I'm in the GIS field and would like to get involved in humanitarian affairs, or wildlife refugee.?

Is it possible to combine these two fields with GIS? If so, what type of experience work should I get involved in, or what classes should I take?





(My B.S. is in Geography w/ five years experience in GIS.)





Thanks for any help.I'm in the GIS field and would like to get involved in humanitarian affairs, or wildlife refugee.?
Yes, it is possible to combine humanitarian/wildlife work with GIS. One common aspect of studies regarding human wildlife conflics, for instance is in determinig how land is being used. The past practice in the past was to conduct ground truthing, and some areas were not easy to access such that this could be unpractical. The use of GIS, however, allows the use of infra-red to be able to determine vegetation cover while only identifying a comparative source via ground truthing. An example of this is in a comparrison between aerial photographs from the Tana River preserve in Kenya from the 1970's with satellite imagery from 2002. The comparrison seemed to indicate that the forest size had infact increased over this period while infact after groundsourcing it became evident that the forest had infact been converted to fruit crops (bananas and mangos) in many areas thus appearing as forests. The use of modern GIS could more easily allow the interpretation of monocultures versus typical forests which are mixed by using the infra-red spectrum thus eliminating as much need for ground truthing and also allow less acessible areas to be understood more easily (with regard to their composition) without the need to actually go there so long as easier accesible areas of the preserve that represent a similiar spectral analysis have already been identified. The reason why I know all this is because I'm describing one of my wife's study areas and what has been proposed for more clearly indicating the effect of the local people on the endangered primate species from that area. Even her curret PhD thesis is utilizing GIS to identify where past bomas were located in the laikipia area (bomas have a distinctly different vegetation) so that she can determine how these landscapes effect baboons. My wife's course load has consisted of a few GIS courses, but because of the seperation between the fields of GIS and anthropology/primatology there were no courses that were directly applicable to what she wants to use GIS for in the future. I'm sure that you could get work/volunteer experience, however, with scientists doing similar work to my wifes around the globe. One of my wife's closest friends has used GIS in South Africa for the aquaculture industry along the coast (that was his PhD) and is currently working in Madagascar in a government project that somehow uses his GIS skills to help develope their application of agriculture. I have an agroforestry nursery in Kenya (humanitarian) and I could easily see how I could utilize GIS for my project as well. If a GIS survey could be used to determine the exact soil types across my district then I could better advise farmers on what types of trees should grow well without the need to ground truth and sample every farmers farm. That could be a Masters or PhD thesis right there :)