A geographic information system is a system
designed to capture, store, manipulate, analyze, manage, and present all types
of geographically referenced data. GIS systems are used by mining companies, timber
companies, state and county officials, land use planners and the list goes on
and on. The system has become a very integral part of study of geography and
geography majors exit school with a detailed working knowledge of these
systems.
What are they used for? In simplest terms it a data base containing
information and data that is tied to a spatial dimension. For example, there
might me a timber cruise associated with a specific stand of trees. Another
example would be an estimate of the tons of coal related to a mineral
ownership.
How I use them? I use MyTopo.com. I have the entire
topographic layer for the state of Georgia and Alabama. I have a subscription
to access aerial photography for these two states. If I draw a tract boundary
in, when I toggle to another background layer, all my features are there. These
features include waypoints, tracks, labels etc. I can use my Garmin GPS and
walk around a stand of trees or a property boundary and import that GPS
shapefile. As you can see there are many applications.
A GIS system is
made up of layers. The type and kind of layers depend on the end-user purpose.
The type of layers I am most familiar with would be: streets, topographic maps,
aerial photography, forest type maps etc. There are many systems out there,
they range in price from free to thousands of dollars.
Your Realtor
should have access to these type tools. You might be evaluating a tract that
has several different type of trees. It would be helpful if you knew how many
acres in each stand. You might need to know the acres in a pecan orchard, row
crops, size of a lake, size of the watershed. You can readily see there are
many applications.
No comments:
Post a Comment