Over the summer I was fortunate enough to land an opportunity making maps for the North American Amphibian Monitoring Program at the Patuxent Wildlife Research Center in Laurel, Maryland. One of my assignments was to turn route paths that were used to survey frogs into digital maps that could be exported to a PDF format and emailed to volunteers. Routes were originally marked on a paper map and/or were mapped in an outdated version of Street Atlas USA, software by DeLorme that was replaced with ArcGIS 9.3. Major lessons I learned this summer? GIS classes somehow forget to mention that in the real world you have to find your own data and figure out how to make it work in GIS. Also, the ESRI Support Forums are indispensable. I also discovered the many, many uses for ArcMap extensions.
Detail maps showing two halves of another route:
Good to hear you enjoy GIS concepts..one issue I have scene through the years is the concepts that dots on a map and access to a pop up are GIS..ie..GE or VE...GIS is a lot more than what consumers or widget builders understand...If you follow concepts that it is data management, planning/analysis, field enabling and finallllly visualization you will have well rounded concepts to use in many appliation areas and yes mash up to GE etc...
ReplyDeleteThis is true--actually, I'm really interested in how neogeography such as Google Earth is influencing the GIS world and GIS professionals. I will be looking to see what kind of long-lasting impact these applications have on those working with cartography day-in, day-out.
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