Geographic Information System Skills for Foresters and Natural Resource Managers

By Krista Merry, Pete Bettinger, Michael Crosby and Kevin Boston

Geographic Information System Skills for Foresters and Natural Resource Managers provides a resource for developing knowledge and skills concerning GIS as it applies to forestry and natural resource management. This book helps readers understand how GIS can effectively be used by professional foresters and land managers to conduct spatial analyses or address management decisions. Through topics presented, readers will improve their ability to understand GIS data sources, identify GIS data types and quality, perform common spatial analysis processes, create GIS data, produce maps, and ultimately develop the skills necessary to use GIS analysis to answer real-world questions.

This book will be of great benefit to GIS users looking to directly apply techniques to real-world data or foresters and natural resource scientists who use GIS in their research.

• Presents unique reflections, diversions, inspections and translations within the text to encourage readers’ critical thinking skills
• Includes a companion website to enhance the reflections, diversions, inspections and translations with additional resources
• Designed with examples, discussions and case studies from seasoned natural resource professionals with decades of combined professional experience

• Language: English
• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Release date: Nov 15, 2022
• ISBN: 9780323905206

Krista Merry

Krista Merry is a geographer and research coordinator in the School of Forestry and Natural Resources at the University of Georgia. She conducts research in applied forest management with an emphasis on remote sensing, geospatial technologies, landscape planning, and precision forestry. She received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in geography from the University of Georgia. She has extensive experience in using geographic information systems (GIS), satellite imagery, and aerial photography, and has earned GISP certification from the GIS Certification Institute. She has published 35 peer-reviewed journal articles and is co-editor of Forest Plans of North America (Academic Press, 2015). She has acted as chair of the Proceedings of the Southern Forestry and Natural Resource Management GIS Conference four times (soforgis.uga.edu). She also has experience in developing online continuing education courses (introgps.uga.edu) and has led the data collection efforts for several human subject surveys.

Book preview

Preface

Geographic information systems (GIS) are powerful tools comprised of hardware and software components that allow for the collection, visualization, and analysis of spatial data. GIS is commonly used by forestry and natural resource management professionals to answer questions about landscape changes, wildlife, recreation, water, and anything with a geographic location on the Earth. Using spatial databases, such as vector and raster data models, GIS can answer questions including Where is the best location for a new trail? How close is this silviculture treatment to an animal den? What proportion of this stand falls within a streamside management zone? and many others. Further, GIS allows for the creation of maps, the introduction of remotely sensed data into analysis, and the implementation of spatial analysis using spatial databases.

Krista Merry was first introduced to GIS during her undergraduate education in geography. Software that allowed for GIS processing included a basic graphical user interface (GUI) but commonly required working within the command line for certain processing features. Following the frustration of working with early GIS software programs, she swore off making GIS the focus of her educational and career pursuits. However, later exposure to remote sensing and advanced GIS processing, along with improvements in commercial GIS software, illustrated to her how GIS is, at its core, a problem solving tool. GIS brought together her ability to understand and visualize spatial relationships with the use of GIS databases to answer questions. Now, her interests focus on projects using GIS to model land cover change across various landscapes, identify potential forested areas impacted by hurricanes, assess accuracy of smartphone GPS receivers, and others.

Pete Bettinger was introduced to GIS in the 1980s, when the old form of GIS was prevalent. In this system, a person drew a map by hand and then associated features on the map with a tabular (printed) report that contained forest stand conditions (volumes, densities, etc.) that were developed with the assistance of a calculator. Over the next decade, he gained first-hand experience in the implementation of GIS in forestry, as forest organizations attempted to develop both centralized and distributed GIS programs. In the late 1990s, he began to teach GIS to forestry students, knowing that it would become a standard skill needed by natural resource management professionals which could increase both the accuracy and efficiency of forest management endeavors. Today, he continues to use GIS for a number of purposes mainly involving instruction to research, and in many cases his students and colleagues are teaching him new ways to use the technology.

