leveraging GIS and Web Mapping to Communicate Locally Relevant Climate Risks and Inform Climate Change Adaptation

Tuesday May 26, 2026 11:15am - 11:45am EDT

Room 174

GIS-based spatial analysis and web mapping offer powerful tools for communicating about climate hazards and risks to residents, planners, and policymakers. This presentation will demonstrate how we leveraged ArcGIS Online and StoryMaps to support the City of Syracuse’s Climate Vulnerability Assessment for New York State’s Climate Smart Communities Program. We used GIS to visualize climate data, historical weather events, community assets, and vulnerable people and places to aid the city’s efforts to publicly communicate locally relevant climate change risks, including increased extreme weather events, flooding, and heat. The maps reveal uneven geographies of climate risk vulnerability, such as flood-prone neighborhoods, aging infrastructure, and socioeconomically disadvantaged neighborhoods and present opportunities to empower residents and inform place-based policy interventions at the local scale.

Speakers

Jonnell Robinson

Assistant Professor, Syracuse University

Tuesday May 26, 2026 11:15am - 11:45am EDT
Room 174

Climate Resilience

1:15pm EDT

Advancements in the USGS StreamStats Web Application for Delineation of Urban Watersheds

Tuesday May 26, 2026 1:15pm - 1:45pm EDT

Room 174

The USGS, in cooperation with Federal, State, and municipal agencies, have recently incorporated watershed-scale stormwater infrastructure data into the publicly accessible StreamStats web application for Washington, D.C. and the Mystic and Neponset watersheds in Massachusetts. Using high-resolution lidar-derived elevation data and municipal stormwater infrastructure datasets, StreamStats can compute a connected network of surface and piped flow that more accurately represents urban topography and stormflow. The updated StreamStats functionality supports stakeholder efforts to address stormwater challenges in urbanized areas by allowing users to view the network of stormwater pipes and inlets, delineate drainage areas, and compute available basin characteristics. This presentation will describe the data, methods, challenges, and advantages to developing this urban stormwater functionality in StreamStats.

Speakers

Laura Luongo

Physical Scientist, United States Geological Survey

Tuesday May 26, 2026 1:15pm - 1:45pm EDT
Room 174

Hydrology

1:45pm EDT

Making a Water Connection: 3DHP and Stormwater

Tuesday May 26, 2026 1:45pm - 2:15pm EDT

Room 174

This presentation will examine the procedures for obtaining and implementing the stormwater data for the MassGIS 3DHP project. The 3DHP data product is high quality surface water mapping derived from high-resolution LIDAR (Light Detection And Ranging) elevation data. The project connected the 3DHP surface water dataset to stormwater infrastructure datasets, enabling modeling of water diverted by inlets, pipes, and culverts and should assist municipalities in mitigating and planning for intense rainfall events. The stormwater data set will also improve stormwater infrastructure planning, design and construction going forward.

The official 3DHP dataset would include elevation derived stream data and the “connectors”. The connectors could be culverts, stormwater infrastructure, or ditches. Furthermore, MassGIS wants to aggregate municipal datasets to create a state-wide stormwater dataset as a feature data service. The feature service could be protected with login and password credent

Speakers

Tom Mueller

Deputy Director, MassGIS

Tuesday May 26, 2026 1:45pm - 2:15pm EDT
Room 174

Hydrology

2:15pm EDT

Remapping our Nation’s streams: How the USGS 3D Hydrography Program (3DHP) supports New England

Tuesday May 26, 2026 2:15pm - 2:45pm EDT

Room 174

The USGS has launched the 3D Hydrography Program (3DHP), an initiative to remap the Nation’s hydrography using a nationally consistent, 3D stream network derived from high-quality lidar data. 3DHP aims to greatly enhance the locational accuracy of mapped streams, provide z-elevation data to the stream network, and increase the mapping density of headwater streams.

Using elevation as the foundation for 3DHP hydrography ensures that these fundamental datasets are aligned, enhancing their compatibility and usability for scientific analysis, modeling, and other applications. Additionally, 3DHP provides a network-addressable hydrographic framework that enables users to reference, index, and link external datasets—such as water quality measurements, infrastructure, and features like wetlands—to stream networks.

This presentation highlights the key advancements of 3DHP, explores its current development in New England, and showcases examples of how 3DHP addresses local needs.

