About Olivia Redmond

I am Olivia Redmond, a geographer with a lifelong curiosity about weather, climate, and the environments people live in. Since childhood, I have looked at the sky, shorelines, and the shape of the land and wondered how natural forces affect people and places. That curiosity led me to study environmental studies and theater at St. Mary’s College of Maryland, where I learned to approach environmental questions through research while also thinking about storytelling, communication, and human experience.

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During my environmental studies internship with the Maryland Chapter of the Sierra Club, I researched single-use plastics for the Zero Waste campaign and helped turn that research into public education. I also led a virtual public dialogue about plastics and their environmental impacts and supported outreach for the Sierra Club Student Coalition at my college. That experience made me more interested in the connection between environmental problems and everyday life—where materials come from, where they go, who is affected, and how communities respond.

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Much of my work outside GIS has also centered on leadership, youth development, recreation, and working directly with people. Through AmeriCorps, summer camps, recreation programs, and community-based work, I have led teams, worked with children and families, managed schedules and logistics, and learned how differently people can experience the same place or situation. Those experiences have made me more attentive to communication, accessibility, safety, and the people behind the information I work with.

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My GIS work grew from many of the same questions. Along Galveston Island, I have mapped sea-level rise and flood risk to understand how rising water, storms, elevation, and coastal geography affect homes and streets. In Virginia, I mapped temperature patterns to see how climate changes between the mountains and the coast. I have traced tornado paths through metropolitan areas to examine where severe weather and human settlement meet. In the Darién Gap, I modeled possible routes through rainforest, rivers, wetlands, and rugged terrain. In the Cuyamaca and Laguna Mountains, I used elevation, slope, vegetation, roads, and terrain ruggedness to study where campgrounds might be suitable.

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Across these projects, I use GIS to understand patterns that are difficult to see from data alone. I am especially interested in weather, climate, environmental change, and the relationship between people and place. Whether I am mapping coastal hazards, temperature gradients, severe weather, or movement across terrain, I want the final map to make the information easier to understand without losing what makes each landscape different.

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A map is never just a collection of layers, symbols, or data to me. It represents a real landscape and the people experiencing it. I want my work to help people see environmental patterns more clearly, understand why they matter, and connect the information back to real places and people.

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