The International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences. Vol. XXXVII. Part B4. Beijing 2008
76
Environmental Applications of GIS
Contributing Disciplines to GIS
Where can you use GIS?
Environment
Landscape Ecology
Anthropology
Infrastructure and Utilities
Geography
Archaeology
Business Marketing and Sales
Cartography
Atmospheric Science
Computer Cartography
Remote Sensing
Meteorology
Land Information
Photogrammetry
Botany
Natural resources management
Surveying
Conservation
Wildlife habitat modelling
Geodesy
Ecology
Recreation resource management
Statistics
Environmental Science
Floodplain management and flood
Operations Research
Forestry
control
Computer Science
Geography
Wetlands restoration
Mathematics
Geology
Aquifer and groundwater management
Forest management
Coastal management
Fisheries management
Civil Engineering
Flistoric Preservation
History
Hydrology
Marine Science/
Oceanography
Paleontology
Seismology
Soil Science
Zoology
Table 1 : GIS as an Integrating Technology
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An operational GIS also has a series of components
that combine to make the system work. These
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components are critical to a successful GIS. A
working GIS integrates five key components:
• hardware,
• software,
• data,
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• people,
• methods.
(The GIS PRIMER, http://www.innovatiYegis.com/education/primer/concepts.html)
Figure 2: Components of a GIS
CONCLUSION
Many governmental agencies and private organizations are
beginning to use GIS to improve their services, assist in
managing resources, and provide support for more informed
decision making and policy planning activities. The applications
of GIS technology seem endless because of the geographic
nature of data used by so many different disciplines. Most GIS
professionals will agree that GIS technology is truly a
multidisciplinary resource that benefits a wide range of interests
(Huxhold, 1994).
GIS is useful because drafting maps is easier, direct analysis of
movements from GIS data is possible using the Animal
Movement extension, visualization of trends (years, individuals,
behaviors) is made easy, and query searches make finding the
trends easy.
APPENDIX 1: Technical aspects of GIS and Tools
Complementary to GIS