Teaching and Learning about Conservation with GIS approaches, tools, and spatial data
We have always been fascinated with our home: The Earth. Our oasis of life in the cosmos has been the subject of poetry, philosophy, music, paintings, scientific investigation, and—maps. For centuries, maps stirred imaginations, inspired explorations of the unknown, and helped us understand our planet. Far from the static documents of the past, today’s maps are interactive and digital, created by people using Geographic Information Systems (GIS).
GIS tools, methods, and data are essential to conservation and wise management and caring for the Earth, as is evident in the success stories in this conservation blog. But unless GIS is taught and learned, it cannot be applied to conservation by decision makers. How can teaching and learning with GIS be done, where should its principles be taught, and what benefits does GIS in conservation education offer?
Benefits of Teaching and Learning with GIS
The benefits that teaching and learning with GIS offers includes spatial thinking, critical thinking, problem-based learning, data fluency, community connections, and others I list here. GIS instruction fosters each of the Center for Ecoliteracy’s six core ecological concepts: Networks, nested systems, cycles, flows, development, and dynamic balance. GIS allows variables to be input, modeled and modified so that the dynamics of environmental processes can be studied.
Hungerford and Volk (1991) defined nine key ecological concepts necessary for environmental education programs: Individuals and populations, interactions and interdependence, environmental influences and limiting factors, energy flow and nutrient cycling, community and ecosystem concepts, homeostasis, succession, humans as members of ecosystems, and ecological implications of human activities and communities. GIS can enhance the teaching of these concepts as well as specific conservation topics such as biofuels and ecotones that I describe in the book Essentials of the Environment (Kerski and Ross 2006).
Students on a Field Trip at Indiana Dunes. Photograph by Joseph Kerski.
Connecting Learners with Real World Data and Issues
Connecting students with real-world data and issues builds spatial bridges in the brain and appeals to multiple ways of learning. Students learn to transfer knowledge, to inquire strategically, and to solve problems with real data. Spatial analysis appeals to today’s visual learners. Using GIS provides a way of exploring a rich body of content and a framework for holistic thinking about the world. GIS provides a set of skills grounded in content standards and fosters critical thinking about data and methods. These marketable skills help students get their “dream jobs” across many fields, including but not limited to conservation.
Students using GIS grapple with current, relevant issues including water quality, invasive species, climate change, and energy and food production, from local to global scale. GIS enables these issues to be analyzed spatially because they all occur somewhere and change over space and time. Students understand the big picture and how patterns and trends are related. Students become involved digital citizens that can use technology in meaningful ways to ask the “what if” questions, test hypotheses, and model scenarios.
Connections to Environmental Literacy and the UN SDGs
Because GIS for teaching uses the same tools and approaches used by scientists, teaching with GIS also adheres well to the NAAEE’s four components of environmental literacy (NAAEE 2011): competencies, knowledge, dispositions, and environmentally responsible behavior. Teaching with GIS also connects well with the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including water quality and quantity, energy, climate, and sustainable urbanization and agriculture, and more.
Student collecting water quality data. Photograph by Joseph Kerski.
I contend that conservation principles and perspectives are too important to wait until students are at the university level but need to be taught and learned earlier in life. How can these GIS approaches be applied in the primary and secondary school environment?
Best Practices in Teaching and Learning Conservation Skills and Themes with GIS
One project that I was honored to be a part of was this collaborative effort in climate and sustainability between Esri, a university, and secondary sc.... The story map of activities demonstrates how climate and sustainability instruction was enriched and how students and faculty became engaged. I also contend that using GIS to teach conservation principles can and should be done across many disciplin..., including environmental science, economics, psychology, data science, business, computer science, geography, GIScience, engineering, planning, and others.
Teaching with GIS is most effective when it is action-oriented and includes hands-on activities. Agricultural data on crops, grazing, and farming practices can be investigated using ArcGIS Online, the ArcGIS Living Atlas apps on water and ocean variables, changes in land cover, and others can serve as primary source research tools, and students can use tools such as iNaturalist and ArcGIS Survey123 to collect data that can then be mapped and analyzed. They use ArcGIS Online, ArcGIS Pro, spatial statistics, and other tools to perform species distribution modeling, habitat prediction, and multivariate clustering for bioclimate region identification through these and other lessons.
Students then use ArcGIS dashboards, instant apps, and story maps to communicate their results to their classmates, instructor, and even to the community beyond their own campus. These visualizations encourage them and others to take action about the urban greenway or community gardens. Students gain specific skills such as creating expressions, performing analysis, and data management.
Through these approaches, students tackle ethical issues surrounding data and mapping. In their future workplaces in academia, nonprofit, government, and industry, they become empowered to be positive change agents.
Northeast Montana. Photograph by Joseph Kerski.
To learn more about ArcGIS solutions in conservation, visit our webpage.
References
Hungerford, Harold R., and Trudi L. Volk. 1998. Curriculum Development in Environmental Education for the Primary School: Challenges and Responsibilities. Essential Readings in Environmental Education. Champaign, IL: Stipes.
Kerski, Joseph J., and Ross, Simon. 2006. Essentials of the Environment. Hodder Education, 336 p.
NAAEE. 2011. Developing a framework for assessing environmental literacy: Executive Summary. NSF project report. Washington, DC: North American Association for Environmental Education.