I have completed the GEOG 291 quiz and reviewed the syllabus
Introduction
Rafay here! A Microbiology major from Pakistan. I do plant biology research in Dr. Wolverton’s lab, and outside of that I make documentaries and shoot film photography. I am taking this class as I know nothing about GIS and it intrigues me. Hope to learn more about it.
Thoughts on Chapter 1
“After reading the text I can sum it up in three words; GIS is not exactly constant, that’s four but as Schuurman says that GIS “suffers from the scourge of being many things to many people: software to a municipality, a scientific approach to a researcher.” Hence the applications are not limited, whether you are a Humanities student or a STEM one, or you are a corporate worker or a researcher, you can use it.
Moreover, in the reading one camp asks where spatial entities are, the other asks how we encode them and what different analytical methods do to the answers. Both are GIS! But maps and mapping is not the same as doing spatial analysis. Mapping shows a dataset visually and stops there, however, spatial analysis generates information that can not be extracted by just taking a look at either, map or data.
The author then dabbles into the history of this system talking about McHarg’s 1962 highway overlay which, being super old school, used tracing paper on a light table. No computer was involved; it was the metaphor of overlay that entered GIS.
Though ironically, the history is messier than I expected, and kind of accidental. CGIS came out of Tomlinson and Pratt happening to sit next to each other on a plane, and the name was handed down by a member of Parliament.
That does carry into how we use GIS now, most users treat GISystems as a black box, borrowing Latour’s term; nobody asks how the software decides where the income polygon boundaries go, the output is just assumed true.
GIS wants crisp lines and reality is fuzzy, so the categories you pick determine the answer. And that stops being abstract the moment resources are attached, if funding depends on communities falling below an income threshold, then how you define income is doing political work, not just technical work.”
Application
Astrophotographers use GIS to overlay satellite sensor data with topographic maps to locate dark sky areas classifying them into Bortles. By mapping artificial light domes, they can pinpoint the optimal remote locations for executing long night sky exposures and capturing clear star trails.
Source: Esri UK, “Explore your night sky this WInter” Map Gallery.