GIS Day

GIS Day was on Nov. 18, however I was working that day (and there weren't any planned activities at my place of employment).  So instead I ended up celebrating GIS Day this past Monday (11/23) at work with the official unveiling of one of my internship deliverables.

As part of my internship I had updated a 'how-to' guide explaining GIS and GPS protocol for the Stanislaus NF (STF) Heritage Staff.  The guide takes one through the following steps: create a working data storage file structure, how to collect GPS data & download it, how to append the GPS data to a working copy of the STF Heritage geodatabase, how to digitize surveyed areas, what the preferred attribute values are for the Heritage data, and how (as well as when) to submit the final product to the STF GIS Coordinator.  The guide will hopefully standardize the spatial data collection methods for the forest, and also help those who may not have very strong GIS skills complete basic data management tasks.

Sample page on how to find & use the Append tool.

Towards the latter end, I 'field-tested' my guide on two employees who have had little to no GIS experience.  Their current job duties have given them the GPS collection and download experience, but the GIS side of things was lacking because technically that's not their job.  Yet in order to move ahead our profession basic GIS skills are required... but opportunities to learn them can be thin on the ground (but much appreciated whenever they come along).  My co-workers used the guide, and said that it was easy to follow and understand (which I was seriously wondering about, because the append part wasn't so easy to write... I have a new appreciation for our professors and TAs who put together our labs with all those screenshots!).  Hopefully future new employees at STF also find it easy to use and understand, and can navigate their way through data collection at STF with confidence.

*Originally published on November 27, 2015.  Updated on 2/27/2017 to repair image links.