Hello, My name is Cooper Gensler and I am a sophomore, majoring in Environmental science and Geography
After taking the syllabus quiz, I completed the reading where I learned all about what GIS is and how it is being used to learn more about the physical world and its various implications. I found it very interesting how GIS is used by many different companies or people to find out different information using the same processes. One of the first recorded uses of GIS was in 1962 as it was used as a method to process cartographic information and then analyze said information. It was originally used by Ian McHarg who was constructing a highway and wanted to make it so it would be the least disruptful to the natural environment. McHarg did not use a computer as he layered pieces of tracing paper with sections such as housing, forests, and valleys on those papers. With this, he could effectively trace the path for a highway while successfully limiting the amount of wildlife that was misplaced. Learning about GIscience and GISystems was really neat. GIScience is primarily the computer based side of GIS as it describes why certain processes occur using justification and theoretical bases. This is opposed to GISystems which use processes to get a certain output. GISystems is what we as students are being taught and is more accessible to every day use. Overall both sides of GIS are incredibly important to how information is processed. GIS in general is a very powerful tool in how information is visualized across many different systems of earth. It can help convey information that can display how different parts of the earth are connected.
in this map, ARCGIS is used to display the distribution of fish species in the Western US. I thought that this was a very helpful and insightful graphic that shows information that would be helpful to someone who is a marine biologist or an adjacent field.