Kevin Boston has been using GIS since the mid-1980s in a variety of forestry and natural resources projects incorporating GIS into conservation and production management projects from around the world. GIS has been the information core for solving these problems as it maintains spatial and nonspatial data. He finds it useful for displaying both the problems and possible solutions that lead to discussions and improvements in the decision making processes that support improved natural resource management.

Michael Crosby serendipitous, yet frustrating, introduction to GIS in the spring of 2005. Sparing the reader humorous and head-scratching anecdotes, he had a patient professor and lab instructor navigating Esri's ArcView 3 and ArcGIS somewhere in the 8.2 release of the software. In the summer of 2005, he found himself working at the Naval Oceanographic Office and was allowed to work on incorporating GIS into ocean modeling and mapping efforts. It was here he began to learn more about remote sensing capabilities and applications and continued his graduate education in forestry beginning in 2007. There he learned to apply spatial technologies to forest inventory design and analysis and transitioned into modeling impacts of extreme weather events on forested ecosystems. He continues his education today teaching and learning from students and incorporating high-resolution datasets into tree and forest ecosystem assessment and change.

GIS is a rapidly changing discipline advancing from simply making a map or viewing an image to the incorporation of newer, finer resolution sources of spatial information that allow for the development of three-dimensional models of landscape features or the creation of GIS databases simply using an application (app) on a smartphone. These advances, along with the value of established GIS processes, make GIS a dynamic field that is important for early career or seasoned professionals in forestry and natural resources to have comprehensive knowledge of and basic skill sets to implement analysis in a GIS environment.

This book seeks to introduce readers to several aspects of GIS including components of GIS and spatial analysis, GIS data models and types of geographic data, coordinate systems and the role of reference systems in GIS, mapping, creating, collecting, and managing GIS data, processing different GIS data models, remote sensing, and professional ethics and practices associated with the use of GIS. Additionally, we provide several case studies that focus on how GIS can be used to answer questions in a natural resources context. Through discussion of these topics, we hope to encourage readers to think past basic GIS concepts and consider more deeply the functionality and implications associated with GIS and GIS processes.

We hope to engage readers and inspire more in-depth consideration of topics presented in this book through exercises distributed across each chapter referred to as reflections, diversions, inspections, and translations. Reflections encourage readers to think about ideas or concepts, usually from a personal perspective, and to organize their thoughts into a cohesive, short summary. For example, from Chapter 2 we find this reflection:

Reflection 2.1

Imagine that you have recently been hired as a forester for the U.S. Forest Service, and that you will work on the Ocala National Forest in Florida. What types of GIS databases would the forest have, or could the forest develop, that would require the use of point data?

Diversions ask readers to take a break from reading the book and use critical thinking to solve a problem. These may be as simple as a basic spatial analysis question. For example, readers may be encouraged to organize data and determine the appropriate spatial analysis process to find a solution. Often, the purpose of a diversion is to develop a plan for answering a question. As an example of a diversion, the one noted below can be found in Chapter 5.

Diversion 5.4

Use your cellular phone and an application (app) such as Avenza Maps to mark the location of a few trees outside your home or office. Find a way to save these point positions as a GIS database that can be opened in GIS software or Google Earth. In general terms, how accurate (spatially) are the points that represent the trees?

Inspections encourage readers to analyze a GIS database or a result of a spatial analysis function and assess its quality. With inspections, we direct readers to more specific databases or maps available through the Internet, including on this book's website (gis-book.uga.edu). Inspections encourage readers to compare concepts presented in the book to real-world applications. An example of an inspection from Chapter 3 involves accessing a common type of map used in the United States.

Inspection 3.3

Access the Placitas (New Mexico) quadrangle map that is available on the book's website (gis-book.uga.edu). Alternatively, this map can be accessed through topoView, a service hosted by the USGS. The Placitas area is northeast of Albuquerque. In which township and section, would you find Ranchos de Placitas?

