WESTERN PRESENTS
FIRST GIS DAY

Western Carolina University will celebrate its inaugural Geographical Information System Day with workshops Nov. 8-9 to showcase for faculty, staff, students and off-campus individuals WCU’s GIS and remote-sensing capabilities.

GIS is a computerized mapping and data management system capable of integrating, storing, editing and analyzing geographically referenced information. It is a tool that allows users to create interactive queries, analyze the spatial information and edit data.

GIS can be used for scientific investigations, resource management, asset management, urban planning, route planning and more. “GIS is problem-solving using spatial information,” said Joni Bugden-Storie, assistant professor of geosciences and natural resources management at Western.

GIS Day has been a national event since 1987 that is associated with the National Geographic Society, and this marks the first year that WCU will begin participating in the grassroots event.

“We want to bring attention to the resources Western has in its GIS classes and in the library. There is a demand for it,” said Bugden-Storie. “There are people on campus and in the community who are not majoring in or studying GIS, but they are using it in the classroom and for their research.”

The following one-hour long workshops will be held in Room 186 of Hunter Library:

• Wednesday, Nov. 8 – “GIS Resources at WCU and Mapping Census Data” with Bart Voskuil, environmental and geosciences liaison at Hunter Library, 1 to 2 p.m.

• Wednesday, Nov. 8 – “Mini-GIS Session using ArcView” with Ron Davis, assistant professor of natural resources management, 2 to 3 p.m.

• Thursday, Nov. 9 – “GIS Applications on Campus and in the Region” with Joni Bugden-Storie, 9 to 10 a.m.

• Thursday, Nov. 9 – “Mini-GIS Session using ArcView” with Ron Davis, 10 to 11a.m.

For on-campus participants, registration is available online at www.wcu.edu/it/. GIS Day is one of the options in the “Workshops and Training” link. Interested participants should register for each workshop they would like to attend.

Off-campus participants can contact Bugden-Storie by phone at (828) 227-3819 or by e-mail at jbugden@email.wcu.edu.

For more information about WCU’s department of geosciences and natural resources management, call (828) 227-7367.