AMS Short Course on GIS Tutorial for Atmospheric Sciences
Room 354
In recent years geographic information systems (GIS) and other geospatial technologies have become increasingly important to the atmospheric sciences community. The use of GIS in many traditional atmospheric organizations has expanded greatly and has become an important tool in both the private and public sectors for such applications as data integration, decision making, mapping, and information dissemination. Today, GIS has become very interoperable with weather, climate, and hydrometeorological data.
This course will teach basic GIS theory and methods using the Environmental Systems Research Institute’s (Esri) ArcGIS for Desktop platform. All hands-on exercises will use weather and climate case studies in order to illustrate the power of GIS technology for integrating physical weather and climate datasets with more traditional GIS socio-economic and infrastructure spatial datasets. This course is aimed at traditional atmospheric science students and faculty as well as professional meteorologists and climatologists working in both the private and public sectors. Each section in this course will be formatted into a short lecture and detailed hands-on exercise. During the lecture portion, geospatial theory will be explained, followed the hands-on lab exercise where participants can work with ArcMap and ArcCatalog software using real weather and climate datasets.
Key concepts covered will include exploring spatial data with ArcMap and ArcCatalog, data symbology and classification, cartographic mapping, and coordinate systems and map projections. Case studies will include historical tornado tracks, the 2012 drought in Texas, Hurricane Sandy’s track and impacts, the Superstorm of 1993, and modeled climate simulations.
Course Details:
This is a one-day course that will be offered on Sunday January 10th.There are no prerequisites necessary, however, previous knowledge of geospatial data is helpful. Lunch will not be provided for this course. Participants must bring their own laptop with Esri’s ArcGIS for Desktop already installed. A one-year evaluation copy of the Esri ArcGIS for Desktop software will be provided and instructions on installation will be posted prior to the course. ArcGIS for Desktop is designed with Windows-based computers but can run on Apple computers that run windows using VMWare, BootCamp, or Parallels. The instructors encourage the use of a Windows-based laptop.
Course Instructors:
Jennifer Boehnert, GIS Coordinator, National Center for Atmospheric Research and Greg Dobson, Director of Geospatial Technology, University of North Carolina at Asheville.
For more information, please contact Jennifer Boehnert at 303-497-2858 or [email protected], or contact Greg Dobson at 828-251-6973 or [email protected].