The purpose of a translation is to think about hypothetical situations readers may encounter after being provided with background on a specific subject in the text. For example, readers might be asked to concisely describe a GIS process to a person in their life who has little to no understanding of the topic. For example, from Chapter 7, we find this translation exercise:

Translation 7.1

Imagine you are explaining GIS to your parents or siblings. In general terms, describe for them the concept of selecting features, and the various ways that this can be accomplished.

General GIS and GIS analysis topics are important in developing knowledge and skills for the lifelong use of GIS. Many are incorporated into this book. Our goal is to promote skills and analytical capabilities in the readers of this book. Through the topics presented across the eleven chapters, we hope to improve the reader's ability to understand GIS data sources, identify GIS data types and quality, perform common spatial analysis processes, create GIS databases, produce a map, and develop the skills necessary to use GIS to analyze real-world questions related to forestry and natural resources.

1: Geographic information systems

Abstract

Geographic information systems (GIS) are tools that support the collection, display, and analysis of spatial information. They are integral today in natural resource management. The focus of this book is on the theory, concepts, and applications of GIS for foresters and natural resources managers to develop the skills to advance the use of GIS in management. This chapter provides an overview and definition of GIS and the basic concepts that will recur throughout the remaining chapters. As such, one may find here information about hardware and software components and a discussion of the types of problems that GIS can help address. A functioning GIS provides increased efficiency for data storage, analysis, and communication in natural resources. It is important that users of GIS programs understand their functionality, as this knowledge is generally transferrable across data formats, software packages, and analysis processes utilized today.

Keywords

Attributes; GIS; Hardware; Location; Software; Spatial analysis

Introduction

A geographic information system (GIS), in its most basic sense, is a computer mapping program that integrates spatial data (points, lines, polygons, grid cells that have a geographic assignment) and tabular data (numbers, text, codes that describe the features) and allows sophisticated geographical analyses to occur. The power of a GIS rests in the fact that it can be used for many more purposes than to simply make a map. More broadly, a GIS is an entity for collecting, managing, analyzing, and displaying geographic information (Fig. 1.1). A GIS is geographic in the sense that the work one conducts with it generally relates to places of interest, whether on Earth, on Mars, underwater, or inside the human brain. If the places of interest can be associated with a coordinate system, those rules for defining the positions of things, then they are geographic in nature. A GIS allows one to make a connection between physically drawn features and their associated attributes, and this facilitates the development of knowledge about the shape, size, location, and character of the physically drawn features. This information can be of great value in understanding the condition of the landscape or water body to which the data refers. A GIS is considered a system because it is collectively a group of items (hardware and software) that form an organized entity. As was noted in the third sentence of this chapter, formal definitions of GIS often suggest that they are capable of gathering, organizing, and storing data, that they provide the opportunity for people to manipulate and manage this data, that they have great capacity for complex analysis, and that they physically consist of the necessary hardware, software, people (human capital), and communication processes to accomplish some of the most sophisticated geographical analyses one could imagine (Bolstad, 2012; Jensen and Jensen, 2013; Chang, 2019). A synthesized combination of these ideas forms a working definition of GIS as a system that allows for the organization, management, analysis, and visualization of spatial data. In searching widely for published works on GIS, one may find instances when geographic information systems and geographic information sciences are used synonymously. However, geographic information sciences focus on theoretical advances in the field made through novel academic research and industrial applications (Yuan, 2017; Goodchild, 2018). Therefore, for the purposes of this book, these concepts will be treated as separate ideas. Here, we concentrate mainly on the computer-based methods and means to store, access, analyze, manipulate, and visualize spatial and nonspatial data (Fig. 1.2), or basic geographic information systems.

Figure 1.1  The general processes associated with creating GIS databases and maps that describe a location on Earth.

