Bigfork map wizards show their stuff
<p>Sandi Baker, a Bigfork High School junior and Cave Club member, prepares to establish monitoring for biological resources at a cave entrance within the Grand Canyon. The club made its second trip to the canyon earlier this month to continue extensive monitoring and mapping of cave environments. The success and national recognition of the Cave Club paved the way for establishing Geographic Information Systems classes at the high school and middle school.</p><p></p>
Flathead Valley has mountains of environmental data waiting for Bigfork High School students in Geographic Information Systems classes to collect, analyze and make sense of, often for the benefit of state and federal agencies.
The first Geographic Information Systems class was introduced last year taught by Hans Bodenhamer. This year, Bodenhamer teaches two high school classes and, for the first time, is teaching it at the seventh-grade level.
Geographic Information Systems uses technology to capture, analyze, store and display data from specific locations. The data is translated into map layers. Each layer is linked to a particular data set and can be viewed individually.
Geographic Information Systems has a variety of uses, from development planning and resource management to solving crimes.
The data Bodenhamer’s students mine is collected during field trips or gathered from government agencies such as the state highway department and Montana Department of Fish Wildlife and Parks.
“There is all this data sitting around in boxes,” Bodenhamer said. He added that with budget cuts, many government agencies don’t have the manpower to analyze it all and this is where his students lend a helping hand while learning.
The Bigfork students recently presented some of their research at the Montana Association of Geographic Information Professionals conference in Kalispell.
Their varied topics included: human impact in Jewel Basin; vegetation in the Flathead Waterfowl Production Area; types and concentrations of road kill along Montana 83 over 11 years; and a three-dimensional geological map of the Continental Divide Syncline in the Bob Marshall Wilderness among others.
Students use technology such as computers, satellites and Global Positioning Systems. One of the pricey devices students had the opportunity to borrow for collecting field data was a handheld device called a Trimble Juno, according to junior Olivia Witt. Witt gave a presentation about mapping vegetation communities on the Flathead Waterfowl Production Area.
“They are handheld portable devices that can do an infinite amount of things like drawing polygons [around different species of vegetation], placing points, adding information and data,” Witt said. “The end result is a bird’s-eye view of all the vegetation communities.”
Audience member Jeff Hedstrom, a senior at Montana State University majoring in Earth Sciences/GIS Planning, was amazed at the advanced learning Bodenhamer’s students were doing.
“This is college-level stuff,” Hedstrom said. “GIS is such a powerful tool and not a lot of people know about it. You’re basically compressing different layers of data you can format and manipulate,” Hedstrom said.
GIS analyst Denny Rea of Columbia Falls also was in the audience. Rea formerly worked with Flathead County for 13 years doing jobs such as mapping roads, digitizing addresses and compiling databases for Homeland Security.
Rea now volunteers in Bodenhamer’s classes to help teach students GIS software at the school. Rea introduced GIS to the Bigfork Cave Club in 2009.
“The software is very difficult to learn,” Rea said. “We try to break it down for them.”
The Cave Club is the crown jewel of the GIS program. Formed in 2005, it initially was a recreational club. The club quickly established a relationship with the National Park Service and Glacier National Park. Bodenhamer said the Cave Club since has worked in more than 50 caves, including some in the Grand Canyon.
In 2009, the club received the President’s Environmental Youth Award for its cave conservation on federal lands. Two students were flown to Washington, D.C., to accept the award and met President Barack Obama. In 2010, the club spoke in front of more than 10,000 professionals at the Geographic Information Systems International User Conference in San Diego.
Bodenhamer said the number of invitations for Cave Club members to speak or monitor caves and number of students interested in Geographic Information Systems continues to grow.
“I don’t think there are many other high schools in the state that are teaching GIS,” Bodenhamer said. “I hope that changes in the next few years.”
Reporter Hilary Matheson may be reached at 758-4431 or by email at hmatheson@dailyinterlake.com.