WildMetro Offers GIS Class


On Friday, February 15 and 22, John Mickleson, friend to WildMetro and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) expert, taught a two-part seminar on Introduction to GIS.    Attending the class were five young volunteers for WildMetro: Danny Ulhar, Nudhbi Choudhury, Sogol Jafarzadeh, Richard Aracil, and Andrew Kaplan.  John provided the attendees with the basics of navigation in a graphic user interface (GUI) like Google Earth.  He also taught how to store and create information for a GIS program through the use of KML and KMZ files.  WildMetro plans to use our new found GIS knowledge, skills, and ability to digitalize our extensive plant, bird, and mammal data studies throughout the New York metropolitan region.  Once we digitalize the data, we will use image overlays on Google Earth to track changes in the landscape and species’ population.

       
Sample Image Overlay of Bird Species' Location in Pelham Bay Park

If you want to learn the basics of GIS or are interested in helping on this project, please contact David Burg at wildmetro@gmail.com.