Jonah Hoj

I'm an environmentalist and sustainability advocate from Los Angeles, CA. I recently graduated from UCLA majoring in Geography and Environmental Studies, and now work as a fellow in the California Climate Action Corps. In my work with my host site, the Malibu Foundation, I strive to always improve my cartographic abilities while also exploring the potential for geospatial analysis to change the way we see and interact with the world.

My long-term focus is on climate change and the steps we can take to help people mitigate its effects.

Featured Work

Living Heat Shield

Palisades Fire Response

Pacific Surfliner Relocation

Ukraine Frontline

Spatiality of Access

Site Suitability Analysis

Arctic Sea Ice Decline

Cost of Teaching

General Portfolio

Burn Hazard

These burn maps of Riverside County demonstrate the use of geometric processing. The first map displays raw data of fire hazard, clipped to the borders of Riverside County. The second shows the same data distributed across neighborhoods, and the third shows parcels, along with two inset maps where fire hazard is highest.

Zion National Park

This project sought to create an alternative representation of the National Park Service's famous map series, using Zion as an example. The biggest change is symbology, which seeks to incorporate facets of the local environment into the color and texture of the map itself. Fitting all of these map elements together is a bit of a challenge, so some creative innovations have been taken with the legend to make the delivery of information more streamlined. Representation of important map features needs to be different from the classical symbology, but not so different that readers misunderstand what the map is trying to show. The main project page can be found here.

Laguna and Cuyamaca Mountains

These maps were made for GEOG 181A: Intermediate GIS. They introduced me conceptually to site suitability analysis, and helped me really get comfortable working with multiple kinds of data (shapefiles, DEMs, and satellite imagery) all in the same setting at the same time. More than other kinds of analysis, site suitability requires one to work with multiple factors that come in different shapes and sizes, and to process them into formats that can work together. The one-page writeup on this project can be seen below.

Site Suitability Analysis - Laguna and Cuyamaca Mountains.pdf

Sea Level Rise

This map of potential inundation in Los Angeles was made for GEOG 7. While Los Angeles, along with much of the West Coast, is largely insulated from the worst effects of sea level rise, it will still severely impact those areas and industries that have daily contact with the ocean: marshes and wetlands, low-lying cities and towns, and most especially ports and harbors. As we can see, the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach must be retrofitted if they are to remain functional by the end of the century, underscoring the economic impact of climate change on places we deem safe.

Hong Kong

This topographic map of Hong Kong and its mountains was created for GEOG 180. It showcases some unique ways of displaying areal features, specifically in the urban buildup layer; one has to be careful to balance readability with symbology. Colors must be differentiated, yet they also shouldn't clash. Depending on the number of layers you have, this balancing act can get quite difficult!

Japan

This hillshaded map of Japan was created for GEOG 180 at UCLA. This displays some of the complexities that arise when mapping multiple different features; cities, prefectures, and countries must all be symbolized differently and yet they must also mesh. This map is more complicated still, with its hillshade, graduated bathymetry, and custom labeling schema.

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