GEOLOGICAL, ECOLOGICAL, AND HUMAN HISTORIES OF WOLF AND EGG ISLANDS (GEORGIA): INTEGRATING UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH WITH PUBLIC OUTREACH THROUGH THE GEORGIA COAST ATLAS

The Georgia Coast Atlas is a multidisciplinary online project developed by Emory University that uses the Georgia coast and its barrier islands as a venue for redefining the concept of a traditional atlas. Instead of paper maps, the Atlas uses digital scholarship to explore the ecological, geographic (physical and human), and geological dimensions of the Georgia coast. The Atlas is done jointly through the Center for Digital Scholarship and the Department of Environmental Sciences, combining digital media with scholarly content – text, audio, photos, on-site edited videos, 3-D panoramas, drone footage – intended to serve educators, conservationists, students, and the general public. We have also begun using the Atlas as an outlet for undergraduate research projects, with students developing scholarly content for the site. In this case example, an undergraduate student (Moore Torres) studied the Holocene barrier islands of Wolf and Egg Islands, located on the mouth of the Altamaha River. Both islands are part of a U.S. National Wildlife Refuge for shorebird conservation and difficult to access, meaning most people can only learn about them remotely. Island changes over time were studied by using GIS and aerial photographs from 1953 through 2015, with polygon shorelines applied to calculate island-area changes over time. This in turn showed whether the islands underwent net erosion or accretion. These methods demonstrated that Egg Island had net accretion from 1953 to 1974, net erosion from 1974 to 1977, and accretion from 1982 to 2015. In contrast, Wolf Island had net erosion from 1974 through 2015, which may be attributable to sea-level rise, longshore drift, or both. We have since integrated this initial research on the geological history of the islands with information about the ecological and human histories of the islands. This combined material was then put online and linked directly to digital maps of Wolf and Egg Islands, providing a fuller (and geographically based) context for understanding the islands. We hope this example acts as a template for future undergraduate research projects feeding directly into the Atlas, giving students a valuable educational experience that also delivers the fruits of their research to the public.