GIS Skills

This is one of two maps I made for Monday’s presentation. The PDF looks much better. Really. SDF staff and villagers from Ban Houimanaw are going to speak to officials from the government forestry department about how traditional villager knowledge helps preserve natural resources in the forest. Mr. Dacho keeps saying I have to present as well, but I can’t tell if he is joking or not. I’m pretty proud I got my act together enough to make a GIS map using GPS data from the field. Although standing next to Pau’s maps, mine look like they were drawn by a five year old with two crayons and some stickers. He’s the man. He also has the worst back problems I’ve ever seen in someone under 30 from sitting at the computer all the time.

If you read the text of the map and wonder what I mean by “land use category of farmed land without old tree stumps,” here’s the deal. There are four patterns of agricultural land use in the village. They are rice paddy fields, vegetable fields with stumps, fields without stumps, and orchards. For the poster I made I wrote brief descriptions of each. We went in to compare the health of the stump fields versus the no stumpers. Here is the stump explanation.

"There are two reasons for the presence of stumps in the fields that have them. First, when clearing forest the forest stumps are labor intensive to remove. Second, their presence reduces soil erosion and landslide frequency. The stumps are beneficial. The reason for the lack of stumps in the plots without them is that the villagers removed them to quiet the fears of officials within the forestry department that stumps meant that more forest was being cleared. The plots without stumps endure a greater rate of soil erosion and risk of landslides. The data collected on December 3 reflects that fields with stumps promote the growth of more beneficial plants than those without. "