Geographic Information Systems (GIS)

GIS, or Geographic Information System, combines cartography with statistics and databases, allowing for an easy to understand interpretation of local data. It is beneficial to ecology in that it can provide information on land use, species, human population, habitat, and much more. GIS works to inform decision making. For our GIS project, we looked at Snowy Plover nests in Florida and the types of habitat they inhabit. This can be done for many species, and the used habitat can be overlapped with areas of human use in order to see how humans affect habitat usage by different species. Of course, this is just one of the many uses, and in my Conservation and Biodiversity class, we focused more on human use and how roads and urban areas affected surrounding habitat. GIS can also show you how an area changes over time.