Spring GIS learning opportunities in the Catalyst
February 09, 2026
Author: Erin Ridnour
Want to expand your GIS toolkit beyond Esri’s ArcGIS? Our workshops focus on a variety of free and open source tools for geospatial analysis. This series is a collaboration between Digital Scholarship and Initiatives and the ISU GIS Facility.
Making interactive Maps in Leaflet Part 1: Getting started
Wednesday, February 18, 2026, 1-2:30p.m., The Catalyst (Room 199)
In this workshop, participants use Leaflet - a popular open source mapping library - to create and customize your own map. We'll go over how to set up your data in Google Sheets, how to link that spreadsheet to a Leaflet template, and how to customize the appearance of your map. Perfect for beginners interested in building data visualization and mapping skills.
Making interactive maps in Leaflet Part 2: Storymaps
Wednesday, February 25, 2026, 1-2:30 p.m., The Catalyst (Room 199)
In this follow-up workshop, build on your Leaflet skills to create an interactive StoryMap combining a map, narrative text, and images into a seamless storytelling experience. You'll learn how to customize the look and feel of your StoryMap to share your story with your peers, your community, or the world.
Wednesday, March 4, 2026, 1-2:30p.m., The Catalyst (Room 199)
Dive into spatial data analysis in R using the sf package and tidycensus for accessing U.S. Census data. This hands-on workshop will guide you through importing, manipulating, and visualizing spatial datasets using local demographic data.
Thursday, March 12, 2026, 1:00-2:30p.m., The Catalyst (Room 199)
Have you ever wanted to make a map to add context to your project, but didn’t know where to start? Introduction to QGIS (a free and open source mapping software) will give participants skills to begin their map-making journey. This workshop will introduce participants to the QGIS interface, show them how to create and edit a basic data layer, and make a quick map.
Thursday, April 9, 2026, 11:00am - 12:15p.m., The Catalyst (Room 199)
Have you ever struggled to find data for a GIS project? We will be exploring OpenStreetMap (OSM), a community-contributed, open map of the world, as a possible data source. It is a good and often underutilized source for spatial data. In this workshop, participants will learn how to download data from OpenStreetMap and import it into GIS software. We will discuss data validity and ways to contribute to improving the OSM map.
Virtual Speaker Event
Am I Green Enough? Green Reports for monitoring vegetation
Tuesday, March 10, Noon-1 p.m. (online)
Dr. Dana Peterson, Ph.D., director of KansasView and senior research associate with Kansas Applied Remote Sensing, a program of the Kansas Biological Survey & Center for Ecological Research at The University of Kansas, joins us virtually to present on the Green Report and the Sentinel Green Report.
The Green Reports use remotely sensed imagery to track vegetation greenness across time using different resolution sources, the classic Green Report uses 1km imagery, and the Sentinel Green Report uses 10m imagery. The Green Report web app produces a series of maps; greenness, NDVI compared to previous time period, NDVI compared to last year at that time, NDVI compared to the last time the same crop was grown, and NDVI compared to an average of all years, to help growers and land managers evaluate how vegetation changes across crops and rotations. Zoom Link: https://iastate.zoom.us/j/99446611919?pwd=kKVMBK3vTHt2hKcEGMJHhqHMJDn8km.1