Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 1.1: GIS functions
how far up you want to climb. You'll notice that our GIS progression is
like scaling the outside of an inverted cone. Imagine yourself as a rock
climber doing a free climb up the outside of that cone. The higher you
go, the more of a workout you're going to get. Learning OSGIS is a bit
like climbing that cone. Fortunately, you decide how far to go based on
what you want to do. Getting on board is pretty easy. Let's visualize.
Visualize
The dictionary (well, one of them anyway) defines visualize as “make
(something) visible to the eye.” That definition fits pretty well with what
we want to do. We want to see our data. This is the entry-level activity
in GIS. We get some data, whether from our GPS or by downloading it
from the Internet, and we look at it. Remember, that's the first thing
Harrison was interested in—looking at his data. That sounds good, but
you'll quickly find that just looking at a bunch of black lines on a white
background isn't all that exciting. We need a context for our data. Let's
return to Harrison for a moment.
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