1. Introducing GIS Getting to Know ArcGIS Desktop

2. Brief History Recap  Studying the world using maps and globes  Models are now found inside computers – more and more sophisticated Computer models (maps) + Analysis tools = GIS

3. Old Map of what?

4. GIS are  ….tools that allow for the processing of spatial data into information, generally information tied explicitly to, and used to make decision about, some portion of the earth. Demers, 2000

5. Forecasting Geological Trends

6. GIS tracks our weather

7. Layers of GIS

9. Layers contain Features or Surfaces  City Layer –Capital Cities –Towns –Villages

10. Features have shape and size  Can be represented one of 3 ways –Point (cities, schools, fire hydrants etc…) –Line (road, river, pipelines) –Polygon (countries, lakes, tracts of land) Same object may be represented by a polygon in one layer and line or point in another.

11. Vector Data  Points, lines and polygons are vector data

12. Surfaces  Numbers rather than shape  Elevation, slope, temperature, rainfall…  Raster – a matrix of identically sized square cells

13. Surface-Raster of Ocean

14. Features linked to Info  Features are more than shape and location  Info is stored in Attribute Table  Records (rows) for each feature  Fields (columns) for each category of info