When GIS is used for forestry and natural resource management purposes, it inherently involves mapping elements of landscapes and water bodies. These features could include streams, inventory plots, wildlife habitat patches, recreation areas, or timber stands, and they all are referenced to a place on Earth. Perhaps aerial or satellite imagery assist in the development of databases and in the two-dimensional display of the various resources of interest. Perhaps even global positioning systems (GPS) or physically drawn features assist in the development and display of the resources of interest. Regardless of how the data were developed, a GIS can be used in many interesting ways, such as for representing the three-dimensional aspect of above-ground, underground, or underwater resources (Figs. 1.3 and 1.4) or for assisting in construction and maintenance operations (Huang et al., 2021). The Titanic Mapping Project, for example, which concerned the RMS Titanic, a ship lost in 1912, used GIS to map the underwater location of recovered artifacts and to link these locations to detailed profiles of the ship's features (Vrana et al., 2012). Similarly in forestry and natural resource management, one might use GIS to organize and catalog important features such as wildlife nest locations, property corners, and hiking trails. Of course, there are many other applications of GIS that can help develop knowledge, address management concerns, and investigate issues that have an inherent geographical context (Chen et al., 2015).

Figure 1.2  Year of origin for forested areas of a small portion of the Francis Marion–Sumter National Forest, South Carolina, USA. Credit: Vegetation data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service (2021b).

However, even today with the widespread availability of computers and GIS programs, some maps are still drawn by hand. There are many reasons why people still do this (convenience, cost, training), but these should not diminish the fact that a well-developed map can be of value to the purpose for which it was designed. For perspective, 40 years ago, nearly all forest management maps were hand drawn (Fig. 1.5). GIS was beginning to mature in the 1970 and 1980s, and adoption of the technology by forest management organizations as a standard way of making maps really began to take hold in the 1990s. Today, likely all of the larger forestry and natural resource management organizations utilize some type of computerized mapping program. Fortunately, there are many benefits associated with using computerized systems for map development:

• The symbology (symbols, colors, text) of a map can be adjusted easily.

• Errors within maps can be identified and corrected quickly.

• Maps can be reprinted or saved in digital form.

Figure 1.3  A 3-dimensional radar image of Glacier Bay National Park, Alaska, USA, 2012. Credit: U.S. Department of the Interior, Geological Survey (2012).

• Computer-generated maps often have a more professional appearance than hand-drawn maps.

• Map files can be shared with other people who use the same software.

• Maps can be saved in various graphics formats without having to scan them.

• Within an organization, maps can be developed using consistent data management protocols and templates.

Employers of forestry and natural resource management professionals generally expect new employees and recent graduates to know how to use GIS, and to possess some basic knowledge and skills with respect to computerized mapping technologies (Merry et al., 2007, 2016). If one were to examine job announcements related to entry-level forestry positions, one might further understand the importance of these technologies from an employer's perspective. Two recent studies of job advertisements for entry-level forestry positions in the United States suggest a large percentage of entry-level positions require young professionals to have basic knowledge, experience, or skill in the use of GIS, along with a basic ability to read and interpret maps (Bettinger et al., 2016; Bettinger and Merry, 2018).

Figure 1.4  A sea floor map of the Puerto Rico Trench. Credit: U.S. Department of the Interior, Geological Survey (2006).

Inspection 1.1

Using the Internet, visit the Occupational Outlook Handbook hosted by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and review the duties that conservation scientists and foresters commonly perform (through the What They Do tab). While your exposure to the type of work that conservation scientists and foresters do may just be beginning, try to make a list of the types of maps that might support these duties. Then, compare your list to the lists of others who have also attempted this task.

Figure 1.5  Hand drawn timber sale map from 1983.

