Introduction to Geographic Information Systems

This book is designed to provide students in a first or second GIS course with a solid foundation in both GIS concepts and the use of GIS. The book retains the same comprehensive coverage of GIS topics as featured in the first edition. This book stresses both concepts and practices. GIS concepts from fields such as geography, cartography, spatial analysis, and database management explain the purpose and objectives of GIS operations and the interrelationship among GIS operations. Each chapter in this book is divided into two main sections. The first section covers topics and concepts addressed in the chapter. The second section covers applications, usually with three to five problem-solving tasksIntroduction to GIS strikes a careful balance between GIS concepts and hands-on applications. The main portion of the chapter presents GIS terms and concepts and helps students learn how each one fits into a complete GIS system. At the end of each chapter, an application section with 3-5 tasks presents students with actual GIS exercises and the necessary data to solve the problem|Chang: Introduction to GIS follows a logical progression from basic to complex and specialized GIS topics|The author created all the figures and tables in Introduction to GIS ensuring precise correlation between the chapter material and their accompanying visuals|Key terms are boldfaced where they first appear in the chapter and then summarized and defined with a glossary at the end of the chapter|The web site provides PowerPoint files and sample test questions. The student center provides ArcView 3.2 data sets and exercise instructions