Geographic Information Systems and Remote Sensing

Geographic Information Systems (GIS)
Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are one of the most important developments to occur recently in Geography. You can think of GIS as computerized mapping. Computers revolutionized our ability to analyze large amounts of information about the Earth, and these improvements have affected everything from how we study the environment, to how the government works, to how large businesses operate.

• give precise directions between any two addresses in the U.S.
• map the population density of the Baltimore metro region
• model the movement of toxic spills through the groundwater
• create 3-d images of faraway places

I teach a couple of classes in GIS, and the last two examples were made by some of my students in a lab exercise. Lucky for them, GIS is not hard to learn, and there are a lot of jobs out there for people who know how to use it.

Remote Sensing
Remote Sensing is simply the ability to see the ground from far away. It is a phrase we use that covers airplanes taking photos of the ground, and satellites using sensors to create images of the Earth. There are lots of satellites recording images of the Earth right now, and much of this imagery is available for free on the Internet. Here are a few examples:

This last image is from a sensor called ‘MODIS’- see if you can click on the city of Baltimore in the image below.