Senior Lecturer in Environmental Studies Eileen Sylvan Johnson taught the course this year and last to give students with prior GIS experience an opportunity to work on real-world projects—and take their skills to the next level. Last year, the class partnered with the state's to model the impacts of flood events on communities in Western Maine.
This year, biology lab instructor Shana Stewart Deeds, who serves on Topsham's Conservation Commission, asked Johnson if her class's sixteen students might update the town's 2010 Natural Areas Plan. The plan, Deeds said, “guides local efforts to conserve high-quality natural areas and open space identified as important to the town.”
Johnson quickly warmed to the idea. “It was enough of a project where the students could divide it up and focus on what they each wanted to do,” she said. “Plus, there was an openness in the community to accept student ideas...Students had a lot of agency in how they structured the project.”
Another crucial component: the project offered the town a clear benefit and would improve residents' quality of life. The students, meanwhile, would gain consulting experience by providing a community with a worthwhile service or product.
At the end of the semester, students presented their findings and maps to the Conservation Commission, which is starting its process to update the Natural Areas Plan.
Kyle Pellerin ’26, an environmental studies and computer science major, said he took the class because it perfectly merged his interests in environmental protection and data analysis. At the start of the semester, he described how he and his peers engaged in lively discussions about what areas to focus on and how to organize their endeavor. “It was a very active process. Our mindset was to provide as much useful data as possible,” he said.
The students in the class categorized the major objectives for their project:
- Update GIS data for six major environmental categories: recreation, water quality, habitat, wetlands, environmental health and safety, and lead productivity.
- Assess changes in conservation lands since 2010, identify newly protected areas and potential conservation opportunities.
- Analyze development patterns, including new construction and impervious surface expansion.
- Evaluate green space accessibility to guide future park and trail development, including accessible trails.
- Reassess priority places, complete a trial scenic assessment to identity and prioritize areas of high scenic value.
- Integrate new categories into the map, such as significant habitats and flood risk, to address a changing world.
- Develop a habitat matrix analysis for future community engagement.
- Provide updated data for the town to pursue next steps.
In addition, two students provided additional analyses:
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Determine carbon sequestration potential, particularly in wetlands and forests.
- Create a build-out scenario to help inform future zoning and understand development patterns.
Pellerin's smaller group of three students worked on updating GIS maps for six major environmental categories: recreation, water quality, habitat, wetlands, environmental health and safety, and lead productivity. His research looked specifically at water quality, and he mapped wells, aquifers, water runoff sites, and areas prone to flooding in major storms.
Environmental studies and history major Issie Gale ’25, also in Pellerin's group, updated habitat maps, “identifying areas where there are ecologically significant plants and animals and areas of interest [such as waterfowl and wading bird habitat, wetlands, and open fields] to guide land-use planning and conservation efforts,” she said in her presentation to the commission.
Her maps also show large contiguous undeveloped lots that don't have much infrastructure or roads—possible sites for future conservation. (Gale has a prior connection to Topsham: she was an environmental studies fellow with the town's planning department in the summer of 2024, when she helped to develop a pollinator park.)
Chase Lenk ’26, an environmental studies and economics major, said he enrolled in the class because he wants to pursue a career in city planning—“and GIS skills are very important for that. This class seemed like an amazing opportunity to learn more and put them into practice.” (Read about his summer internship with the Gorham planning division.)
For his piece of the project, he worked with Seamus McDonough ’27 to map new buildings and paved areas. They revealed that less development had occurred in focus areas designated for preservation than in the previous decade, “a pretty cool finding to include,” he said.
He added, “I am interested in how you can balance development with environmental impacts, and how to build housing stock in an environmentally conscious way. This project let me analyze something in the pursuit of this interest.”
The class also reinforced Lenk's desire to “work with people to use data to provide insights so they can make decisions about something that matters.”
A few weeks after the students' presentation to the commission on their findings, Deeds met with the Conservation Commission. She heard only positive feedback from its members. “It's fantastic,” she said. “We had none of this updated information! So all of this is a gift to the Conservation Commission and to the town.”
For students, the experience of working with Topsham helped them to recognize “that the knowledge they have gained is incredibly valuable,” Johnson said. “They learn they can do really great things for communities.”
