This course will serve as an introduction to using spatial data in a geographic information system platform and is intended to meet the continued needs of fisheries professionals to integrate spatial assessments into their research and management objectives. Participants will learn fundamental concepts of using geographic information and gain experience applying those concepts in hands-on exercises to accomplish real world tasks that might be conducted by a fisheries biologist. We will introduce participants to ArcGIS Pro, a commonly used software, and the open source software QGIS which has seen vast improvements over recent years. We will provide instructions for hands-on exercises for both software packages so participants can choose the program they are most likely to use. Temporary student licenses in ArcGIS Pro will be provided to students who would like to complete the workshop using that software. Lectures will focus on concepts, such as understanding spatial projections and scales, avoiding pitfalls of incorrect usage, and technical topics such as formatting and management of spatially referenced data. Participants will learn how to create maps using best practices, locate and read metadata, use existing datasets, create new datasets by digitizing or incorporating field-collected spatial information, join tabular data to spatial data, use geoprocessing methods to summarize metrics, and carry out other GIS operations useful for fisheries biologists. Participants will be able to apply the concept and techniques covered in this workshop to their own work upon completion of the course.
Organizers:
Hadley Boehm, [email protected]
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