College of Agriculture and Life Sciences' Geographic Information Systems Education Laboratory

Visit our GIS Education Lab Calendar for a List of Upcoming Events

At the center of the precision farming education effort at NC State University is the College of Agriculture and Life Science Geographic Information Systems Education Laboratory. The GIS Education Lab uniquely provides education and extension training in computer-based information technologies used for site-specific agricultural and environmental management. The facility is centrally located at 2414 Williams Hall on NC State University's main campus. Day-to-day operations are coordinated through the Department of Soil Science. Directions the facility are available on-line.

Student Workstations

The GIS Education Lab is equipped with 20 Windows 2000 Professional workstations for student use and one Windows Windows 2000 Professional workstation for instructor use. Each machine has relevant software installed to facilitate access to raw and processed spatial data and thematic geographic information. Current configurations include student access to ArcGIS, Arc/INFO and ArcView, AgInfo, and SGIS.

Data Management and Delivery

The data management system in the GIS Education Lab was designed to enable a wide array of applications.  At the root of the data management system is the ultra-fast network. A 100-BaseT, TCP/IP backbone is accessible to all NC State University departments, potentially allowing the entire University community direct access to the data products, developed in the Department of Soil Science, through Unix, Windows, and Macintosh operating systems. Data requests and delivery are brokered by a Linux server running ftp, web and SAMBA services.

The GIS Education Lab currently has extensive spatial data holdings and thematic geographic information, with initial data storage on the server system exceeding 150GBs. The Department of Soil Science, which oversees day-to-day operations for the lab, has a memorandum of agreement with the NC Center for Geographic Information and Analysis for real-time access to a major portion of the state corporate geographic database.

Local servers within the GIS Education Lab contain spatial data for a wide range of applications. This data has been spatially referenced to a common datum, map projection, and units so lab users can quickly and effectively retrieve and manipulate data. Much of the data we use in the GIS Education Laboratory is available on-line for download. 

Current data holdings in the lab include:

• digital county soil maps for most of the state's 100 counties,
• digital soil attribute data (MUIR, National Soil Characterization),
• statewide summer and winter LANDSAT TM imagery ('93, '94, '95, Winter 2000),
• statewide SPOT panchromatic (10 m) imagery for the entire state,
• custom developed hydrologically enforced digital elevation maps for the entire state,
• statewide EPA Reach File 3 hydrography, and
• numerous derived data layers used to characterize nitrogen and pesticide risk.

Other major data holdings include water quality and hydrographic data from watershed characterization projects and the USGS ambient network monitoring system. These extensive data holdings and memoranda of agreement provide us with direct access to much of the data needed for the development of specific applications and targeted educational case studies.