Holly Waite graduated in June 2006 with her Bachelor of Environmental Studies in Honours Geography. She included a Diploma of Excellence in Geographic Information Systems as part of her degree.
Being a graduate of the Geography/Geomatics stream at the University of Waterloo has given me the knowledge and the skills needed to enter into this fast growing field.
The Geomatics specialization provided me with a strong
background in Cartography, Remote Sensing and Geographic Information Systems (GIS), and also exposed me to
some of the key tools used in this field.
In the final year of my degree, I chose to take both the GIS and the Remote Sensing project
courses as well as a GIS Management course to obtain the Diploma of Excellence in GIS. The diploma recognizes my expertise in GIS.
In the GIS project,
my group members and I created a GIS application to model coastal erosion on the north shore of Lake Erie.
The map (left) shows a projection of how much erosion will occur in 25 years. This information is combined with a high resolution
orthographically corrected image to give a full impression of the outcome.
In the Remote Sensing Project course, we analyzed different types of satellite images. 
The image (right) shows a subset of a Landsat image that we used for land use classification.
We used "training sites" to
tell the computer what electromagnetic wavelengths each landform reflects. Once a number of training sites were made, an
image classification algorithm was run to automatically classify land use types such as urban, forest, and agriculture.
The GIS specialization at UW prepared me for the work force and have taught me how
to think spatially.
The most rewarding part of this program for me was learning how to use Geomatics and GIS for conducting spatial analysis and using it, along with my knowledge, to solve real world problems.
