Lands & Resources Planning

The Lands and Resource Planning Project K.O. is coordinating is well on its way and is making great progress a goal of the project is to build capacity at the community level. To help accomplish this goal the community planners were to take an, introduction course into Geographic Information Systems (GIS), Geographical Positioning Systems (GPS) and mapping provided by the Confederation College’s Forestry Center. The GIS training consisted of 4 days starting on Tuesday October 27^th2009 and ran through to Friday October 30th, 2009. There were 10 community planners, two from each who traveled to Thunder Bay from the communities of Deer Lake, Fort Severn, Keewaywin, Poplar Hill and North Spirit Lake First Nations.

The week was a challenging but rewarding for both the participants and the staff. The training began with an introduction to spatial data collection and management and GIS. We studied, what is spatial data? (e.g. vector, raster etc.) Looked at and studied maps, learned the two different kinds of maps, their purpose, how to read and calculate scales, grids/graticules for coordinates and problem solve. We also learned the importance of Easting and Northing numbers/coordinates on maps and how to work with these. Additionally we learned how to work with Google Earth and other mapping software to upload information from the GPS units to make our own maps.

Throughout the week there was scheduled entertainment for the participants on Tuesday movie night was available at the local theatre, Wednesday evening everybody was invited to go bowling at Mario’s Bowl, and on Thursday a dinner was scheduled. Although the days were long and tiring we all gained very important and valuable knowledge to enable us all to do the work that is required for our home communities to benefit from this project.