FREC 480: GIS in Natural Resource Management
COURSE SYLLABUS--Spring 2008

Instructor: John Mackenzie
office: Townsend 215     office hours: Wednesdays 2-3PM or by appointment      office phone: 831-1312
home phone: 453-0859     cell: 373-3723     FREC Dept. fax: 831-6243   e-mail: johnmack@udel.edu

The class meets Tuesdays & Thursdays 12:30-3:15PM in the Geography Dept. GIS lab, Room 218 Pearson Hall

The 10 Commandments of GIS

Graded Projects Resources:

Grading:  This course is entirely lab-based; there are not quizzes or exams.  100% of your course grade will be determined by the completeness and correctness of your lab projects.  All lab projects are to be submitted as web pages; I will teach you basic web authoring techniques during the first three weeks of class.  These are not group projects; they are individual projects.  You may consult with other students on how to tackle specifric aspects of your project, but all projects you submit must be entirely your own work. The final project is to be done outside of class. I recommend that you choose a topic and get started on it by mid-semester.

Course Objectives: Develop basic spatial analysis skills using vector and raster geographic information systems. This course teaches GIS concepts, functions and applications via hands-on training with ArcGIS v9.

Prerequisites: prior microcomputer course or thorough familiarity with microcomputers is expected.

Texts, Etc.:  There is no textbook to buy, but you should buy a 1GB or larger USB jump drive for storing your coursework.  Get a skinny one; the frames on some computers make it tough to get fat ones into all USB ports.  You will be responsible for keeping track of your work files.  You will be posting your projects on UD's copland server, and will need additional disk quota to store everything. Request a disk quota change to obtain least 50MB of quota on the "usra" file system through IT/NSS (you will have to log in for authentication).   It will take 24 hours for your additional quota to appear. (To check your quota allocation and usage, type "quota -v" at the copland prompt.)


CLASS SCHEDULE (subject to change)

WEEK TOPICS PROJECTS
1     Feb 12/14
Course organization, intro | classroom overview | ArcMap overview start project 1
2 Feb 19/21
Getting started in ArcMap 
3 Feb 26/28
Projections & coordinate systems
4 Mar 4/6
Tables, Charts, Map Composition
5 Mar 11/13
Importing Data | Feature Manipulations | Cholera mapping demo project 1 demos; start project 2
6 Mar 18/20
Spatial Statistics | Interpolation

7 Mar 25/27
Spatial Analysis 1

Spring Break

8
Apr 8/10
Spatial Analysis 2

9
Apr 15/17
 GPS intro | GPS walkabout project 2 demos; start project 3
10
Apr 22/24
3D Analysis

11 Apr 29/May 1
Hydrologic Modeling
start project 4
12 May 6/8
Remote Sensing
13 May 13/15
Georeferencing | Vegetation indices

14 May 20
Other Arc extensions and tools | Project wrap-ups project 3/4/5 demos


SPATLAB home page | RDMS home page | Penny Hall GIS lab