The Development of a Web GIS for Online Rainforest Sponsorship

Abstract

Abstract – Kathryn Ellen Alexander

This paper documents the process of designing and developing an interactive sponsorship map for a team of conservationists working in Madre de Dios, Peru. The creation of an Inter-Oceanic Highway, which divides the southern Amazon around the borders of Brazil, Bolivia and Peru, has caused great concern within the scientific community. The highway, created to reduce poverty in the remote regions of the Amazon, has caused trepidation due to the theory that its creation could potentially exacerbate the deforestation trends within the Peruvian Amazon by exporting the high rates of deforestation from Brazil. The creation of this map was intended to allow Internet users worldwide to sponsor endangered hectares of the Tambopata rainforest. Using a concession of land owned by Arbio Peru, a software experiment was conducted using the Rapid Application Development methodology. Interviews with the project stakeholders at the requirements analysis indicated the high-level requirements of the project, and a series of software prototypes were created to find the most appropriate solution using technologies discovered using secondary research in the literature survey. Through the use of desktop Geographic Information Systems (GIS) software, a unique vector shape file of the area was created and persisted in a spatial database to eventually be displayed in Google Maps through the use of a combination of PHP and JavaScript. The presented software performs as a technical platform onto which any vector shape file can be uploaded in order to quickly produce bespoke editions of the map for different areas of endangered fauna.