On Thursday, April 17, the applied GIS class at Unity
College hosted Mr. Thomas’s AP Environmental Science class from Belfast Area
High School in a state-of-the-art GIS computer lab. Three college students and
professor Kathleen Dunckel from Unity College guided BAHS students through a
tutorial using ArcGIS Online software to construct maps of all the organically
certified farms in Maine. The technology allowed students to add and manipulate
data for each farm, such as addresses, size of farms, products sold, distances
between farms, etc. Students were also able to use program tools to determine
distances between farms and Belfast, and also to insert equations to calculate
the corresponding carbon dioxide emissions due to transportation. Students
concluded that long distance transport of organic food produces significant
carbon dioxide emissions, such that it may be more sustainable to buy food from
local sources, even if they’re not organic.
BAHS students concluded their work in the GIS lab by
exploring other data layers available in the ArcGIS Online database. The maps generated by students were
saved to their Google Drive accounts. While this field trip was merely an
introduction to GIS technology, students recognized the potential uses of GIS
across disciplines to represent data spatially, for both presentation and
research purposes. After eating lunch at the cafeteria, students were taken on
a tour of campus.
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