Scientific Images & Geographic Information Systems (GIS)

Note

Materials from this workshop are archived in the University of Minnesota’s Digital Conservancy: doi.org/10.24926/2025.276521

The workshop was held July 14-15, 2025 in Building 10 at the NIH Campus in Bethesda, MD.

Instructors

  • Neggin Keshavarazian (Princeton University)
  • Amy Schuler (Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies)
  • Mariah Kenney (Carnegie Mellon University)
  • Kelly Grove (Florida State University)
  • Timothy Norris (University of Miami)

Resources

Note

Participants are encouraged to review DCN’s CURATE(D) workflow before the first session.

  • Pre-workshop preparation
    • GIS
      • Download and install QGIS.
      • Download the 1_Environment_Setup_Datasets.zip adapted from Kramer et al 2019.
      • Please see the 01_Environmental_Setup slide deck for more details (through slide 5).
      • If you feel adventurous, try to open any part of the setup dataset in QGIS.
    • Scientific Images
      • Download and install ImageJ to be used to manipulate scientific images. Specifically we will use Fiji which is a distribution of ImageJ that includes additional useful plugins.
        • Windows users are recommended to install in the users directory where it will have permissions to update itself.
        • Mac users - the software may run through Rosetta if you have a newer M-series processor, this can have some performance cost. Alternatively you can download a java version which can run natively.
  • Shared Notes for the entire workshop
  • Slides
    • General Workshop Information
    • GIS Slides
      • 01_Environmental Setup
      • 02_GIS_Introduction
      • 03_Ethics_and_GIS_Data
      • 04_Transformations
      • 05_GIS_Metadata
    • Scientific Images
  • GIS Cheatsheet
  • Exercise Data Sets
    Please download and unzip in an easy to find folder on your computer

Schedule

Day 1: July 14th

Time Topic
9:00 AM Welcome and DCN background and Icebreaker
9:30 AM Introduction to GIS and geospatial Data Types
10:30 AM Break
10:45 PM GIS Data Types (cont) and Ethical Considerations
12:00 PM Lunch
1:00 PM GIS Transformations
1:45 PM Break
2:00 PM GIS Metadata
2:45 PM Break
3:00 PM GIS Metadata (cont) and Wrap Up
4:00 PM End of Day 1
6:00 - 7:30 PM Dine Arounds!

Day 2: July 15th

Time Topic
9:00 AM Welcome Back & Icebreaker
9:15 AM Introduction to Sci Images and Software
10:30 AM Break
10:45 AM Image Metadata and Transformation
12:00 PM Lunch
1:00 PM Introduce capstone and datasets; brainstorm with teams
2:15 PM Break
2:30 PM Capstone share out and Wrap Up
3:00 PM End

Suggested Citation

Kenney, Mariah; Schuler, Amy; Keshavarzian, Neggin; Norris, Timothy; Grove, Kelly. (2025). DCN-NIH Specialized Curation for Geospatial and Scientific Images Workshop, 2025 . Retrieved from the University Digital Conservancy, https://doi.org/10.24926/2025.276521.