GISing On A Rainy Day- 5 January 2009

This picture shows my ordinary defense mechanism for postponing tasks that I would rather not do. The art of procrastination begins and ends with the skill of maintaining a highly disorganized office. This is just a small slice of my workspace, but the astute observer will quickly realize that almost everything I will need in any given month is likely all within arms reach. And, if the wheels on my rolling chair are functioning properly, suddenly everything for a whole quarter is at my fingertips. What does all of this efficiency have to do with procrastination? Simple. Although my office organization technique makes me highly efficient, most people wonder how I can accomplish anything at all. Therefore, if I want to put something off until a later time or date (which I usually do) I simply spend three to four days cleaning my office. Disorganizing it, if you will, all under the guise of efficiency.

Today, I didn't have that luxury. I have a mapping assignment that's been on my plate for awhile now that was unofficially due on Wednesday. Last Wednesday. So, I decided to start on it today. I've been working on a GIS project that basically divides Kokopelli Wildlife Area into several (140, to be exact) different areas and stores a set of attributes for each parcel all in one spot. Things like acreage, current habitat type, infrastructure, soil type, and photos. GIS stands for Geographic Information Systems--it is basically a system that allows you to store all kinds of data and have it referenced to a place on a map. After you get all the information you need into a program such as ArcGIS, you can spit out a map that looks something like this:

The different labels and lines and colors all mean different things. In this example, the large yellow numbers correspond to soil types and the small, green numbers are the numbers of the parcels that I carved out of Kokopelli WA. When a parcel is clicked, a magical spreadsheet opens up that tells you everything you need to know about that specific piece of ground. I know this all sounds really cool, but just imagine how much more fun it is to actually do it. But before you get to do all this fun stuff, some poor stooge has to actually enter in the data and draw the boundaries, and all that other exciting stuff. Enter Pikeminnow, the wildlife biologist.

Basically my day was spent typing in attribute information for all 140 of the parcels of Kokopelli WA, so that people can play around with it later and create pretty maps. And steal all the glory.

I know, I know, now all of you are probably jealous and wondering how you, too, can live the glamorous life of a wildlife biologist. Oh, well, at least it was raining out today...