MAPS: A GIS for land resource management in Montana

G. A. Nielsen; J. M. Caprio; P. A. McDaniel; R. D. Snyder; C. Montagne

Excerpt

Ageographic information system (GIS) can be an effective tool for land A use planners, engineers, researchers, agricultural producers, resource consultants, and others who need information about land resources on a regular basis. Storing land resource data in a GIS provides the capability to (a) easily retrieve information, (b) produce information tailored to different needs, (c) display and discover information through manipulation of large data bases, and (d) identify and assess variables for predictive models (22).

As a tool for summarizing, manipulating, and presenting an ever expanding land-attribute data base, the Montana Agricultural Experiment Station at Montana State University developed a computer-based GIS. The Montana Agricultural Potentials System (MAPS) is an operational, statewide GIS that displays any combination of almost 200 climatic, physiographic, land use, and soil attributes on Albers equal area maps at several scales.

System format

MAPS stores and manipulates data in raster (grid) format on a VAX 8550 mainframe computer. Several of the FORTRAN system programs are modified from the Land Use Mapping …

Footnotes

G. A. Nielsen is a professor of soil science, J. Hi. Caprio is a professor of agricultural climatology, P. A. McDaniel is an adjunct assistant professor of soil science, R. D. Snyder is a system programmer/analyst, and C. Montagne is an associate professor of soil and land resources in the Department of Plant and Soil Science, Montana State University, Bozeman, 59717. This article is a contribution from the Montana Agricultural Experiment Station, Paper No. J-2479.
Copyright 1990 by the Soil and Water Conservation Society

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