Syllabus
Day 1: Overview of key issues in watershed ecology. Introduction to the Northeast Creek watershed. Learn about the watershed through GIS. Impacts of residential and other development on watershed processes. Introductory field trip to view this watershed and surrounding areas of Mount Desert Island.
Day 2: Introduction to GIS and GPS technology. Students will learn how to collect location and attribute data in the field using GPS, and later import data into a GIS map. Field-interpretation of existing GIS map layers in the Northeast Creek watershed.
Day 3: All-day field trip in the Northeast Creek watershed during which we will collect spatially-referenced data on habitat diversity, biological resources, human impacts, and other watershed characteristics. Learn about GIS-based models designed to predict the impacts of land-use changes on estuarine water quality.
Day 4: Use field-collected and other data to generate interactive GIS maps of the watershed and perform basic analyses. Follow-up field work as needed.
Day 5: Approaches for discovering and sharing data with others using the Internet, including on-line GIS and Google Earth. Techniques learned here will be applicable to watersheds in other parts of the country. |
