The Urban Heat Island Effect is the tendency of a built/urbanized environment to exhibit higher temperatures then the surrounding rural or less developed areas. It occurs when cities replace natural land cover with dense concentrations of pavement, buildings, and other surfaces that absorb and retain heat. The research question I explored here was: Is there a high enough degree of urbanization on the campus of Longwood University for it to display temperature trends similar to that of a big city or urban area? The end goal after collecting temperature data at corresponding GPS coordinates was to produce an interpolated map that would potentially show consistently warmer temperatures around the main campus and slightly cooler temperatures in the surrounding neighborhoods – which was successful!

To collect this data, temperature and GPS coordinates were obtained using a QStarz Travel Recorder XT for GPS and a Lascar Electronics EL-USB 2 Temperature and relative humidity sensor. Both devices were synced to sample data at 10sec intervals beginning at 5:40pm. Data was sampled traversing the area in a car for approximately 1 hour until 6:50pm. Samples from both devices were uploaded and merged in an Excel spreadsheet. Excel data was imported as a .cvs file into Qgis where further processing could be done. An interpolated map was created from the sample points.

This research was extremely educational for me, teaching me research techniques (including how to utilize different instruments to collect data, patience for lots of trial and error, etc.) as well as new mapping techniques (such as importing point data from x y coordinates, creating an interpolation by multiple different methods and choosing the best for a particular data set, and how to visually set up a map with multiple overlapping data sets). As an environmental science major, many of the issues we deal with require some type of spatial representation to communicate to a large audience, which is why GIS mapping is so important in the field.