Google Earth Helps Ecosystem Management Staff Get the Job Done
By Paul Boudreau, Re-printed with permission from DFO Maritime’s ‘In The Loop’.
When planning any road trip, most of us refer to Google Maps to find our destination. Now at DFO, members of the Maritimes Region, Ecosystem Management (EM) Branch, are using Google Earth to make their workload easier and optimize their goals. Recently, the EM Branch hosted a workshop that provided training to staff on the benefits of using this popular Internet website and available online information. Through this article, you will see if this program can help you with your job.
Managing human activities from the edge of the continental shelf, up to the height of coastal watersheds that support anadromous and catadromous fish is a challenge for the EM Branch. In order to do this, there is a wide variety of information required.
Traditionally, staff have put a lot of effort and energy into finding and making use of information from within DFO, and from outside sources. The information is typically available in a wide variety of formats using a variety of different media (e.g. electronic databases, hard copy maps, digitized photographs, etc.). Of particular interest is geospatial information from Geographic Information Systems (GIS). Access to all of these types of information has been, and will continue to be a challenge. Yet, there are online tools that can help meet some of the more basic requirements of viewing available information on a map, sharing information with staff and others and possibly even generating and publishing simple maps on the Internet – Google Earth and Google Maps (GE/GM) are two online tools that are freely available to staff for displaying geospatial information. Geospatial information is anything that is tied to a geographic location. It could be the site of a scientific sample, the centre line of a river, or the polygon of a marine protected area boundary.
With all the different work tasks and a recognized need for the supporting geospatial information, the EM Branch Management Committee initiated a strategic review of the existing and potential uses of geospatial information in the Branch. One of the key recommendations that came out of the review was to upgrade the skill sets of all staff to make use of common tools on their desktops to find, access, and use geospatial information online.
The first step in this process of capacity building was a one-day Google Earth (GE) Workshop on September 20, 2011. Jennifer Hackett, the workshop lead, supported by the Branch Data Management Committee, planned and delivered the workshop as an entry level, interactive training session. It was aimed at all staff, so that as a group, the Branch may begin to build a collective knowledge of the technology to support each other in its continued use. The topics covered included helping staff download Google Earth to their laptops, showing some of the basic information that is available online (from Google Earth), and also demonstrating the kind of information that is available from other federal and provincial agencies such as:
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DFO Ecosystem Management (information on the geographic boundaries of existing marine protected areas) View it in Google Maps ;
- Natural Resource Canada Surveyor Generals Branch (information on the boundaries of First Nations lands in Canada - http://clss.nrcan.gc.ca/googledata-donneesgoogle-eng.php ); and
Image showing what Google Earth can do for Ecosystem Management staff.
- Of particular interest to staff was a newly created map of the geographic boundary of the DFO Maritimes Region from the watershed to the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ).
Image showing the boundaries of the DFO Maritimes Region available for viewing in Google Earth.
Evaluations provided by participants showed a high degree of success in exposing them to the usefulness of this technology in meeting their work tasks. Over 75 percent gave the course an overall rating of “very good/excellent!”
The reaction from staff clearly expressed their increased awareness and the potential benefit to this technology in meeting some of their work requirements. Comments included:
“Hope to make greater use of GE, especially to view data and create graphics.”
“I can now open GE files and work with different layers. I am much more informed and comfortable with the use of the program’s features.”
“It is easier to work with GE than I thought. I am more likely now to use GE and to share information with others in this way.”
“I can now view and access data that I didn’t know was available. I can view it from any computer since I don’t have to look at data in a GIS.”
Additional sessions of the Workshop material have been provided to EM staff in the Area Offices. All of the training materials have been provided to staff, whether they were able to participate or not.
There was a strong call in the evaluation and in the informal feedback for a continuation of this valuable capacity building process. Additional topics that are being considered for future workshops on GE/GM include methods for easily creating and publishing geospatial information, and learning more about the many different existing sources of information.
Staff are encouraged to check out the events on International GIS Day – November 16, 2011 – in the Student Union Building at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, or at the Centre of Geographic Sciences in Lawrencetown, Nova Scotia.
It is apparent that training in GE/GM is meeting a need for providing staff with tools needed to do their job more efficiently and effectively. This popular technology is on everyone’s computer, so why not use it to help get the job done?
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Last Updated on Monday, 12 December 2011 19:45
