Brevard County student receives top award for map he made regarding gopher tortoises
Yuliang Huang sees something in maps others miss: he sees stories and relationships and a way to answer questions.
His passion ignited a project that earned the 17-year old Edgewood Jr./Sr. High graduate the top prize in an international mapping competition this summer.
Huang mapped the locations of gopher tortoise burrows in a Suntree area habitat maintained by Hundred Acre Hollows Inc., a nonprofit grassroots organization that creates green spaces for educational use. The data, collected over two years, counted the number of gopher turtle burrows in the area and collected meta data at each of the burrows to gauge the population's health.
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Huang’s map titled “Gopher Tortoise Burrow Inventory 2022” was awarded first place in the Spatial Analysis ArcGIS StoryMaps category hosted by the Environmental Systems Research Institute at a conference in San Diego.
“I like how maps are easy to understand but they can give you so much information at the same time,” Huang said. “I heard someone say once that a map is concise but has a whole story behind it. It goes along with the proverb that ‘an image is worth a thousand words.’ I think the same goes for maps.”
According to the competition rules, the projects in the category Huang won had to state the problem and its relevance, and then show the analysis and results and draw conclusions based on the analysis.
In some ways, the award was a culmination of all the work Huang has put into learning the software package and the concepts surrounding geographic information systems as a tool for spatial analysis.
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Huang became fascinated with maps as a tool to convey information when looking through travel brochures and flipping through old maps, but he began learning the software thanks to the encouragement of his father, Lixin.
“I have my father to thank for that,” Huang said.
Lixin saw geographic information systems as a skill that could serve his son well in a career.
“I want him to think spatially,” Lixin said. “Most of the time (people) see numbers on an excel spreadsheet but not how those numbers are distributed in space. Location means something.”
It also teaches patience and resilience. The actual creation of the map is one of the final steps in a project. The most difficult part involves gathering and compiling the data, and then analyzing the numbers.
“If you think about it, if you don’t have the right data you cannot make anything,” Lixin said. “You need to manipulate data, and make sure the data that is coming in is high quality to get the map that makes sense.”
That first project marked mapping landmarks at Joshua Tree National Park and it sparked Huang's interest in creating digital maps. From there, Huang began building his skills.
For his next project, he made a map that identified bald eagle nests when he was 11 years old.
“We had just finished a unit on conservation in elementary school and I wanted to try do a project that would make a difference in the environment,” he said.
He found data related to bald eagle nests throughout Florida and decided to map them. When he was 12 years old, he created another map displaying the distribution of students on the free and reduced lunch program.
The free and reduced lunch program is a proxy for identifying children who live in low to moderate income households. According to his analysis, the impoverished areas in Brevard are concentrated near Palm Bay, Cocoa and places just south of Titusville.
Those efforts provided him with the knowledge to complete the award-winning project.
Using techniques in a book, Huang and a team of rangers began surveying the turtle burrows in 2020 that were located on the Hundred Acre Hollows site and collecting data, such as the size and the activity of the different burrows.
The survey was repeated two years later to determine if any changes took place. He measured changes that included the size of the tortoises, their numbers and the direction of their burrows. His results helped answer questions related to the health of the turtles’ population.
"The number of tortoises has probably increased, indicating that the tortoise population is as healthy as before," Huang said.
His study will be used as part of Hundred Acre Hollows' bid to commissioners to allow them to continue leasing the property and maintaining the habitat.
For Huang, this award marks just the beginning of his venture into technology. He will be attending the University of Florida and plans to major in computer science.
Ralph Chapoco is government and politics watchdog reporter. You can reach Chapoco at rchapoco@floridatoday.com and follow him on Twitter @rchapoco.
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This article originally appeared on Florida Today: Edgewood graduate wins big mapping contest with gopher tortoise maps
