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In late September, a representative from the Portland Police
Department visited the weekly open house at USM's Geographical
Information Systems (GIS) lab to see how GIS equipment could
make their dispatching system quicker and more efficient.
The visit opened their eyes to other possible ways GIS could
help them. GIS combines a powerful database system with the
three-dimensional graphic capacity of a CAD (computer aided
design) system. The police had been analyzing the geographical
distribution of local crimes by representing crime statistics
on an area map with pushpins. With a well-designed GIS program,
they could, they learned, bring together all the crime statistics
in a computerized data bank with three-dimensional digital
satellite imagery and mapping capacity at any scale.
USM's GIS lab has taken on the mission of encouraging application
of GIS technology to problem solving in and out of academia.
The lab was first established in 1993 in Bailey Hall in Gorham
using internal funds. It was expanded in 1997 with funds from
a National Science Foundation grant written by Matthew Bampton,
associate professor of geography, who has been the driving
force behind development of GIS capacity at USM since he joined
the faculty in 1992. The lab, which acquired more equipment
in 1999-2000 with additional NSF funding of $100,000, will
be upgraded again through Bampton's latest NSF grant for $360,000,
which also will equip labs at UMaine at Farmington, Fort Kent,
Augusta and Machias.
NSF curriculum grant
The latest grant will integrate GIS technology into more
disciplines. At Fort Kent, for example, GIScience will be
applied to forestry-related projects; a criminology professor
at UMA is interested in GIS applications; at UMF, it will
be used to enhance epidemiological research by a medical geographer
looking at environmental factors affecting disease; and at
Machias, GIS will be used in marine studies. Curriculum assistant
Rosemary Mosher will visit all labs, developing lab materials
and faculty skills.
The three-year, NSF-funded curriculum project, which started
last May, also will support development of a GIScience curriculum
that will include a common core of skills to be taught to
students at all the participating institutions. This will
allow students to move to another campus that matches their
focus of interest. The curriculum also will allow for lab
exercises and data sets tailored to the geographic situation
and programmatic strengths of each campus. USM has the biggest
facility in the grant consortium, more GIS courses and faculty
resources, including a lab operations manager, Nasir Shir.
GIS, Bampton explains, enables researchers to pose variations
of two basic questions: what can be said about a particular
location, and where are all the locations related to a particular
piece of information. It can provide all the information –historical,
geographical, ecological, fiscal, etc.– that has been collected
referring to an exact location on the map, accessed by selecting
that point on the map; and it can identify all the places
where a particular observation about the world occurs.
At USM, it is being used in urban planning projects, archaeology,
geology, environmental science, biology and some Muskie School
projects. Biologist Chris Maher uses GIS to map the sites
of burrows in her research on groundhog social patterns, and
botanist Terry Theodose maps plant communities in salt marshes.
Bampton cites colleagues in other institutions who apply GIS
to track cancer clusters and patterns of car theft.
GIScience in the field
After USM's initial GIS lab was set up, Mark Swanson, professor
of geology, approached Bampton about applying GIS technology
to geologic research. Swanson and Bampton have spent the last
eight years in the field developing techniques for precision
digital mapping of geologic data, using Global Positioning
System, which makes use of a satellite receiver, and a radio
transmitter and receiver to establish a point out in the field
within one millimeter in three dimensions. In recent years,
Bampton and Swanson have developed techniques for integrating
GPS data collection with the use of the infrared equipment
Total Stations, so that the two technologies complement and
correct each other. The information is displayed and analyzed
using GIS technology.
With GPS equipment, Swanson has been studying the collision
between North America and Africa that happened 500 million
years ago. Like a cop reading a car's skid marks for evidence,
Swanson reads the history of the ancient collision of the
two continents that is recorded in the cracks, fractures,
skid marks and smears that show in the rock fabric along the
Norumbega fault line. He and his students measure and record
the cracks in the rock face, mapping the intrusion of external
rock material and other tiny details that they follow over
hundreds of meters and kilometers. Traditionally, such mapping
was done on paper by hand, often recording the shape of features
such as ribbons of other rock by outlining the intruded rock
with string and transferring the drawing to paper. This technique
required managing strips of paper many feet long.
After working with Bampton on applying GIS/GPS to his needs,
Swanson and his students can now map in a week what used to
take a whole field season. Using the digital mapping ability
of GPS and Total Stations, they can map very tiny details
more precisely and zoom out via computer from tiny details
to the large scale context, looking at the region of mid-coast
Maine to New Brunswick. Over the last eight years, Bampton,
Swanson and their students have been mapping the Norumbega
fault line where it falls among the peninsulas and islands
of the coastline between Brunswick and Bath. The two professors
and their students use sea kayaks to navigate the area and
land their recording equipment on rocky outcrops.
NSF student training grant
Since 1993, the two also have collaborated on grants. Last
spring, they received another NSF grant for $122,000 that
allowed them to train nine undergraduate students over the
summer in the use of GIS, GPS, Total Stations and traditional
geologic field methods as they continued mapping the tectonic
plates on the Maine coast. While three of the students were
USM science majors, the other six students were chosen from
a national pool, coming from as far away as Montana to get
trained in this emerging field.
"We're at a turning point in our ability to analyze data"
Bampton says. "We now have the tools to map with a precision
that allows us to understand more, working on a scale that
allows you to see the distribution of features, patterns,
linkages, and orientation that were previously invisible.
"Increasingly, I think, we'll be able to see new things in
nature. It's a breakthrough point in science like that which
happened when good quality microscopes became widely distributed.
Or like the late 17th century when the first reliable maps
allowed scientists to begin to see how the shape of continents
fit together, setting the stage for the theory of plate tectonics."
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