I got a Garmin V GPS, with an attachable WAAS unit and antenna for differential correction. So now, instead of 25-30 feet of error, I’m potentially getting less than 1 meter (on a good day.)
Also, I got a new 4.1 megapixel digital camera that I can attach to the GPS so that each image I take is stamped with the latitude and longitude.
And the kicker? A Panasonic Toughbook PDA loaded with Arcview GIS software, so I can instantly produce GIS coverages in the field.
I am a biologist/geographer working with the [url=“http://www.nature.nps.gov/im/”]Inventory and Monitoring Program of the National Park Service. I’m in charge of making sure that we have complete lists of all species of vertebrates (and some inverts…we’re starting up snail and mussel studies) in a group of national parks.
I’m also in charge of water quality, air quality, soil quality, exotic species, and threatened & endangered species monitoring.
Thus, the toys. I’m now able to, say, go out to a given national park, locate the habitat of an endangered plant, grab GPS locations, do a stem count, load that into a permanent coverage for later GIS (geographic information systems) use, and photodocument the whole thing. All the data goes into a national database, and we’re finally standardizing formats across the country so that data from all national parks will meet the same standards.
