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Environmental GIS: Nicholas A. Procopio, PH.D, GISP Nick@drexel - Edu

This document discusses environmental applications of geographic information systems (GIS). It provides examples of how GIS has been used for monitoring land use change, assessing the impact of urban development, and simulating natural and urban environmental processes. The document also presents a case study on using GIS to model deforestation in the Philippines under different development scenarios. Overall, the key applications of GIS discussed are spatial analysis and modeling to understand environmental processes and inform decision making.

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Muna Aziz
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52 views22 pages

Environmental GIS: Nicholas A. Procopio, PH.D, GISP Nick@drexel - Edu

This document discusses environmental applications of geographic information systems (GIS). It provides examples of how GIS has been used for monitoring land use change, assessing the impact of urban development, and simulating natural and urban environmental processes. The document also presents a case study on using GIS to model deforestation in the Philippines under different development scenarios. Overall, the key applications of GIS discussed are spatial analysis and modeling to understand environmental processes and inform decision making.

Uploaded by

Muna Aziz
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PPT, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Environmental GIS

Nicholas A. Procopio, Ph.D, GISP


[email protected]
GIS Applications
 Applications generally fulfill the five M‘s of
GIS:
• mapping,
• measurement,
• monitoring,
• Modeling,
• and management
Applications of a GIS
 Political Science  Health care
• Analysis of election results • Epidemiology
• Predictive Modeling • Needs Analysis
 Real Estate  Education
• Neighborhood Land Prices
Administration
• Traffic Impact Analysis
• Enrollment Projections
 Business • School Bus Routing
• Demographic Analysis
• Site Selection
• Market penetration
Applications of a GIS
 Urban Planning And  Environmental
Management Science
• Zoning, Subdivision • Monitoring environmental
Planning risks
• Economic Development • Management of
watersheds, floodplains,
• Emergency Response wetlands, aquifers
• Code Enforcement • Groundwater modeling and
• Tax Assesment contamination tracking
• Hazardous or toxic facility
siting
More Env. Applications
 Monitoring land use
change
 Assessing the impact of
urban settlements
 Simulation of processes
in the urban and natural
environment
Scientific questions and GIS
operations
 Within the spatial domain, the goals of applied
problem solving include,
• Managing spatial operations and inventories
• Rational, effective, and efficient allocation of resources
• Monitoring and understanding observed spatial
distributions of attributes
• Understanding the difference that place makes
• Understanding of processes in the natural and human
environments
• Prescription of strategies for environmental maintenance
and conservation
Case study: Deforestation in the
Philippines
 Objective is to identify a range of different
development scenarios that make it possible to
anticipate future land use and habitat change,
and hence also anticipate changes in
biodiversity.
Case Study: Methods
 Used qualitative data collected through stakeholder
interviews in a quantitative GIS-based analysis to
calculate the probabilities of land use transition under
three different scenarios of land use change.

 The three different scenarios not only resulted in


different forest areas by 2019 but also different
spatial patterning of the remaining forest.
Forest area (dark green) in 1999 and at the end of the
land-use change simulations (2019) for three different
scenarios.
Uncontrolled Sprawl Restricted to existing
arteries Growth in the
American Midwest
under four different
urban growth
scenarios.
Horizontal extent of
image is 400 km.

Leapfrog development Constrained


due to zoning development

(Source: Paul Torrens, 2005


“Simulating sprawl with geographic
automata models,” reproduced
courtesy of the author)
Land use in
Southern New
Jersey and the
Pinelands
Landscape Pattern Changes:
Mimosa Lakes
Percentage
Altered Land
1986 – 8.8%
1995 – 23%
2002 – 33%
2007 – 35%

1988 – median pH
did not exceed 4.8

2001 & 2009 –


median pH
exceeded 6.0
Aquatic
Integrity
of the NJ
Pinelands
Radiotelemetry
locations, general
travel path, and
activity range
(minimum convex
May – Oct 2002 polygon, and 50%
and 95% isopleths)
of snakes.

April – Oct 2003


Foundations
 Foundation-
• The theme of inferring process from pattern, or
function from form, is a common characteristic of
GIScience applications.
• Contrasts nomothetic (generalized) and
idiographic (specified) approaches
Principles
 Principles-
• GIS makes it possible to incorporate diverse
physical, biological, and human elements, and to
forecast the size, shape, scale, and dimension of
land use parcels.
• It makes use of the core GIS idea that the world
can be understood as a series of layers of different
types of information, that can be added together
meaningfully through overlay analysis to arrive at
conclusions.
Analysis
 Analysis
• Process is inferred not just through size measures,
but also through spatial measures of connectivity
and fragmentation.
General Issues
 Irrespective of the quality of the measurement process,
uncertainty will always creep into any prediction
• Data are never perfect
• Measurement error and uncertainty
• Forecasts and models are a simplified representation of the real world
 GIS users should not think of systems as black boxes,
 Users of GIS should always know exactly what the system is
doing to their data.
 User awareness of these important issues can be improved
through appropriate metadata and documentation of research
procedures
 The results of analysis should always be reported in sufficient
detail to allow someone else to replicate them.
Remember……
 GIS is fundamentally about solving real-world
problems.
 GIS leads to better decision making!

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