I started applying GIS to my work in biogeography about 10 years ago. Through my graduate internship, PhD work and two other research jobs, I used the proprietary software packages that were available and used at my workplaces – mainly CartaLinx, Idrisi, ArcView and ArcGIS. But I found it rather annoying that we were constantly dealing with license renewal issues, and that I could not use the software away from the workplace unless I acquired my own license.

Figure 1: Distribution of Spanish algyroides (Algyroides marchi) at three spatial scales and from two different data sources.

It crossed my mind on several occasions that switching to free software would spare me those problems. However, there was prejudice against the analytical capabilities of free software, and even after I heard about the potential of GRASS, I was still reluctant because I thought it would be too difficult to learn. I was also afraid it would be cumbersome to migrate all the maps and analyses that I had done so far. At the beginning of my post-doc in 2008, I finally gave it an opportunity and took a training course on Quantum GIS and GRASS. It was probably the best decision of my professional life! I found that QGIS provided a very intuitive interface for GRASS, hat they complemented each other perfectly, and they provided all the analytical capabilities I needed.

I started using both programs immediately after the course. Not only did I begin all my new GIS work with QGIS/GRASS [e.g. 1,2], but I also did follow-up analyses on previous works that I had done with commercial software. For example, I had built models of otter [3] and desman [4] distribution in the Iberian Peninsula. After switching to QGIS-GRASS, I analysed how those models behaved when downscaled to a finer resolution [5]. Another previous work on biogeographic relationships between Iberian lynx and rabbit [6] had a follow-up after I switched to QGIS-GRASS [7]. Not only did I not have any problems with the migration of the data and previous results: I also found it much easier to do the things I wanted to do with the new software, and was able to do extra analyses which I could not have done with the programs I used before.

Figure 2: Environmental suitability for the Pyrenean desman (Galemys pyrenaicus) together with presence, absence, and random points in north Catalonia (Spain).

Conclusion

All in all, switching to Quantum GIS/GRASS brought me nothing but advantages. I can now work freely at work, at home and on my laptop on the move, without having to worry about software licenses or moving to new institutions. Open-source software covers all my research needs and gives me the freedom I longed for.

Author

This article was contributed in July 2010 by A. Márcia Barbosa. She is a post-doctoral researcher at Imperial College London (UK) and the University of Évora (Portugal).

References

• [1] Barbosa A.M., Fontaneto D., Marini L. & Pautasso M. (2010) Is the human population a large-scale indicator of the species richness of ground beetles? Animal Conservation, early view. doi: 10.1111/j.1469-1795.2010.00363.x.
• [2] Fontaneto D., Barbosa A.M., Pautasso M. & Segers H. (submitted) The 'rotiferologist' effect and the drivers of species richness in rotifers.
• [3] Barbosa, A.M., R. Real, J. Olivero & J.M. Vargas, 2003. Otter (Lutra lutra) distribution modeling at two resolution scales suited to conservation planning in the Iberian Peninsula. Biological Conservation, 114:377-387.
• [4] Barbosa A.M., Real R. & Vargas J.M. (2009) Transferability of environmental favourability models in geographic space: the case of the Iberian desman (Galemys pyrenaicus) in Portugal and Spain. Ecological Modelling 220: 747-754. doi: 10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2008.12.004
• [5] Barbosa A.M., Real R. & Vargas J.M. (2010) Use of coarse-resolution models of species' distributions to guide local conservation inferences. Conservation Biology, early vew. doi: 10.1111/j.1523-1739.2010.01517.x
• [6] Real R., A. M. Barbosa, A. Rodríguez, F. J. García, J. M. Vargas, L. J. Palomo & M. Delibes, 2008. Conservation biogeography of ecologically-interacting species: the case of the Iberian lynx and the European rabbit. Diversity and Distributions, 15: 390–400. doi: 10.1111/j.1472-4642.2008.00546.x.
• [7] Barbosa, A.M. & Real, R. (in press) Favourable areas for expansion and reintroduction of Iberian lynx accounting for distribution trends and genetic diversity of the European rabbit. Wildlife Biology in Practice."

The Associação Leonel Trindade – Sociedade de História Natural (ALT-SHN) is a non profit institution headquarted in Torres Vedras, Portugal, specialized in paleontology. The institution manages a large fossil collection, mainly from Upper Jurassic. One of the key issues in paleontological management is to assess spatial context of the sites from where the fossils are retrieved – hundreds of sites representing thousands of different specimens.

The Project

Back in 2008, we came up with the idea of exploring GIS technologies to support the investigation and get a more holistic perspective on the heritage we were dealing. This idea boosted SIGAP Project (GIS applied to paleontology) [2]. The project, supported by public and private entities – mainly the Municipalty, Digiterra.hu and the Army's Geographic Institute (IGeoE), aimed three goals:

• 1 Field Survey with Differencial GPS to gather the coordinates of the sites;
• 2 Build a Risk Model to identify hazards towards paleontological heritage and thus prevent them through regular field surveys;
• 3 Build a Geographic Database to handle all the information and start the collection inventory.

Software we used

QGIS was the mainframe of all the project. Data was dumped directly to QGIS, and then edited and manipulated in order to achieve the desired outputs. The GRASS interface provided by QGIS allowed us to conduct complex spatial analyis on rasters in order to obtain the risk model we needed to plan our field work and future prospection.

Furthermore it allowed us to import PostGIS layers and visualize them on QGIS.

Figure 1: Vector point data editing and visualization

The choice for QGIS was also encouraged by the multi platform support. The institution has three distinct facilities, and each of those facilities has different systems – We have Mac, Windows PC and Linux PC, therefore it's of extreme importance that we have the freedom to install the software on any machine we want so we don't get stuck to a particular computer.

Figure 2: Paleontological Risk Map

Conclusion

The overall experience with QGIS can only be rated has being very good and recommendable. From our point of view, the main advantage of QGIS is that it's not just a GIS software – it's a productivity suite for spatial data. It allowed us to take advantage of other powerful tools within a single work environment. From QGIS you can work with GRASS, with PostGIS, with GPS data, with webservices and with tens of useful plug-ins developed by users worldwide. The user friendly interface is also a big advantage, especially if you have to train first time users has we've done. The easyness of the interface makes production of maps an everyday task and brought people closer to spatial approaches [3].

Author

This article was contributed in November 2010 by André Mano. He is responsible for the Geopraphic Department of Associação Leonel Trindade – Sociedade de História Natural. His area of interest is focused on geotechnology applications to the fields of paleontology, archeology and cultural heritage.

References

• [1] www.alt-shn.org (portuguese only)
• [2] MANO, André. (2009) – Sistema de Informação Geográfica Aplicado à Paleontologia. Paleolusitana: Revista de Paleontologia e Paleoecologia, Torres Vedras: Alt-Sociedade de História Natural. ISSN 1647-2756, n.º 1, p. 245-250.
• [3] Mano, André. (2010) – Projecto SIGAP, Trabalho de Projecto apresentado como requisito parcial para a obtenção do grau de Mestre em Ciência e Sistemas de Informação Geográfica. ISEGI – UNL, Lisboa, 2010