Hi! My name is Hayden Kelner and I’m a sophomore Environmental Science and Zoology double major. I’m in Chi Phi, the Entertainment Director for CPB (Campus Programming Board), the Secretary of the Rock Climbing Club, I play bass drum in the marching band, and I work as a tour guide and student curator at the campus’s Natural History Museum. I enjoy playing videogames, board games, building Legos and model kits, and embroidering on occasion.
I had heard of GIS from my uncle’s cousin who works for the North East Ohio Regional Sewer District. He works as a field biologist and collects water samples and catches bugs to help determine quality of water as well. However, there is a whole department that works hand and hand with them that uses GIS. Similar to how the chapter mentions uses for GIS, they help by analyzing water runoff and highlight potential problems areas for other departments to survey. When I had heard that a light went off in my head that this was an important tool to have under my belt for my career ahead. While reading I was surprised to see how many uses GIS has. It’s used in ways I didn’t even know were possible like with epidemiologists. Whether it be with environmentalists, or even sales departments, it seems like GIS has use in every field. It’s uses in graphing, mapping, making models and other tools cover such a wide array of needs that it can really be molded into any way necessary. It was also really cool to read about GIS’s uses in farming. Agriculture is such an overlooked field of work and not many people give it much thought. Seeing the behind the scenes of it in a sense and seeing what processes and issues can be identified and dealt with was really interesting.
This semester I’m taking entomology, so getting to see how GIS is used in that field was interesting. In this article, researchers used GIS to identify how forest dwelling insects have been disturbed over the years in Grand County, Colorado. By using GIS they were able to identify how certain beetles may react to logging and other habitat factors. By using previously gathered data they were able to use that to replicate the effects through GIS.
Source: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304380017302053 