GIS and useful skills

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Anonymous
GIS and useful skills 2017-01-18 11:52:20 Post No. 8612627
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GIS and useful skills Anonymous 2017-01-18 11:52:20 Post No. 8612627 [Report]

I'm currently finishing my undergrad in Ecology. At my university, we have an Environmental Geomatics certificate that requires some GIS and GPS courses. I'm terrible at math and have no experience with computers or programming besides R.

I was planning on spending my senior year taking all the electives that I wanted. I specifically decided on taking this major based on a zoology course I took in high school and I planned on finally taking the invert/vert zoology courses they offer here and some other hands-on type of outdoor classes that teach how to ID, basic animal anatomy, taxonomy, ect. as electives but if I pursue the geomatics certificate I won't have any extra time or space for those other electives. Taking the certificate would literally just fill my schedule up to graduation.

All of the professors tout the need for the certificate and how we'll never get jobs without it. I honestly don't know what path to take, and I have no idea if I would be any good at it. I'm already in a lab at school and have been doing summer work in a county lab without any experience with GIS. If /sci/ has advice on the job prospects in ecology, if GIS is difficult to learn, or if I should just focus on honing more outdoorsy type skills pls help me.

Anonymous 2017-01-19 03:38:02 Post No.8613203
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Anonymous 2017-01-19 03:38:02 Post No.8613203 [Report]

I took some GIS at uni.

Was actually fairly enjoyable. I can see how it's an extremely useful skill to have these days. What I was doing wasn't very programming or math heavy

Anonymous 2017-01-19 03:49:54 Post No.8613233
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Anonymous 2017-01-19 03:49:54 Post No.8613233 [Report]

>>8612627
GIS is a legit good skill to have. marketable almost anywhere.

Anonymous 2017-01-19 03:57:00 Post No.8613244
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Anonymous 2017-01-19 03:57:00 Post No.8613244 [Report]

>>8612627
I'm a GIS pro. Yes, it's very good to have those skills. Yes, it's very good to know trigonometry. Depending on the animals you study or monitor, it can be extremely useful to be able to map your data. The best marriage of biology and GIS is when you can design electronic data gathering methods for use in the field with hand-held devices integrated with GPS. Fr example iForms. R is an especially useful tool.

For pure GIS though, the future for those seeking success is in enabling lay folks to display their data. To devise methods and routines, set up web maps that accept data easily from them and display it.

Anonymous 2017-01-19 01:03:04 Post No.8613961
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Anonymous 2017-01-19 01:03:04 Post No.8613961 [Report]

I taught myself GIS in a summer at a job I got with zero GIS experience.

Anonymous 2017-01-20 02:45:46 Post No.8615643
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Anonymous 2017-01-20 02:45:46 Post No.8615643 [Report]

So would you say it's more important for me to come out of undergrad with animal science classes or the GIS certificate?

Anonymous 2017-01-20 05:22:33 Post No.8615904
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Anonymous 2017-01-20 05:22:33 Post No.8615904 [Report]

>>8615643
I'll confess, I am not sure what "animal sciences" is. Sounds more like veterinarian education. But if you want to study microscopic or locally endemic species, GIS isn't going to help much.

I'm aware that Imgur.com will stop allowing adult images since 15th of May. I'm taking actions to backup as much data as possible. Read more on this topic here - https://archived.moe/talk/thread/1694/

I'm aware that Imgur.com will stop allowing adult images since 15th of May. I'm taking actions to backup as much data as possible.
Read more on this topic here - https://archived.moe/talk/thread/1694/