Spring 2008

Course Objectives: Provide students opportunity to become proficient in using GIS for environmental problem solving. The course will concentrate on analytical applications, data exchange among other analytical tools, and spatial modeling.

Course Protocol: We will meet Tuesday and Thursday from 12:30 to 3:00 pm in Room 6 Woodward Hall. The course is 100% lab-oriented. We will spend the lab period learning new procedures and practicing them on small applications. I expect student's to keep on top of of the methods under discussion. If a student must be absent from class, it is his/her responsibility to get presentation notes from a classmate.

Grading: Performance in the course will be based on homework scores and projects. One assignment will require developing a comprehensive database for an area. A second project will require atlas-quality map production and extensive vector or raster spatial analysis and modeling. I will also give small assignments over the semester which will require written report or hard-copy mapping. The projects and assignments will contribute to your final grade as follows:

Assignments 60%

Projects -- Mid-term (15%), Final (25%)

Make-up or extra-credit assignments are not given. Assignments or projects turned in after deadlines will not be accepted unless arrangements have been made with the teacher in advance of the assignment. Final Projects are due 8 May (Final Exam period).

Communications: All handouts and messages for class will be posted on the class web page (www.edc.uri.edu/nrs/classes). In addition, questions, comments, concerns, and other dialogue between students and the instructors will happen through email. I hope to make this a paper-free class (except for your mapping, we will do a lot of practice cartography).

Where You Work: I encourage you to do your assignments on a computer that you will use for your research or other class projects. This can be in a lab on campus, your major prof's machine, etc. I will give everyone a free copy of ArcView 9.2 software (studnet version) with a 1 year license. This will work for most parts of the class but not others (where we use extensions and models not included in the ArcView kit). If you don't have access to another computer on campus, you are welcome to use a computer in Woodward room 6. It is imperative that you back up your data often. I urge you to get a small external hard drive or a large capacity memory stick.

Instructor: Pete August, pete@edc.uri.edu, Room 28A -- Kingston Coastal Institute, x 4-4794;

General Topics to Cover:

Creating a Seamless Database
Generalization
Projections
Overlay Procedures
Proximity Analyses
Generating data from ASCII files
Data exchange with other software
Raster Modeling
Terrain Modeling and 3-D Visualization

Click here to get to the semester schedule.