• Hello!

    Either you have not registered on this site yet, or you are registered but have not logged in. In either case, you will not be able to use the full functionality of this site until you have registered, and then logged in after your registration has been approved.

    Registration is FREE, so please register so you can participate instead of remaining a lurker....

    Please be certain that the location field is correctly filled out when you register. All registrations that appear to be bogus will be rejected. Which means that if your location field does NOT match the actual location of your registration IP address, then your registration will be rejected.

    Sorry about the strictness of this requirement, but it is necessary to block spammers and scammers at the door as much as possible.

GIS Project Ideas

airenlow

airenlow

hope is not a strategy
I am taking a GIS (geographic information systems) class as part of the wildlife management emphasis on my Biology degree. It's a computer program that allows you to make maps based on sets of data (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geographic_information_system). I'm having a hard time coming up with an idea for my final project. I would like to do something about corns, but I can't think of a decent question that has to be answered.

One example project was studying the Ohio terrain to determine how hard it would be to reintroduce mountain lions to the area. Another was tracking polar bear movement in areas effected by global warming.

I don't actually have to collect the data myself. I have to find existing data and convert it into a form that the GIS program will recognize, then map out the data and present the final project to the class. So, if you have any ideas that include quantitative and spatial data, I would love to hear them. Jeff, if you can think of a cool rattler idea, I would consider that too. Thanks for your help!
 
Saw GIS and I had to visit the thread.... ;)

As far as cool GIS projects...there are a lot but they can get quite extensive very fast. You could mimic the temperature one the USGS did on the "burmese" python to indicated they can go very far north. (Let's not mention that they used the wrong temp and looked for rock pythons which are still as of yet very rare in Florida but rocks can handle the cooler temps). However, it might be fun to do a US temp map with temp ranges and overlay where real burms may go. That data should be easy to find.

As far as rattlers (and most other snakes for that matter), most of the distributions are already known. Furthermore, with most rattlers needing a hibernacula in northern climates, that becomes the limiting factor and it doesn't matter whether every other component is present. If there is no overwintering site, then there are no snakes. There is one study out there that came out of University of Arkansas on GIS modeling and possible den sites. They took real dens and modeled what the GIS signature was and tried to find other dens. That might be a possibility to see if timbers can be reintroduced in Ohio into places where they have be extirpated.
 
Thanks for the ideas Jeff! I was hoping you or KJ would see this and be able to help me out. I'm leaning towards the Burm project right now...I think that would be interesting for the whole class.

Do you know Terry Schwaner? He has done a lot of herp work all over the south, so I figured that might be a familiar name for you...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top