Course Description

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Course Overview

Course Description

Demand for professionals with careers focused on the environment, conservation and sustainability (green-jobs) continues to grow at ever increasing rates. All of these careers a diversity of skills, but among the most important are skills focused on geomatics, mapping and spatial data analysis. Designing urban greenspace corridors, forest conservation zones, management for endangered species, sustainable forestry practices and locating re-greening sites for carbon mitigation all require knowledge and skills in acquiring, analyzing, processing and displaying geo-spatial data.

Geospatial information such as forest inventories, satellite images, digital terrain models, plot-based field records, climate models, or road and stream networks are ubiquitous; yet specific skills to handle and process the information, and analytical approaches to translate these data into a relevant applications for policy, science, or operations are needed.  In particular GIS software and algorithms allows analysis of spatial location data quickly and efficiently. Remote sensing provides highly detailed 2 and 3D data on terrestrial, atmospheric and oceanic conditions. Geo-positioning technologies result in extremely accurate locational services. Advances in the miniaturization and capacity of hard and soft computing technologies provide storage and communication capacities. It is important that students develop informed skills in all of these areas.

Whether you have previous geomatics experience or not, this course is designed for students to introduce themselves to the core concepts of geomatics through analyzing spatial data using several different tools. We hope to inspire you with the capabilities of GPS, remote sensing and GIS so that you can start thinking about the next generation of spatial analysis and how it might be applied in the future.

Target Audience

Managers, and researchers interested in the application of state of the art geospatial tools for forest monitoring and mapping.

Course Prerequisites

No prerequisites.

FODE009