Professor Li teaches four classes at the Department of Geography and Environmental Management (GEM), University of Waterloo.
Undergraduate courses
Geography (GEOG) 215 China: Diverse and Dynamic
This course examines and compares Chinese and Western views on contemporary issues in China from a geographic perspective. Thematically-organized topics include geographical patterns and processes that drive China’s development, food security and population control, urbanization and internal migration, economic growth and environmental issues, regional development and spatial inequality, diverse cities and regions, and integration into the global economy.
This course is recognized as a Peace and Conflict Studies (PACS) Content Course that fulfills requirements in the interdisciplinary PACS plan.
GEOG 310 Geodesy and Surveying
This course provides students an introduction to geodesy and surveying. Lectures cover measurement techniques applied to geomatics, operations with automatic level, total station, and GPS instruments for doing distance and angle measurements, leveling, traversing and topographic surveying.
To enroll in this course, students must take a prerequisite GEOG 181 Principles of geographical information system (GIScience) and have prior knowledge of algebra, plane and analytical geometry, and plane trigonometry.
GEOG 316/PLAN351 Multivariate Statistics
This course provides students with the foundation necessary for identifying the most appropriate multivariate statistical techniques to use for data analysis in geography and planning. Students will learn the most common multivariate statistical techniques used in the environmental sciences/studies, develop own ability to interpret outputs from the statistical software packages and communicate the results of these techniques.
To enroll in this course, students should be comfortable with basic knowledge of introductory statistics.
Graduate courses
GEOG 608 Urban Remote Sensing
Urban environments are characterized by highly dynamic changes in the socioeconomic and biophysical domain. Sustainable management strategies for such environments involve procedures of mapping, monitoring, and environmental assessment, which in turn require reliable base information and robust analytical frameworks. Today, remote sensing plays a vital role as sources of information and for decision making in support of a wide array of urban applications. At the same time, rapid advances in high resolution imaging sensor technology and image analysis techniques with importance in the urban context evolve. Following the increasing significance of urban growth as well as a rising number of urban agglomerations and world-wide mega cities, an expanding scientific community focuses on topics related to urban remote sensing research.
Urban remote sensing is a growing research field, and many applications which were once impossible are now well established or at least promising procedures. This is due to the increasingly finer resolution of available sensors (both in the spatial and the spectral domain), but also to the extensive records of data exploitable for temporal analyses.
This course will therefore focus on computer-based methods for information extraction from remotely sensed data to support urban planning and environmental management. This course will provide in-depth knowledge of remote sensing concepts, principles, methodologies, and applications; examine and demonstrate the utility of remote sensing methodologies in real world urban problems (land use/cover changes, transportation, environmental pollution, resource management, and quality of life studies) at desperate spatial and temporal scales.
To enroll in this course, students must have prior experience in remote sensing methods and software packages such as Environmental Systems Research Institute (ENVI) or PCI Geomatica.
GEOG 675 Selected Topics in Geography
This course examines a selected topic in the areas of remote sensing. The topic will be negotiated on an individual basis with Professor Li. An outline for this course, approved by Professor Li, must be submitted to the Program Director, within three weeks of registration. Topics selected in previous years include “Mobile Laser Scanning of Roadway Environments”; “Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) Sensing of the Urban Environment”; “Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) Remote Sensing of the Marine Environment”.