Wilderness analysis

Draft Bulgaria wilderness map using the above procedures.

Draft Bulgaria wilderness map using FME for calculating the wilderness zones.

One of my side projects is making systems/procedures for wilderness mapping. My goal is to develop flexible open source tools for doing this work.

I have made a series of articles where wilderness is connected. I start with a philosophical view of wilderness and move on to a practical application of the analysis tool FME from Safe Software to generate a wilderness map using available data. This will be followed by examples of how such wilderness maps will look. I will also look at wilderness degradation analysis and cartographic methods to visualize wilderness.

This is not so much about what I consider wilderness or not. I do provide a philosophical context, but I am not a philosopher. I am a decent geographer. I have had the opportunity to learn about wilderness indicators both as a professional in Norway and Tanzania. As member of the board of directors of the Norwegian Trekking Association and hiking guide I also learnt much about wilderness from a more personal perspective.

The main lesson from my professional and personal perspectives is that an indicator depends on the user. The used could be an conservationist NGO, wildlife managers or even commercial entities. I am hoping that the provided tools can represent a common denominator for discussions on wilderness indicators – and wilderness.

Regreational road in Serengeti, June 2006.

Recreational road in Serengeti, June 2006.

The following articles are relevant for this theme:

 

Procedure to analysw wilderness as implemented in FME.

Procedure to analysw wilderness as implemented in FME.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *