Geographical Information Systems Applications in Ecology

1
Geographical Information Systems Applications in
Ecology Term Paper Presentation By Abdullah
AL-Dhubeeb ID 210315 For CRP 514 Introduction
to GIS Term 041 11th Offer Course Instructor
Dr. Baqer Al-Ramadan Jan2, 2004
2

• Introduction
• Objective
• Review of Literature
• Ecological data sets
• The role of GIS methods
• Study limitations
• Conclusion
• Recommendations

3
Introduction

• Ecology is the study of how living organisms
  interact with their environment.
• The rapid rise in the volumes and quantity of
  ecological data collected have facilitated the
  development of GIS to handle the diversity of
  information involved.

4
Objective

• Discuss the benefits of the GIS in applied
  aspects of ecology.
• The type of data that can be used to run GIS in
  ecology.
• How use GIS as a tool in studying ecological
  processed such as measuring and mapping habitat
  potential.

5
Review of Literature
Early 1900s first systematic ecological studies
which could be broken up into measurable
components and mapped as layers. 1970s The
representation and analysis of land cover are
first touched by GIS applications. 1980s the
ecological application in GIS became one of the
major area of GIS applications. Late 1980s
there are many studies have done almost in every
part of ecology.
6
Ecological data sets

• Species location data.
• Terrain/ land characteristics.
• Location of conservation sites.
• Soil types distribution.
• Biomass data.

7
The role of GIS methods in the ecological
applications

• Assist in estimation of the availability of
  natural resources.
• Improving the quality of data capture.
• Assisting visualization of changes.
• Applying physical models and modeling changing
  environmental parameters through use of sample
  data.
• Providing better access to environmental data.

8
Study limitations

• Extremely large in volume because their
  collection and maintenance is carried out of the
  national or even international basis.
• The existence of environmental databases does not
  guarantee their easy access or availability.
• Dimensions of linear features (like roads) often
  exaggerated. Make it difficult to determine
  exactly where roads are located with respect to
  habitat or to calculate the actual area of land.

9
Study limitations (cont.d)
The existence of environmental databases does not
guarantee their easy access or availability. 1.Q
uestions of confidentiality 2.Cost 3.Inappropria
te physical storage mechanisms. 4.The highly
isolated character of many environmental data
sets. 5.Varying formats of available digital
data.
10
Conclusion

• GIS are not new to ecology, but have been
  introduced into the profession during the last
  15 year.
• Capture , analysis, management and display of
  ecological data are all activities that can
  greatly benefit from application of GIS.
• The recent developments in mapping technology,
  interpolation methods, remote sensing and
  modelling have provided useful tools for GIS
  application in ecology.

11
Recommendations

• Area of needing the technical development in the
  environmental database include
• The development of scale-free databases (local,
  regional, national, continental and global
  scale).
• The recognition and handling of error conditions
  in analysis and modeling (in the nature of much
  environmental data).
• The development of icon-based interfaces to GIS
  to enable the wider use by an increasingly
  non-specialist audience.

12
Recommendations (cont.d)

• Improving the accessibility of environmental
  databases.
• Define and set up exchange formats for digital
  data.
• Graphics-based spatial data retrieval, associated
  with automated
• graphic indexing.