SPRING
2002 • VOLUME 6, NUMBER 3
Center
for Environmental Literacy Spatial Data Server to Inform Students,
Faculty and Administration
BY
JANET TOBIN
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Geographically
referenced information about the campus environment is now
accessible to anyone via the Internet and the College's new
spatial data server. |
A Mount
Holyoke art class can use its data on College plant species to
create accurate botanical drawings. An economics professor can
use its information to prepare a report for the president on the
cost-effectiveness of adopting alternative energy sources in a
proposed new building. Facilities management staff can use its
data on the rate and cause of sediment buildup in the College’s
Lower Lake to make decisions about redirecting storm water runoff.
It is a new spatial data server (SDS), an ongoing project of the
College’s Center for Environmental Literacy (CEL) that is being
supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Uncommon
in the Information Age are tools that provide both the titanic
amounts of information we crave and ways to find the meaning we
often struggle to extract. Just such a hybrid, Mount Holyoke’s
new SDS allows nonscientists and scientists alike access to many
layers of campus environmental data and provides ways to analyze
it—all with the click of a mouse. In fact, anyone with access
to the Internet can use the SDS to perform, in a matter of minutes,
an analysis that formerly would have taken a scientist trained
in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) software a significant
amount of time to complete.
For
the past thirty years, scientists have been using GIS, computer
systems in which geographically referenced information is assembled,
stored, manipulated, and displayed, to analyze and attempt to
solve environmental dilemmas. A GIS typically has two components:
one that operates on graphics (satellite images, for example)
and another that operates on descriptive, text-based information
(data relating to the mapped areas). Because of their complexity,
these systems have been accessible only to specialists. “Lots
of campuses have more GIS data than they know what to do with,
since most people don’t have the training to use the systems,”
says Scott Bergen of the CEL. “Mount Holyoke’s spatial data server
combines GIS and environmental data in a way that is useful to
everyone.”
The
campus data, which have been amassed by the CEL over the past
four years and now compose the server’s database, include everything
from satellite maps of campus buildings and undeveloped areas
to information about roads and trails. The server retrieves and
processes descriptive information useful for tracking and analyzing
environmental impact. Linked to the Stony Brook watershed on the
SDS campus map, for example, is a table with information about
streams, land use, and vegetation for specific locations within
the watershed.
“I
don’t know of another college that is using GIS data both to inform
administrative decision making and to assist in integrating environmental
content throughout its curriculum,” says CEL director and Associate
Professor of Geography Thomas Millette, an expert in GIS and the
founder of the College’s GeoProcessing Laboratory. “The spatial
data server is one part of the College’s steadfast commitment
to fostering an environmentally sustainable college community.”
Take
a look at the SDS at http://www.mtholyoke.edu/proj/cel/sds.
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