Mapping Change: How One Student Uses Geography to Connect Communities and Nature-Based Solutions

By Stephanie Godward, Communications and Marketing Director, College of Arts & Sciences 

When Lin Wu discovered the geography program, they felt like they had found UofL’s best kept secret. 

Housed within the Department of Geographic and Environmental Sciences, the major offered Wu everything they were looking for in terms of a career path that could have an impact on the local community and beyond.  

“It's such an incredible department with really great faculty and programs that I feel like nobody knows about, and you only know about it if you’re specifically looking for it,” Wu said. 

Originally a theatre major who wasn’t sure what to major in as a freshman, Wu switched to sustainability because they have always been interested in environmentalism and engaged in climate activism in high school.  

“When I found out about the geography program and specifically my track, which is urban analytics, I realized that it encapsulated the sustainability piece of it, but also looked at how people interact with space, and how space and history are so tied together,” Wu said. “Geography ended up being the perfect place, and the more classes I take, the more it solidifies it for me every time – yes, this is the program for me.” 

Projected to graduate with a BS degree in 2027, Wu is also minoring in Sustainability and Public Health, serves as Honors Student Council’s Vice President of Outreach, and also works in the Office of Admissions as a Lead Cardinal Guide for Belonging, Access and Engagement.  

This past summer, Wu worked with Professor of Geographic and Environmental Sciences Andrea Gaughan, who also serves as the Associate Dean of Research, on an interdisciplinary National Science Foundation funded project that is happening across three locations in the US, including Louisville, Manchester and Providence. Wu participated in this research as part of the Summer Research Opportunity Program. 

“The research is focused around increasing procedural equity in the development of nature-based solutions in those three cities,” Wu said. “This is exactly the kind of work I want to be doing. It is community-engaged, and we are also doing nature-based solutions and developing things that are actually going to help people, so I was really excited about that.” 

Wu analyzed data collected during a listening session held in May at a community event in which residents of the Old Louisville area participated in focus groups and surveys. The residents shared their perceptions of green spaces in their neighborhood and parks, with a focus on Memorial Park, a very small pocket park.  

“The consensus among the community was that it is a forgotten child of the park system,” Wu said. “A unique part of the listening session was a participatory GIS aspect, where participants marked on paper or digital maps an approximation of their place of residence that also marked the parks they utilize.” 

Wu collected the data from the listening session and combined it with spatial data they received from digital surveys. They compared that with existing spatial data on diversity and tree canopy in Jefferson County, meshing the two together.  

“We looked at the qualitative data that we got from listening sessions with pre-existing quantitative data to see if it matches up, and to ask if there are ways that it doesn’t,” Wu said. 

Learning more about GIS through hands-on learning in the field was a challenge that Wu welcomed. 

“Last semester, I took one GIS class, so I very much feel like a beginner, but it was a really cool way to hone my GIS skills more, actually having to do a GIS project that I had to guide more,” Wu said. “I had the opportunity to sit with the problem-solving with GIS, working through the frustration of it, but I had so much support.” 

The best part was contributing to a project that will impact the community. 

"As far as work that I want to do, I want it to be community-engaged. Getting to do that as a central part of the project was really cool,” Wu said.