GIS

What is GIS? GIS stands for geographic information systems, defined by ESRI as, "A system that creates, manages, analyzes, and maps all types of data. GIS connects data to a map, integrating location data (where things are) with all types of descriptive information (what things are like there)." (source)

I won’t bore you with the history of GIS lesson that you’d get in any intro GIS class. The essence of what you should know is that GIS and the whole geospatial world have rapidly evolved over the last 50+ years, and that GIS is utilized more and more in both academic and professional settings.

How can you use GIS? GIS can seem very overwhelming at first - and it is! f you are able, a class - whether at school or through an online program (linkedin learning, coursera, edX) - can be a helpful place to start. There are also lots of tutorials online for free on youtube, and plenty of help forums as well.

GIS requires some sort of software or program to use, and luckily there are a lot out there, with varying degrees of cost and user-friendliness. In my personal experience, I've heard about the programs below the most, and have found the following in terms of their usability and cost.

• ArcGIS - very commonly used, fairly user friendly, does cost a bit but it is not the most expensive.

• GEE - also fairly commonly used, requires coding/a bit more advanced, free.

• TerrSet - not super common, not very user friendly, high cost.

• QGis - the only one which I have not used, free and user friendly.

There are of course more than these out there, but in my time as a GIS user, these names are the ones that I hear the most

GIS 101

Let’s say you’ve picked a software, and found some resources on how to use it. Where do you start? What is the most important to learn? GIS has practically endless uses, and you could quickly overwhelm yourself trying to understand it all. Depending on your goals, you may want to spend more time learning about certain areas over others. However, some key things that everyone should know are below

• Data. Data is the foundation of what you do in any GIS software, and knowing data types and where to get data, as well as how to store it, is super important!

• Terminology - learning what things are called both generally and in the software you use will be very helpful when you get stuck or don’t know what went wrong

GIS takes a long time to learn properly - I first used GIS over 2 years ago, and I still learn new things all the time. The most important thing is to be patient with yourself (and the software), and don’t forget to have fun!