Environmental Mapping

The process of collecting and visualizing spatially referenced data about our environment is referred to as environmental mapping. Environmental mapping does not refer only to an end product, such as a map of deforestation, but to the whole process of acquiring, preprocessing, storing/archiving, analyzing, and finally displaying information about our physical environment (Figure 1). As such, environmental mapping can be regarded as multidisciplinary. It draws on the expertise of environmental scientists, such as physical geographers, geologists, ecologists, and climatologists, who help define the aspects of the environment to be studied and how to interpret the data collected. It also draws on surveyors, photogrammetrists, and remote sensing specialists to provide expertise in the acquisition of data on the environmental phenomena being studied. Cartographers, modelers, statisticians, graphic ...