The problem statement in the lesson reads as follows: After reading about development and deforestation in Brazil, with your new-found GIS skills, you decide to use GIS to investigate the situation on a deeper level and on a spatial level. Your goal is to make an assessment about the pattern and reasons for development in one of the most widely known parts of the rainforest, the state of Rondộnia, Brazil. Skills integrated in the lesson include downloading and formatting data from an international public domain data source for use in a GIS. This source is Brazil’s Institute for Geography and Statistics (Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatistica (IBGE)). This agency, which operates in part as a national statistics agency, a land management agency, and an environmental agency, is a rich source of data in many tabular and spatial forms. One of my goals in writing the lesson was to help students realize that agencies outside the USA are also placing their spatial data online, and while language and bandwidth may pose challenges, many of these resources are worth pursuing. Read More
