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Into the field with global positioning systems
By Tim Stoddard
To Nathan Phillips, the 850 acres of forest and wetlands at BU's Sargent
Center for Outdoor Education in southern New Hampshire present an ideal
laboratory for studying New England's natural history. With its kettle
pond, floating glacial bog, and rolling topography, Sargent Center offers
a window onto the dynamic processes that have sculpted the region's landforms
and ecosystems. But until this spring, undergraduates in the CAS geography
department have had few opportunities to leave the classroom and explore
the physical environment beyond Commonwealth Avenue.
"Many of the students from last year wished that our courses offered
more field exercises," says Phillips, an assistant professor of geography.
"And that is completely in line with our own goals here in the department
of increasing education and research in the field."
To enhance the field component of the physical geography courses that
he teaches, Phillips has turned to a familiar technology: the global positioning
system (GPS). With funding from BU's Instructional Technology Grant Program,
he recently purchased four Magellan NAV 6000 GPS units and has integrated
them into field exercises for an introductory geography class this spring.
Phillips says that it is the first time that geography undergraduates
have had formal instruction in GPS.
By communicating with a constellation of 24 satellites operated by the
Department of Defense, GPS units calculate latitude, longitude, and elevation
with varying degrees of precision. When the military made GPS available
for civilian use in 1990, it was employed as a navigational tool by mariners,
pilots, farmers, and outdoor adventurers. But as GPS receivers become
smaller and more affordable, the technology is now penetrating everything
from wrist watches to cell phones.
Amanda Cooper (CAS'01), a research assistant in the geography department,
who studied environmental science at BU as an undergraduate, says that
until recently, the handful of older GPS units in the department were
primarily used for research by graduate students and professors.
"GPS was one of those things that you picked up on your own,"
Cooper says. "If you felt motivated and approached professors, they
would be more than happy to let you use their GPS, but you were never
really taught how do it."
Using GPS is fairly straightforward; if the receiver has a clear signal
from at least three satellites in the network, it will calculate your
coordinates within seconds. But the simple task of gathering and storing
data becomes more complicated when GPS is connected to a geographic information
system (GIS). Often confused with global positioning systems, GIS is software
for assembling, manipulating, and displaying various kinds of spatial
information.
The state-of-the-art GIS facilities at BU have long been a strength of
the geography department, says Phillips. But in the realm of physical
geography, where the objective is to locate landforms and understand the
processes that created them, there are some things that the software can't
simulate.
"Relying only on printed maps leaves out a huge component of exploration
and discovery," he says. "We want to involve students in the
creation of spatial information."
On April 5 and 6, students from Phillips' physical geography courses visited
Sargent Center and nearby Mt. Monadnock to conduct a variety of field
experiments using the new GPS units. One group focused on the glacial
legacy of Sargent Center, using GPS to map evidence left by retreating
glaciers during the last ice age. Others opted to climb Mt. Monadnock,
collecting ecological information on the changing soil acidity, vegetation
cover, and air temperature at different elevations. With these data stored
in their GPS units, the students later downloaded them into a GIS program
on a laptop, where they will analyze the information and generate maps
for their specific projects.
Only a few CAS faculty currently bring students to Sargent Center for
field research, Phillips says. But he hopes the success of his recent
field trip with the GPS units will encourage others to follow suit.
Thomas Kunz, a CAS professor of biology, brings undergraduates to Sargent
every year to study bat ecology, and Fred Wasserman, a CAS associate professor
of biology and 2001 Metcalf Cup and Prize winner, will be leading a MET
field ecology course to the area this summer. Wasserman says that he does
not currently use GPS with his undergraduates, but that the devices might
be helpful in mapping bird territories.
"If I could borrow some of the geography department's equipment and
see if we could plot the birds' territory with GPS," Wasserman says,
"I might give it a shot."
In the future, Phillips says, GPS will be useful in a variety of applications
outside of physical geography. "To be able to locate and generate
visual data using GPS units is definitely important in the business, economic,
and political world, as well as in the natural sciences," he says.
"Sargent Center is going to be a focus for our field efforts in the
department, but it's not the only focus.
I expect that these GPS units will begin to be used in other geography
courses focusing on urban settings as well."
19 April 2002
Boston University
Office of University Relations