Using QGIS to support protected area monitoring: lessons learned in Vietnam and Lao PDR

Poster | Presented

  • Peter Ersts, American Museum of Natural History - Center for Biodiversity and Conservation
  • Kevin Koy, American Museum of Natural History - Center for Biodiversity and Conservation
  • Ned Horning, American Museum of Natural History - Center for Biodiversity and Conservation

The American Museum of Natural History's Center for Biodiversity and Conservation (CBC) is actively promoting the use and development of open source solutions to support biological conservation and management efforts.

Most recently, the CBC held workshops in Vietnam and the Lao People's Democratic Republic to introduce protected area management staff to basic GIS skills and several specialized protected area monitoring methods. Quantum GIS (QGIS) was used as the principle application for viewing and integrating different types of spatial data. Much of the focus of these workshops was on how to use a plugin the CBC is developing for QGIS called eVis (The Event Visualization Tool). eVis can be used to easily view geocoded photos associated by attributes to points in the QGIS mapping environment.

During these workshops there was a strong interest in using QGIS and exploring other open source solution. Many of the workshop participants had never used a GIS and some only had limited computer skills. Nonetheless, the participants found QGIS to be easy to use especially given the support of local languages.

We have been pleased with QGIS and its extensibility through the plugin interface and look forward to continuing to promote this application within the conservation and management community. As more functionality is added to QGIS we expect this application will become the desktop GIS of choice for many of our colleagues around the world.

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