In today's contemporary resource management environment, it is reasonable to find that a high percentage of forestry and natural resource management professionals use GIS to support their normal work activities. In one survey of southern United States foresters, nearly 60% of the people surveyed acknowledged that they used GIS two or more days per week, often to navigate across the landscape and to map the boundaries or edges of properties or recent management activities (Bettinger et al., 2019). Forestry and natural resource management careers are not unique in this regard, as other similar natural resource management careers, such as those involving land use planning, may also require professionals to frequently use GIS (Merry et al., 2008). However, natural resource professionals who engage in computerized mapping efforts need not be computer experts. On the other hand, employers are increasingly in need of problem solvers, people who can be relied upon to access adequate and accurate data and make timely management decisions based on their use and on an analysis of spatial data. Therefore, some familiarity with spatial technology, both the theory and the associated technical skills, is part of the routine education and training of natural resource professionals. Educational institutions attempt to instill this knowledge and develop these skills in their students through GIS courses.

Although it is suggested that natural resource professionals need not be computer programmers, knowledge of certain basic technical aspects of GIS might be expected of people who use GIS frequently as part of their job. For example, it would be highly beneficial for professionals to understand the differences among data models, types, and formats associated with GIS, how landscape and water features are referenced using coordinate systems, how to obtain, edit, and manage geographic data, how to employ basic spatial analysis functions and spatial statistics, and how to effectively communicate a message to other people using maps. Likely, few people employed in a forestry and natural resource management organization will have extensive knowledge or skill in all of these areas, but some understanding of these concepts by everyone employed is important. The goal of this book is therefore to provide insights into the building blocks of GIS and help develop the skills commonly used in natural resource management. As one's career in forestry or natural resource management progresses, additional responsibilities (managing personnel, resources, etc.) are likely to follow. An understanding of the building blocks of GIS and the skills commonly used in natural resource management are of great value even when others are the ones conducting the spatial analyses and making the maps. For example, one may find themselves as part of a team responsible for scheduling management activities on several 100,000 acres of forest lands, and almost certainly in this case, utilizing a collection of spatial databases to address the associated tasks (Crosby and Booth, 2011). Or one may find themselves needing to present information on subjects such as biomass or timber availability during a meeting with colleagues, and almost certainly in this case too, utilizing a collection of spatial databases to address the associated questions (Wulder et al., 2008). Understanding how the final product (the plan, the report, the estimate) is developed is important even if the technical analyses and procedures were conducted by others.

In managing computerized maps, foresters and natural resource professionals often edit the shape or location of features (timber stands, roads, etc.), query the associated databases to answer questions (Which stands are of an age that can be thinned?), and regularly manipulate and update graphic features to illustrate management activities and concerns. Editing spatial features, editing associated attribute tables, and digitizing landscape features are common tasks for forestry and natural resource management professionals (Merry et al., 2007, 2016). In one survey of these professionals, the most frequently developed maps included basic maps indicating the location of a stand of trees and specific maps indicating areas scheduled for harvest. In association with these products, ownership boundaries, roads, streams, and management units were the most frequently used types of GIS databases (Merry et al., 2016).

With time, foresters and natural resource managers will realize that they need reliable access to a myriad of databases in order to make rapid, accurate, actionable decisions and to disseminate the outcomes and implications of these decisions to others. To accomplish this, many people utilize GIS, if not for the types of analyses that are possible, but at least as a clearinghouse within which the data can be accessed and displayed. A GIS can be used to plan and store inventory data (Kӧhl et al., 2006), to integrate data collected with GPS (McConnell et al., 2020), to plan forest operations (Bettinger and Sessions, 2003; Grigolato et al., 2017) and to analyze remotely sensed data for management or wildlife habitat assessments (Wulder et al., 2005; McDermid et al., 2009). A GIS can help address many land management issues that are of interest to society, to research, and to practice. GIS has become so ubiquitous in natural resources fields over the last few decades, that when asked what data might be needed to determine forested areas in need of a thinning treatment, one's first inclination may be to turn on the computer and access a vegetation-related GIS database.

