By CYNDI GRAHAM
Moapa Valley Progress
A local 4-H club has received nearly $20,000 in high tech equipment to be used by local youth in their exploration of the realm of geography.
The University of Nevada Reno Cooperative Extension has provided a world class Geospatial Information System (GIS) at the Logandale Cooperative Extension Office. Where Wolves 4-H club has been using this new equipment to create amazing interactive maps of the Moapa Valley.
This equipment “will allow our 4-H Club to do just about any possible Geospatial Analysis and to produce high quality maps,” said Where Wolves 4-H advisor Doyle Raines. “This is just one of the many ways the UNR Cooperative Extension has supported our club and the entire 4-H community in the Moapa Valley.”
The Where Wolves club is a “STEAM team” which focuses on Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics. The club has 10-12 members and meets once a week on Wednesdays for up to four hours at the Logandale Cooperative Extension complex.
The club has been focusing intently on maps and geography. But they do more than just that. The group incorporates art, photography and coding skills such as HTML in their mapmaking efforts. The kids produce electronic maps, do geocaching and employ GIS and GPS (global positioning systems) in their work.
The maps that the team make are interactive as well. They are programmed with hyperlinks to the websites of various businesses or other locations that are featured on the maps.
“We started only about a year and a half ago,” said club leader Doyle Raines. “Everyone is excited about it.”
The Cooperative Extension facility received top-of-the-line computers, mapping software and a high-end large monitor that will allow the 4-H club members to see their maps at full-scale.
The club has learned map making skills so quickly and so well that a small group of its members were recently selected for the National 4-H GIS/GPS leadership team. Where Wolves club members Kody Burris, Abby Dreyfus and Iaian McMurray will be travelling to San Diego, CA this weekend to attend the Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI) Users Conference and attend meetings of the 4-H National GIS/GPS leadership team. These events will take place July 8-12.
“The UC is the most prestigious GIS event in the world, with 18,000 attendees,” explained Raines.
“ESRI supported our 4-H youth by waiving all conference costs including on site training” Raines added. “It’s a total value of approximately $9,000.”
The 4-H youth used the new equipment provided by the UNR Cooperative Extension to make a map of the Valley that they will display in the Map Gallery and compete against other high school teams.
“It’s a map of the (Moapa) Valley with attached photos to go along with all of the marked locations,” explained Where Wolves club member Iaian McMurray. “We even took all the photographs ourselves so we wouldn’t be infringing on any copyrights.”
The team can be found on the Facebook page “Where Wolves 4-H GIS/GPS Club.” Visitors to the page can see the local Moapa Valley interactive map that the youth submitted for the conference map gallery.
