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Tuesday 18 October 2005: Session 2, 8:30:00 AM
Getting the Next Generation Involved: Land Use Analysis of a Vital Watershed
Presentation Abstract
Northwest Arkansas is undergoing one of the fastest growth rates of any area in the country, fueled largely by the presence of Wal-Mart and Tyson corporate headquarters. One of the attractions of the region to both corporations and developers is the reliable water supply, backed by the more than 40,000 surface acres of Beaver Lake. CAST has joined forces with Beaver Water District and other local entities to host a project for six high-school students, who have spent their summer assessing the land use within the 1,186 square-mile watershed. Using GIS and image-processing software, they have acquired data ranging from Thematic Mapper-based land use/land cover data to county assessors’ parcel data. The students have generated maps and reports for each of the 12-digit HUCs within the watershed, providing the Water District with valuable information for their ongoing effort to preserve or improve water quality. At the same time, the students have become much more intimately aware of the potential problems that could face their generation as the region continues to grow.
Speaker Biographical Information
Malcom Williamson : RGIS Mid-South Center for Advanced Spatial Technologies (CAST) - University of Arkansas
Malcolm Williamson is a GIS and geomatics researcher at the Center for Advanced Spatial Technologies (CAST), located at the University of Arkansas. He has collaborated with the Arkansas Multi-Agency Wetland Planning Team for over nine years, focusing on GIS methodologies in natural resource and wetlands analysis. Since 1997 he has spent a large portion of his time supporting K-12 students using geospatial tools in the 230 member schools of the EAST Initiative, a not-for-profit educational organization. He leads a four-person team that presents training workshops and on-site visits to schools in six states, and also develops a wide range of Web-based resources to help prepare our next generation of geospatial users.