Speakers

Adam Benthem

National Map Liaison, USGS

Adam studies the anthropogenic modification of rivers and land surfaces. He specializes in using remote sensing to monitor and predict landform change through time with a focus on integrating field-based site measurements with regional-scale geospatial datasets. He received his Master’s... Read More →

Tuesday May 26, 2026 2:15pm - 2:45pm EDT
Room 174

Hydrology

3:15pm EDT

Validation of Ocean Color Satellite Products (Sentinel-2) over the Banana River AERONET-OC Site

Tuesday May 26, 2026 3:15pm - 3:45pm EDT

Room 174

Abstract: This study systematically validates Sentinel-2 MultiSpectral Instrument (MSI) ocean color products against standardized AERONET-OC SeaPRISM measurements at the Banana River site within Florida's Indian River Lagoon (IRL) system. Matchup datasets spanning 2023–2024 were constructed from Sentinel-2 overpasses (±3-hour temporal window) processed through both ACOLITE and RadCOR atmospheric correction algorithms. Complementary environmental observations from the IRL Observation Network (IRLON) provided context on the dynamics of turbidity, wind speed, CDOM, and chlorophyll-a influencing optical variability.
Results demonstrate excellent spectral agreement between satellite-derived and in situ remote sensing reflectance (Rrs), particularly at 560 nm, where both processors achieved R² > 0.90 and low bias. Peak Rrs consistently occurred near 560 nm across all matchups, validating the sensors' ability to capture the dominant water-color features in this optically complex environment.

Speakers

Kalu Okigwe

Graduate Student, Clark University

Kalu Okigwe holds a B.S. in Geography and Environmental Management and is currently pursuing an MSGIS at Clark University. Before joining Clark, he worked as a Geospatial Data Scientist and Analyst in waste management, environmental engineering, and urban planning, as well as Deputy... Read More →

Tuesday May 26, 2026 3:15pm - 3:45pm EDT
Room 174

Remote Sensing

3:45pm EDT

Rhode Island Stone Wall Mapping Project

Tuesday May 26, 2026 3:45pm - 4:15pm EDT

Room 174

The Rhode Island Stone Wall Mapping Project is the first comprehensive inventory of the state's stone walls. Using ArcGIS Pro, the project developed an original methodology to extract linear wall features from the 2022 Rhode Island Statewide LiDAR dataset using relative height filtering of the point cloud. The resulting dataset documents over 5,200 miles of stone walls, revealing historical land-use patterns tied to agriculture, settlement, topography, and geology. With the mapping phase complete, the project has transitioned to research and outreach. This includes a pilot citizen science effort to use mobile data collection and Python to gather field-validated data for future machine learning applications. This presentation offers a case study on the challenges of linear feature extraction from LiDAR, and will discuss the limitations of automated approaches, the role of manual digitization, and practical strategies for operating low-budget, community-driven geospatial projects.

Speakers

Elliot Vosburgh

Research associate, University of Rhode Island

Tuesday May 26, 2026 3:45pm - 4:15pm EDT
Room 174

Remote Sensing

4:15pm EDT

Modeling Salt Marsh Migration In The Northeastern USA Using Remote Sensing & Geospatial Analysis

Tuesday May 26, 2026 4:15pm - 4:45pm EDT

Room 174

Salt marshes are an important ecosystem that protects shorelines and provides key habitat for many species. Rising sea levels are threatening coastal marshes; however, the marshes have shown resilience by migrating upland. The ability of marshes to migrate depends on the nature of the surrounding landscape. Knowing where salt marshes have potential to migrate can give land stewards the ability to facilitate migration. This study uses the Sea Level Affecting Marshes Model (SLAMM) to simulate future salt marsh migration in 9 different National Parks along the east coast of the US. We use the best available elevation and land cover data for each park to model marsh migration at 1m spatial resolution under various sea level rise scenarios. The models will also account for anthropogenic barriers to help identify where facilitating marsh migration makes sense. This study will provide higher resolution salt marsh migration models than currently exist to guide NPS conservation efforts.

Speakers

Atticus Scott

Graduate Research Assistant, The University of Rhode Island

Hello everyone! My name is Atticus Scott. I just completed my first year as a Master's student at the University of Rhode Island, working for Dr. Jason Parent in the URI Environmental Data Center. My research is primarily focused on modeling salt marsh migration along the east coast... Read More →

Tuesday May 26, 2026 4:15pm - 4:45pm EDT
Room 174

Remote Sensing

Spring NEARC 2026

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Spring NEARC 2026

10:15am EDT

Jeff Amero

Katie Grillo

10:45am EDT

Cate Arnold

11:15am EDT

Jonnell Robinson

1:15pm EDT

Laura Luongo

1:45pm EDT

Tom Mueller

2:15pm EDT

Adam Benthem

3:15pm EDT

Kalu Okigwe

3:45pm EDT

Elliot Vosburgh

4:15pm EDT

Atticus Scott

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