Environmenatal Mapping with GIS
ISSUES AND EXAMPLES
Ian Allan
GIS university
Contents
Introduction ........................................................................ 5
What is a Geographical Information System (GIS)................ 6
Why Now is the Perfect Storm for GIS ................................... 7
The Case for the GIS Analyst.................................................... 8
Why Simplicity Makes GIS Maps More Useful ........................ 9
What’s Environmental GIS? ...................................................... 10
The Secret to Creating Environmental GIS Maps Quickly ........ 10
Air photos..................................................................................... 11
Rainfall records............................................................................ 11
Soil and Geology Maps............................................................... 12
Other Maps................................................................................... 12
Scale of Basemaps ......................................................................... 13
Example: Deriving a Soil Map from a Digital Elevation Model ... 14
Key Points ...................................................................................... 14
Geomorphological background that informed the GIS model........ 15
Mapping ......................................................................................... 15
Conclusion...................................................................................... 18
Example: Water Pipes and Very Detailed GIS Soil Environments.. 20
Key Point.......................................................................................... 20
Introduction ...................................................................................... 20
Soil Environment Mapping ............................................................... 21
GIS Very Detailed Soil Environment Map and Water Pipe Bursts ... 22
Conclusion........................................................................................ 23
Example: GIS and Environmental Conflict Minimization ............... 26
Key Points ........................................................................................ 26
.Example: Resolving Planning Conflict in a Waterfront Development 27
Key Point.......................................................................................... 28
Example: Avoiding Planning Conflict in an Estuary Town ................ 31
Key point .......................................................................................... 31
Example: GIS and Aboriginal Heritage .............................................. 35
Key Point.......................................................................................... 35
Example: Mapping Soil Drainage with Satellite Imagery .................. 38
Key Point.......................................................................................... 38
Example: Mapping Natural Assets...................................................... 40
Key Point.......................................................................................... 40
Example: Living Assets Inventory..................................................... 41
Example: Vegetation Condition Assessment...................................... 43
Can you teach yourself GIS? ............................................................... 43
Your Personal Characteristics............................................................ 45
Are You Technically Inclined? ...................................................... 45
Are You Application Inclined? ...................................................... 46
The Thirteen Basic Skills You’ll Need to be Good at GIS.................. 46
Basic Cartographic Traditions ....................................................... 46
Basic GIS Theory.......................................................................... 46
How to Produce Cartographically Pleasing Maps........................... 47
How to Create and Edit GIS Maps................................................. 47
How to Create, Edit and Query Tables........................................... 47
How to Clean Tabular Data and Represent it Consistently ............. 47
How to Use Global Positioning Systems (GPS)............................. 48
Basic Air Photo Interpretation ....................................................... 48
Geocoding (Mapping an Address in a Table)................................. 48
Metadata (Describing Datasets)..................................................... 48
Programming and scripting............................................................ 48
Data Presentation .......................................................................... 49
You Need to Understand the Problem You’re Mapping ................ 49
The traits of a good GIS course ...................................................... 49
Course style ...................................................................................... 49
Course datasets over the same area .................................................. 51
How to Build on Your GIS Education............................................... 52
Participate in Networks and User Forums.......................................... 52
Gain Experience (consider volunteering)........................................... 52
Read Books....................................................................................... 52
Conclusion........................................................................................ 52
What Does Taking a GIS Course Involve?....................................... 54
The time factor.................................................................................. 54
The Cost factor ................................................................................. 56
How to Decide on the Right GIS Course ......................................... 59
How to Find a Complete GIS Course ............................................... 64
Bibliography....................................................................................... 67
Introduction
In many organizations GIS is polarized so strategic environmental mapping projects often miss out. The polarization happens on two fronts ...
1. On the one hand GIS professionals:
a. Too busy: Technically competent GIS professionals are too busy
with day-to-day problems to take the time to understand the environmental problems in their organization that need to be mapped.
b. Problems get technologized: Environmental problems get defined in GIS terms so GIS departments provide environmental professionals maps that may not be useful to them.
2. On the other hand environmental professionals:
a. Intimidated by GIS: Often environmental professionals are intimidated by GIS. Perhaps they tried to use it years ago and remember how difficult it used to be. Whatever the reason, they prefer business-as-usual – hand drawing onto maps they probably bought from their local map shop, reducing / enlarging maps on photocopiers to make them scale-compatible, etc.
b. Avoid strategic mapping projects: Or, they avoid strategic mapping altogether and focus on site level assessments where there are no GIS mapping requirements.
In such an environment everybody who might benefit from a good quality GIS mapping project loses. Hand drawn maps that sit in the back of project reports rarely make their way into the corporate GIS for future use by other projects.
One thing is for certain, in the absence of GIS, environmental mapping projects rarely reach their full potential.
I want to make the case for the GIS-Analyst – someone who understands both the problem that needs to be mapped and the GIS technology that can be used to express that problem to both decision makers and stakeholders. Such as person only needs a basic understanding of a topic, and then be interested enough to ask intelligent questions of the environmental scientists. Rarely are the mapping requirements complex, and rarely are such projects beyond the reach of small teams containing both GIS and environmental professionals. The skill that GIS professionals need to learn is how to create useful field-maps for environmental scientists that will then be easy for the GIS department to incorporate into the corporate GIS.
In the text that follows I begin by defining what GIS is, and in doing so I suggest why some environmentalists have been so reluctant to use GIS for strategic mapping. I then delve deeper into why GIS analysts are so important in the environmental sector, what a good GIS base map looks like, and then how to work with an environmental professional in a way that allows them to be comfortable with GIS. You’ll get to see GIS analyst techniques gleaned from my two decades of working with engineers, archaeologists, demographers, soil scientists, economists, ecologists, and epidemiologists.
Finally I show, with the aid of examples, what can be achieved when you get it right...simple GIS projects that become powerful decision making tools.
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