Author/Authors :
DEĞERLİYURT, Mehmet Mehmet Akif Ersoy Üniversitesi - Fen Edebiyat Fakültesi - Coğrafya Bölümü, Turkey , ÇABUK, Saye Nihan Anadolu Üniversitesi - Yer ve Uzay Bilimleri Enstitüsü, Turkey
Abstract :
Geography, which investigates the interaction between humans and nature, both incorporates and uses different methods and techniques through the developing technological resources. It further extends its area of impact by using these methods and thus, it complies with the era. One of the most important contributions of today’s technological resources brought in the geography is also Geographical Information Systems (GIS). GIS shows the geographers how to better understand and express their study area, the earth, how to easily write it down into a plain paper by means of technological resources despite the curved shape of the earth and how to model the landforms in 2D and 3D. Furthermore, GIS allows us to perform analysis in order to generate new spatial data by examining the multiple data layers all together or one by one as well as using the existing data. In twenty-first century, technological resources led to an increase in functions of GIS. Thus, GIS is not solely made up of mapping and also makes it possible to evaluate the data faster by storing in the numeric field compared to the traditional methods. With the help of GIS, it is possible to generate new data from available data and create different maps depending on these data. By means, affluence of data increases. Moreover, the negative effects of problems arise from data conversion between different GIS software are reduced. On the other hand, the maps that were generated in GIS environment could also be easily stored in a computer and updated over time. Thus, it is prevented that the data become old and lose their up-to-dateness.