Reflection 1.1

Imagine you have been asked by your employer to determine what forested area(s) should be thinned in the next year or two. Think about what information you would need to address this request. For example, what assumptions would you develop about areas that could be thinned, and what GIS databases might you need? What would you need to do with the data, in terms of analysis, to arrive at a reasonable estimate of forest areas to be thinned for your employer? Develop a short summary of how you would respond to this request, one that points directly to the specific questions noted here in this reflection exercise.

Brief history of the development of GIS

Although an incredibly enticing technology for young professionals to investigate, the structures and underpinnings of GIS were developed over 50 years ago. One of the early efforts to enable the analysis of landscape features through the use of computers involved comprehensively classifying land in Canada and detailing the capabilities of lands for both active management and conservation (Goodchild, 2018). In fact, the very history of GIS is tied to the development of computer systems and the management of natural resources, as evidenced by the early work of Roger Tomlinson's team at IBM (Tomlinson, 1968) creating a system that gathered, stored, and analyzed data related to land cover and inventory in Canada. Along with this effort came the creation of the acronym GIS (Yuan, 2017). Early GIS programs were constrained by the processing speed, available storage, and power of the computer systems that were available; therefore, the use of GIS was relegated to specialists and researchers in mathematics and statistics, geography, cartography, and computer science fields (Goodchild, 2018; Coppock and Rhind, 1991). However, GIS by its nature is interdisciplinary, and as advancements in computing capabilities were made, more people with widely diverging interests began to incorporate GIS into science, business, and education. Other interesting developments followed: Chicago's transportation system was examined through work at Northwestern University, the U.S. Census Bureau began to spatially reference addresses, and the U.S. Geological Survey integrated their classic 7.5-minute topographic maps with computer systems. From these efforts, the promise of GIS became evident for fields spanning the spectrum of planning, geology, demography, cartography, natural resource management, and others (Coppock and Rhind, 1991). In the time since Tomlinson began his work, local and national governments, natural resources organizations in the public and private sectors, and individuals have embraced the opportunities GIS and spatial technologies present.

Diversion 1.1

Either alone, or as an informal team of your classmates or colleagues, search the Internet to learn how the following people have been influential in the development of GIS as we know it today: Cynthia Brewer, Jack Dangermond, Howard Fisher, Michael Goodchild, Gerardus Mercator, Ptolemy, Roger Tomlinson, and Dawn Wright. Then, develop a short summary of the contributions of one or more of these people to the development of GIS.

In forestry, the push to enable field foresters to use GIS for their daily mapping needs began in the mid-1990s (Bettinger, 1999). Today, digital mapping through smartphone applications and Internet-based mapping programs promotes the use of GIS by nearly everyone (Teixeira, 2018) by making the technology much more accessible. Great advances have been made in computing systems over the last 2decades, yet GIS may still be limited today by legacy decisions enacted early in its development, such as using a planar (flat) surface as the basis for display, development, and analysis (as it is with paper maps) rather than the curved surface of the Earth (Goodchild, 2018). Even so, a number of technological advances in the 1990s enabled GIS to be accessible through Windows-based operating systems (rather than command-line systems, where one would type a long string of codes to tell a GIS system to perform an operation) and through computers equipped with increasing central processing unit (CPU) speed and random-access memory (RAM). Society is increasingly demanding real-time, location-based services; thus, recent progress in the evolution of GIS involves exploring the ability to accommodate Big Data (defined by its volume, velocity (frequency of availability), or variety) and the various opportunities that might be accommodated by crowd-sourced data (Wilson, 2015). As computer systems, and our knowledge of the world in general advance, we are beginning to acknowledge that forestry and natural resource management GIS data can be collected and analyzed at increasingly finer scales, giving rise to the term precision forestry. Computer processing speed and data access are improving with cloud-based platforms; therefore, GIS and spatial analysis are poised to play an even greater role in the management of natural resources in the future.

