AT 209 Lab 7: Intro to Remote Sensing

Introduction

In this lab, we learned about using the software ArcGIS Pro and learned about remote sensing. For the lab, students were given the freedom to choose any type of tutorial posted on the ESRI website (https://learn.arcgis.com/en/gallery/). For this particular lab, the tutorial named "Connect Streams for Salmon Migration" (https://learn.arcgis.com/en/projects/connect-streams-for-salmon-migration/). Any of the tutorials listed within the main website taught the class the different functions of ArcGIS and the different ways to use it.

Methods

For Lab 7, ArcGIS Pro and the tutorial for connecting streams for salmon was used. The tutorial consisted of finding the best location to create waterways for the salmon and integrating natural waterways and artificial waterways. The location was the Mersey River Watershed in Canada. The project came about because of the dwindling numbers of the Atlantic salmon.

Discussion

While working on the tutorial, we learned about the different features of ArcGIS: processing, naming locations, identifying features on the surface. For the particular tutorial chosen, we learned about identifying the watershed and the best area to include a new waterway. The results are shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1: The image above displays the results of the tutorial and the best proposed location.

As it can be observed, that is the best location for the new waterway because that would create about 24 kilometers of new habitats for the Atlantic salmon.

The software was able to identify that area as the best spot for the new waterway because we used the software to analyze all of the different waterways already created or that were preexisting, and using that, we created that little area to analyze the best area that optimized the most amount of land and how much more habitat would be created.

Conclusion

While using ArcGIS Pro, there was a large sense of the applicability of this software. Remote sensing has great potential to be implemented into the Unmanned Aerial Systems industry. Comparing to LineVision, there is a lot more to do with ArcGIS; the software allows for the maps and location to be analyzed for different features and to create maps like in Figure 1. LineVision does not have this feature, and it pretty much only allows for mapping in relation to the video that was shot. The overall usefulness of ArcGIS is astounding. In the ever changing world, it would appear to be a viable skill to be knowledgable of this software.