Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/75042
Open Tools of atmospheric mercury contamination and bioaccumu- lation in the alpine lakes of the Rocky Mountains. As a post-doctoral researcher, she applied similar analyses to assessing pollution levels (heavy metals and polycy- clic aromatic compounds in air, water and organisms) from oil-sands operations in the lower Athabasca River watershed. The GIS methods involved in both studies required massive datasets to cover the large extents, including reliable digital elevation models for delineating complete catchments, including overlapping areas (see Figure 3), for each sampling location. Multiple-cost paths, multiple buffers and conversion Figure 3. The Athabasca River and its tributaries consist of 49 separate catchments for pinpointing atmospheric contamination and bioaccumulation of heavy metals. bears, he was simultaneously viewing other data on his laptop computer and emailing the following: -----Original Message----- Hi Charlene, As an indicator of technological advances, I'm sitting in a Tundra Buggy east of Churchill Manitoba with a polar bear about 20 meters away. Wireless Internet ... Cheers, Andy -----Original Message----- Hi Andy, Hmmm, with such technological advances, there should be an attached digital photo of said polar bear! Charlene -----Original Message----- Hi Charlene, How's this one? Cheers, Andy That photo is Figure 2. It's not all fun and games, however. The extensive- ness of spatial technology involved in conservation- ecology research projects depends on individual needs: simple visualization of sample site locations or spatial patterns of collected field data at one end of the spectrum to complex modeling at the other. The excessively high quantity of data involved often necessitates batch solutions, or the challenges of ana- lyzing natural observations require extending the exist- ing functionality of GIS software. Through the years, the vast and varied projects have generated multiple new custom tools. Delineating dozens to hundreds of overlapping water- sheds, for example, helped Erin Kelly analyze the extent 28 GEO W ORLD / JU L Y 2O12 to raster are handy built-in tools, but in some instances need to be automated for a multitude of study sites or extended to perform more specialized analyses, such as dispersal (see Figure 4). The proximity of the various terrestrial ground-cover types and land uses to aquatic habitats is a crucial consideration in many wetland studies. The daily changing environment of polar bears stud- ied by researchers in Andy Derocher's lab requires coordinating dates with corresponding sea-ice data. The animal coordinates are recorded via telemetry as often as once a day, and the remotely sensed products of sea-ice concentrations are provided daily, weekly or bi-monthly. The corresponding date of each point must be matched (and in some cases reclassified to conform to existing ice dates) to extract the ice-chart values. The tools can easily be adapted to time-series Figure 4. The city of Edmonton, Alberta, was the site of an urban amphibian study that looked at the connectivity between habitat patches and ponds.