GIS in the field
by Elise Jeffery
June 28, 2005

Today in the afternoon Andy and I headed in town to complete GIS work. The project involved identifying areas greater than 25m by 25m, that can be identified from satellite photos, and then classify them using set vegetation criteria. There wasn’t much variety in the vegetation, nothing intact, mainly farming land used for plantations, grazing or rice fields. This is the way the landscape exists, as I understand it, for the entire journey between Antananarivo and Majunga except for the pocket of forest that we study in Ankarafantsika National Park. On the walk we passed through several villages and all the children would run out to the road to wave and say hello. There was a group of children playing soccer with a ball of yarn and sticks as goal posts. Andy (being the true Englishman) joined in for a kick around much to the kids delight. They are so sweet. I didn’t anticipate the engagement and contact that we would have on this expedition. It would have been so easy to have a research project that was isolated in the forest for two weeks studying the fossa and not experience the local culture of Madagascar. It has been an amazing opportunity and expedition highlight to see the children and people of Madagascar in the isolated villages in order to gain a better understanding of their interaction with the environment and the challenges Madagascar faces to preserve natural areas surrounded by such poverty.