Translation 1.1

Imagine that you are gathered with a group of friends from high school, and they are interested in what you are learning in college. You mention precision forestry, and they become intrigued. Develop a short, 100-word (or so) summary of the field of precision forestry. Write it in a manner that you would offer it to your high school friends.

In general, a GIS provides an efficient means for collecting, managing, and sharing data. GIS allows for the classification of management areas by accessibility and status (Stinson et al., 2019), and by ownership, forest age, dominant species, and so on (Bettinger et al., 2017). In natural resource management, many types of GIS databases are beneficial in addressing immediate and longer-term management issues. Some of these will be described in greater detail later in this book. As brief examples of data availability in the United States, detailed forest data for national forests can be obtained from the U.S. Forest Service (Fig. 1.6), soils data can be obtained from the U.S. Natural Resources Conservation Service, wildlife habitat information can be obtained from various fish and wildlife agencies, and current and historical weather and climate data can be obtained from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). These databases are all freely and readily available to the public, and several of these will be referenced throughout this book. Provided also will be examples of how these data can support forest management and planning. However, some types of data (e.g., forest types) may be unavailable for privately owned lands. In these cases, GIS databases may need to be created. Therefore, expectations of the outcomes of a mapping project should be informed through an assessment of the needs of the project and an assessment of data available (and associated quality). Further, depending upon where one works, foresters or natural resource professionals may use a proprietary GIS system, commercial GIS software, a free, open-source GIS system, or some combination of these to conduct their work. Some unique nuances can be found in the use of these systems, but the core concepts (the theory) should be similar. Therefore, expectations of the outcomes of a mapping project should also be informed through an assessment of the capabilities of the GIS software program being used.

Figure 1.6  The location of aspen (Populus spp.) stands in the Chippewa National Forest, Minnesota, USA. Credit: Vegetation data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service (2021a).

Several critical components are necessary to maintain a functioning GIS program. As has been noted, data is paramount to GIS, as are the people who perform the tasks, manage the databases, make the maps, ensure scripts (computer programs) are running, and so on. Two other critical components of GIS—hardware and software—can have a multitude of options, at times making them seem dizzyingly complex.

Figure 1.7  A desktop computer—central processing unit (CPU), dual monitors, keyboard, and mouse.

GIS hardware

Hardware refers to, essentially, the physical pieces of equipment that define a computer (e.g., Fig. 1.7). These components include, but may not be limited to the following:

• Computer box or case

• Internal hard drives

• RAM modules

• External storage devices

• Motherboard

• Graphics card

• Sound card

• Monitor(s)

• Wiring

• USB and other ports

• CD, DVD, and other drives

• Speaker(s)

• Microphone

• Camera

• Mouse

• Keyboard

• Printer and plotter

• Scanner

• External power supply or adapter

Many of these components of GIS are the same as the components of a typical personal computing system found in an office environment. In the case of a laptop personal computer, many of these components (e.g., monitor, case, keyboard, camera, speaker, etc.) are closely integrated. In the early stages of the development of GIS, physical maps were transferred to a computer using digitizing tables or boards. Scanners were, and still are, necessary for converting hardcopy maps to a digital format. A plotter might be required for printing large maps, and additional storage (external or internal hard drives, or cloud storage) may be necessary to host the data. While we now use cloud-based or Internet services to host and share GIS data, in some instances, GIS data is still shared or stored using removable media such as a CD (compact disc), DVD (digital video disc), USB flash drive, or other types of memory devices. Therefore, the ability to accommodate these through various drives or ports many be important. The hardware needed to use GIS will depend on the project or data management goals, which may evolve as GIS skills grow and the scope of projects becomes more complex. In some instances of employment, such as a land management organization or educational institution that has an information technology (IT) group, many of the hardware decisions may already have been made. However, if this is not the case, and one needs to obtain a desktop computer or laptop to use GIS, one that has plenty of speed and memory will likely be