April 3, 2007
GIS Technology Maps People and Planet
by
Daniel Hecht

My most recent chat with David Healy was by phone from Ukraine. I could picture him in Dnipropetrovsk, far from his Calais home: curly white hair, a habitually cheerful expression, resembling -- dependent on the state of either’s haircut -- the great bluegrass mandolinist, Dave “Dawg” Grisman.

Our globe-spanning talk was appropriate, given what David does. He’s vice president of Applied Information Management at Stone Environmental, in Montpelier. I think of him as the Steve Jobs of geographical information systems (GIS), an important tool for understanding the natural world and how human beings affect it.

A man of omnivorous intelligence and broad interests, he describes himself as a person “constantly in search of solutions to problems.” Given his BA in Meteorology and MA in Urban Planning, it’s clear he seeks solutions by looking at the larger systemic context of things. Thus his twenty-year interest in GIS.

Aerial mapping is not new, but it wasn’t until we acquired the vertical distance of orbital satellites that we could get a true overview of the terrain. Over here, for example, the entire length of the Missouri River, tributaries like roots of a tree; there, the whole meandering line of knuckled humps that is the Blue Ridge Mountains.

GIS combines these overhead views with digitized data sets based on what’s happening in a place. Think of taking a high-altitude photograph of the ground, then laying on it a series of transparent sheets, each scattered with differently-colored dots or shadings that signify a certain amount or quality of something. As the layers add up, a mosaic emerges, with patterns that reveal a great deal.

If you’re modeling a river system, you might sample various aspects of the waterway at many points and assemble a multi-dimensional portrait of river depth, fish populations, human activities along the banks, and pollutant presence.

Adding the first data overlay, you might discover that where there are lots of red dots signifying pollution, there aren’t many green dots signifying fish. Another layer, with black dots for industrial plants and yellow dots for apple orchards, reveals a surprise: The red pollution dots concentrate near the apple orchards. Deduction: The pollutants aren’t of industrial origin but are, say, pesticide runoff from agriculture. Solution: Determine how to help fish and apples coexist.

GIS can also go into the air to build spatial models that include weather patterns, air pollution, and bird migration routes. And with information from borings and ground-penetrating radar, it can depict what’s beneath the surface, mapping water table contours, soil depth, mineral content, or the “plumes” of contaminants spreading from a pollution source.

A comparatively simple example of Stone Environmental’s GIS work is a recent job developing visualizations of three possible wind tower installations in Vermont, New York, and Maine. Using topographical information, the GIS data models the towers’ visual impact on the landscape. This accurate, objective assessment and realistic digital imaging permits optimum siting, valuable for both developers and wind opponents.

Another Stone project is developing a GIS system to support ecosystem-based management of New York State’s coastal areas. David’s role is to collect information, identify data deficiencies, and design a data management strategy. The resulting GIS map will show living systems such as mollusk, eel grass, and endangered species populations, in the context of human factors like population, economics, behaviors, land use, and pollutant spills.

Prior to GIS, the interaction of such elements was not easily recognizable. Now, their mutual influence can be seen and understood, to the benefit of both people and the environment.

A good example is Stone Environmental’s GIS-based study of demographic and environmental factors in the African countries, Niger and Mali. Working village by village, David and his team assembled a regional information infrastructure based on census data, looking for the causes of poverty. Their maps juxtaposed six human factors, including hunger, education, and proximity to roads, with environmental factors such as rainfall and soil characteristics.

The rainbow-hued maps showed a clear correspondence between poverty and specific environmental factors.

Traditionally, economists analyzing wealth and poverty have tended to focus on measures of trade, industry, and financial policy, and to minimize the influence of natural resources and ecosystems. But with GIS-derived models, governments can better plan development investments, highway construction, and agricultural or educational policies -- all of which, thanks to GIS, they now know must respect the characteristics and capacities of the natural environment.

Given its basis in aerial images and digital information, it might seem that GIS encourages a remote or abstracted view. In fact, it does not distance us from Earth – it’s a tool to help us understand our planetary home, and ourselves, better at last.

###

To learn more about GIS, visit Vermont Center for Geographical Information’s fun and informative interactive website, www.vcgi.org.

Daniel Hecht is a novelist and executive director of Vermont Environmental Consortium. For more information on any Green Grapevine topic, contact vec@norwich.edu.

Copyright 2007 by Daniel Hecht

<< Back