By Leah Veldhuisen ’19
For the first time ever, CC hosted its own geodesign workshop in October. The workshop was developed with Professor of Geology Christine Siddoway and Hrishi Ballal of GeoDesign Hub, and took place from Oct. 22-24.
Geodesign has been an ongoing project at CC, and a handful of faculty and staff, as well as students, worked on research in the summer of 2018. Siddoway; Matt Cooney, GIS coordinator; and Cyndy Hines, coordinator with the State of the Rockies Project; worked with three students, David Sachs ’20, Will Rundquist ’19, and Darryl Filmore ’19,to obtain and analyze GIS data for the section of Monument Creek that runs through CC’s campus. The group has also been working on adding CC as a member-institution of the International Geodesign Collaboration, which would make CC the first and only liberal arts school in the organization.
The data collected from Monument Creek is fundamental to this workshop and future meetings, as one main goal is to examine campus-creek relations using evaluation models. With this information, there can be more knowledge of how CC relates to the urban landscape and physical-geological-hydrological surface environment. During the October workshop, participants from CC and greater Colorado Springs worked in small teams to evaluate how various systems (transportation, green infrastructure, and food supply, for example) are helping or hurting the campus-creek relations. These teams, and then the whole workshop, discussed which elements need to be improved and how to do so. While the workshop was addressing CC’s relationship to Monument Creek, goals of the City of Colorado Springs and El Paso County are also involved.
CC’s next geodesign workshop will be held in mid-May in Tutt Library and will address a wider geographic area, expanding to include 15- and 30-square kilometer areas from CC toward the west. Stay up-to-date via this geodesign blog.
