Phase One

Creating a Base Map

The first step of the mapping process involves the creation of a base map. This is not as difficult as one might think; however, It can be expensive if photographic imagery of the territory is required. Options for obtaining this imagery include hiring a blimp or airplane pilot or a satellite to capture pictures of the territory to be mapped. For remote places such as Muhuru Bay, contracting a satellite to take pictures can cost between $1,000 and $2,000. The image comes in a special digital format that can be opened in a GIS software program like ARCGIS (costly professional package) or QGIS (free package that can be downloaded on the Internet).

The next step, or the first step if aerial photography is not part of the equation, is to take a GPS unit such as the Garmin Rhino—plot points, upload them on a computer, and voila: a map is born. It wasn’t quite so painless in Muhuru Bay, but that’s essentially what we did. Three of our research assistants would go to the far ends of Muhuru Bay on motorbikes, ask people what spots marked location boundaries/other important points within the community, plot these points, bring them back, and Green would upload them into his mapping software program.

At first we were using ARCGIS, but a few weeks into the project, a security guard at our compound, evidence indicates, stole Green’s hardware key—several other valuable items were later discovered in the guard’s office. After this happened, we had no way to access the program, and it would have taken weeks to get another one shipped from the states to Kenya. Therefore, our only option was to use QGIS, a free software program available on the Internet. Even this was a challenge: Green had to take a bus seven hours to Nairobi—that was the closest place with an Internet connection strong enough to finish the download—to obtain the software. This experience highlighted the importance of having a backup set of mapping software in case of an emergency. Our project was stalled for an entire week because we could not access our software! Eventually, after recovering access, we generated a map that looked like this: