What is a geographic information system (GIS) and what is remote sensing?
A geographic information system (GIS) is any system that captures, stores, analyzes, manages, and presents data that are linked to a specific location. GIS has become one of the most important technologies in protected area management planning, ecological gap assessments and monitoring. Remote sensing is the process of collecting data using devices that are physically separated from the protected area. Examples include aircraft, spacecraft, satellite, buoy, or ship. Remote sensing allows protected area managers to monitor sites within a protected area that inaccessible. One of the simplest tools for remote sensing is the free program Google Earth (
http://earth.google.com/intl/en/). By incorporating multiple levels of data, including remote sensing data, into a single geographic information system, protected area managers can monitor forest cover, develop coarse-level resource inventories, identify landscape linkages and potential conservation corridors, develop appropriate zones, and conduct many other fundamental management activities.