GPS and the Environment

Until the advent of GPS tracking, it was practically impossible to record elephant movements with sufficient temporal resolution to give a full picture of movement patterns. The presence of elephants in Kenya is a key indicator of the health of the environment.

Honorable Dr. Newton Kulundu, Minister for Environment, Natural Resources, and Wildlife, Kenya

To sustain the Earth's environment while balancing human needs requires better decision making with more up-to-date information. Gathering accurate and timely information has been one of the greatest challenges facing both government and private organizations that must make these decisions. The Global Positioning System (GPS) helps to address that need.

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Data collection systems provide decision makers with descriptive information and accurate positional data about items that are spread across many kilometers of terrain. By connecting position information with other types of data, it is possible to analyze many environmental problems from a new perspective. Position data collected through GPS can be imported into geographic information system (GIS) software, allowing spatial aspects to be analyzed with other information to create a far more complete understanding of a particular situation than might be possible through conventional means.

GPS provides many benefits for environmental conservation, including:

• GPS data collection systems complemented with GIS packages provide a means for comprehensive analysis of environmental concerns.
• Environmental patterns and trends can be efficiently recognized with GPS/GIS data collection systems, and thematic maps can be easily created.
• GPS data can be quickly analyzed without the preliminary requirement for field data transcription into a digitized form.
• Accurate tracking of environmental disasters such as fires and oil spills can be conducted more efficiently.
• Precise positional data from GPS can assist scientists in crustal and seismic monitoring.
• Monitoring and preservation of endangered species can be facilitated through GPS tracking and mapping.

Note: The main text of this page has not been updated since 2006.