![\"\"](\"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/geog-291\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/208\/2025\/08\/IMG_5328-225x300.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
My name is Hannah Wagner and I am a sophomore majoring in environmental science.<\/p>\n
I first took the syllabus quiz and then read the text which was an introduction to GIS and its history as well as its uses. I found this whole reading to be very interesting and educating because I wasn’t really sure what GIS was and what it was used for. I understood the basics more when it was explained that in the past Ian McHarg had layered tracing paper with different parts of the landscape in order to see where a highway would cause the least amount of disturbance to the environment. I assumed GIS was just simple maps but I was unaware of the “layering” that gives much more data about the location. I was shocked to learn how many industries use GIS to make spatial decisions, especially when those decisions affect everyday life. I was really interested in learning how business farmers were using GIS to decide the best places to plant crops due to their distance to markets and even to understand why a section of crops may have a disease.\u00a0 I was also very interested in “the two faces of GIS”, GISystems and GIScience.\u00a0 I understood it as GISystems is straight forward, the process of gathering data, inputting it, analyzing it, and creating a map all with the given technology. GIScience is the side that questions the technology and digs deeper to find the best ways to represent data. I appreciate the GIScience side that doesn’t blindly trust the code to create the best and most accurate representation. I also found it very interesting that people can perceive information from visual displays easier than a data set or table. This makes total sense to me because I can understand data much better when it is visual and it can help me connect relationships between data much easier.<\/p>\n
I have always been interested in agriculture and its relationship to the environment so I was excited to find a map related to agriculture.\u00a0 I found a website showing lots of different ways GIS is used in precision agriculture mapping.\u00a0 I picked a map that assesses vegetation.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/geog-291\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/208\/2025\/08\/Screenshot-2025-08-22-at-6.29.42-PM-300x203.png\")
<\/p>\n
https:\/\/www.satimagingcorp.com\/services\/geographic-information-systems\/gis-maps-agriculture-mapping\/<\/p>\n
I also looked up GIS application in air quality and found a pretty neat visual that combined different data.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/geog-291\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/208\/2025\/08\/Screenshot-2025-08-22-at-6.42.18-PM-300x185.png\")
<\/p>\n
https:\/\/www.esri.com\/arcgis-blog\/products\/arcgis-living-atlas\/health\/air-quality-aware<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
My name is Hannah Wagner and I am a sophomore majoring in environmental science. I first took the syllabus quiz and then read the text which was an introduction to GIS and its history as well as its uses. I found this whole reading to be very interesting and educating because I wasn’t really sure what GIS was and what it was used for. I understood the basics more when it was explained that in the past Ian McHarg had layered tracing paper with different parts of the landscape in order to see where a highway would cause the least amount of disturbance to the environment. I assumed GIS was just simple maps but I was unaware of the “layering” that gives much more data about the location. I was shocked to learn how many industries use GIS to make spatial decisions, especially when those decisions affect everyday life. I was really interested in learning how business farmers were using GIS to decide the best places to plant crops due to their distance to markets and even to understand why a section of crops may have a disease.\u00a0 I was also very interested in “the two faces of GIS”, GISystems and GIScience.\u00a0 I understood it as GISystems is straight forward, the process of gathering data, inputting it, analyzing it, and creating a map all with the given technology. GIScience is the side that questions the technology and digs deeper to find the best ways to represent data. I appreciate the GIScience side that doesn’t blindly trust the code to create the best and most accurate representation. I also found it very interesting that people can perceive information from visual displays easier than a data set or table. This makes total sense to me because I can understand data much better when it is visual and it can help me connect relationships between data much easier. I have always been interested in agriculture and its relationship to the environment so I was excited to find a map related to agriculture.\u00a0 I found a website showing lots of different ways GIS is used in precision agriculture mapping.\u00a0 I picked a map that assesses vegetation. https:\/\/www.satimagingcorp.com\/services\/geographic-information-systems\/gis-maps-agriculture-mapping\/ I also looked up GIS application in air quality and found a pretty neat visual that combined different data. https:\/\/www.esri.com\/arcgis-blog\/products\/arcgis-living-atlas\/health\/air-quality-aware<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2323,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4940","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-course-student-work"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/geog-291\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4940","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/geog-291\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/geog-291\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/geog-291\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2323"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/geog-291\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4940"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/geog-291\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4940\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4945,"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/geog-291\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4940\/revisions\/4945"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/geog-291\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4940"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/geog-291\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4940"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/geog-291\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4940"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}