HOME ENV510 Landscape Ecology and GIS

Definitions & descriptions | Concepts & issues | Setting up GIS | Using GIS | Application
Functionality | Analysis | Functions | Q & A | Categories | Modelling | Software

Questions, answers and functions

A GIS can be used to ask the question 'what is best' as well as for looking at spatial patterning and relating the distribution of features to that patterning.

GIS Questions

The type of questions that can be answered in a GIS can be categorised into:·

• What are the data?
• What are the patterns in the data?
• What could the data be in another place or time or under different conditions?

GIS Answers

The answers from a GIS fall into one of three types:·

• A presentation of the current data
• A pattern in the current data
• A prediction of what the data could be at a different time or place

GIS Functions

The three function types used to generate these answers from GIS are:·

• Storage and retrieval functions
• Constrained query functions
• Modelling functions
  
  (Adapted from Aranoff, 1989).
  

  
  Do this - Real questions and answers - Why?
  Skim read Case Study 3 about landscape functioning in the Kidman Springs area of the Northern Territory.Think about the questions and answers this GIS addresses. List the emphases in your e-journal:
  - Data
  - Data patterns
  - Data predictions
  

TOP

Site map | Glossary | Downloads | References | Resources | Graphics Version


ENV510 Home
Updated July 2004 © Charles Darwin University
Copyright information and disclaimer

Report page problems to lrp@cdu.edu.au