Applications in GIS

ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES 580

This introductory course in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) is designed to provide you with the knowledge, skills, and confidence to be an independent user of GIS. The course will use the latest version of ESRI ArcGIS. The course is taught using a combination of lectures, demonstrations, and hands-on, interactive tutorials in the classroom. You will also explore the scientific literature to understand how GIS is being used by various disciplines to address spatial questions. The course takes a multidisciplinary approach that is focused on learning the tools of GIS versus working with data from a particular field. The goal is to establish a solid foundation you can use to address spatial questions that interest you, your mentor, or your employee. The first weeks of the course will provide a broad view of how you can display and query spatial data and produce map products. The remainder of the course will explore the power of GIS with a focus on applying spatial analytical tools to address questions and solve problems. As the semester develops, more tools will be added to your GIS toolbox so that you can complete a final independent project that integrates materials learned during the course with those spatial analyses that interest you the most. Students will have the choice of using a prepared final project, a provided data set, or designing an individualized final project using their own or other available data.
Course Attributes: FA NSM; AR NSM; AS NSM; FA CPSC