Soil, Water, and Ecosystem Sciences
Online Courses
Course Listings:
SWS 4720C: GIS IN SOIL AND WATER SCIENCE
About the Course
This course provides students with the basic concepts of geographic information systems and applications focused on soil and water resource management, familiarizes them with the ESRI ArcGIS 10.x software and provide guided practice. Students who finish this class should be able to:
- Explain what a GIS is and what it can do
- Work with and create GIS maps in ArcMap
- Access and query a GIS database
- Describe two common GIS data structures
- Explain what geographic data is, how it is made, and where to get it
- Explain what spatial analysis is and solve geographic problems using ArcGIS analysis tools
- List common GIS tasks and identify which ArcGIS Desktop application is used for each task
- Understand what the geodatabase offers for GIS data storage
- Create, edit, and add data to a geodatabase
- Control the appearance and display of data layers in ArcMap
- Change the coordinate system and map projection used to display a dataset
- Query and analyze GIS data
- Create presentation-quality maps and graphs
Credits: 3
Semesters Offered: Fall and Spring
General Education Requirement Course: No
Prerequisites: Basic knowledge in Windows operating system and in geography, statistics, and soil science/land resources, and high-speed Internet access are expected.
Textbook: Required: Gorr W. and Kristen Kurland. 2016. GIS Tutorial 1, Basic Workbook for ArcGIS 10.3.x. Sixth Edition. ESRI Press. Redlands, California.
Recommended: Bolstad P. 2008. GIS Fundamentals. Eider Press, White Bear Lake, Minnesota and Chang, Kang-tsung. Introduction to Geographic Information Systems. McGraw Hill. Boston. MA