UW Oshkosh Geography Department

GIS Lab

Welcome to the GIS and Remote Sensing Laboratory of the Department of Geography, University of Wisconsin - Oshkosh. We are located in Room 304 of the Halsey Science Center. The laboratory was established in 1993 and remodeled in 2001 and 2003 for instructional purposes. Geography technique courses such as Cartography, Computer Cartography, Introductory and Advanced GIS, and Remote Sensing of the Environment are taught in the laboratory.

The department has the latest equipment for cartography, computer cartography, digital image processing and GIS. The GIS facilities are noted among the best of any university in the State of Wisconsin. The department shares site licenses with other University of Wisconsin campuses for state-of-the-art ESRI products. Twenty workstations are configured in a LAN environment with specialized printers and plotters for the highest quality output.

The laboratory is well-equipped with hardware and software in a local area network (LAN) environment. Twenty HP/Compaq computers (CPU 3.0 GHz; 1GB RAM;) are used for data servers and workstations. Peripheral devices include digitizers, scanners (including Graphtec CS 1000), Laser printers (HP Color Laser 4600dn, HP LaserJet 4200n), large and small format color printers (including HP InkJet 2500CM), and plotters (HP DesignJet 5500ps). Primary software packages include ESRI ArcGIS, ARC/INFO, SDE, MapObjects, and ArcIMS; MapInfo/Vertical Mapper; MapViewer, Surfer and Grapher (Golden Software); and Microsoft Visual Basic and Office 2002.
In 2002, the department moved into the newly refurbished, centrally located Halsey Science Center. Classrooms, laboratories and department offices are located in close proximity. Physical and environmental geographers have access to a well-equipped Soils and Environmental Geography Laboratory and a Dendroecology and Biogeography Laboratory. The soils lab allows students to master basic soil physical and chemical analyses in pursuit of laboratory and field research. The dendroecology lab is equipped to provide students with experience in sampling and characterizing vegetation, including dendrochronological techniques that use tree rings to provide information about the environment, particularly climate.

The laboratory also supports faculty-student collaborative research projects evolving from grants, contracts, and various other sources.
The departmental lounge allows faculty and students can interact freely and informally. Its comfortable furnishings provide a great place for a student to talk with a professor over coffee, to study for an upcoming exam or to share a microwave pizza with classmates. ssss
We also provide GIS training courses for local GIS users.

View of GIS Lab facilities

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