Hello,
I'm RKathie. I go by Kathie. I am new on board and ready to soak up whatever I can. I know there are a lot of directions to go in GIS. I was recently awarded a license for a year's subscription. I volunteer as an alumni member of an environmental national organization and at the student chapter where I graduated in environmental science. I decided to take some time to learn about GIS and had another short time with a license before. This time I have more available time to soak up as much as I can. I wondered if it was my enthusiasm that gained the license, or if it was a way to shut me up because I couldn't stop talking about it. 🙂
I first became interested when I was taking remote sensing and did an assignment about a man using satellite imagery to help people in Africa locate wells that they could not see on the ground. I really need to memorize that resource since I mention it when explaining how it first inspired me. It was because monitoring and remote sensing brought my first interests in the use of the Drone as a possibility of being help to those with real concerns like during water shortages and locating wells. I also learned about esri by attending conferences where there were esri employees who were presenting and one was using a Drone and also used GIS.
I have a lot of interests, including academic research, so I could easily get caught up in too many things at once. ArcGIS is showing me right away to focus. In the meantime, I will soak up as much as I can and continue exploring the variety of uses GIS can be used. It is definitely a great set of tools to have for a number of tasks. One example, Story telling, is a great way to reach out to lay people who do well with conversational context interpretation and imagery with it is a double win.
One of the things I've always wanted to do, as my environmental studies plus working into some naturalist venues converged with everything, is to build a topographical map on the land where I live. I would like to figure out all the different plants and critters I run across; to figure out the water runoff and so many things. At first I was going to do it all by long hand, paper and pencil, but after I found new ways via the computer, and graphical means, I knew I could still sharpen my pencil and have fun drawing. Long hand would be a labor of love that way. I realize it would be a better use of my time learning to build maps and plot the demographics through the training here. More than inspired, I want to also be efficient.
I made my first trip out into the other forum areas and found a great Mars under mapping. I mentioned there that using the comparison option was a great way to view the surface of Mars, which was provided. I live in the desert and know that in wide open spaces, it can throw off perspective and distance if there are no usual nearby landmarks, like cars or buildings. It is often important to take time to try to judge traffic out in the wide open spaces, because the distance and speed are easy to misjudge without surrounding things to scale with.
I need to get back to my training session. I am trying to tick off the list several things. Introducing myself is one. I will try to figure out adding an avatar as suggested. I have never used an avatar. That will happen after the training of the first session.
I think I'll focus on some humanitarian uses among my exploration. Water, food and shelter are among some of the important things to think about. During these crazy times we have lived in with the pandemic, however, having some fun and socializing are helpful for mental health. I will focus on those too. What makes people thrive, and nature? How can these two work together for improvements?
When I want to push away from the computer, I ride my Onewheel.
