Abstract
Interdisciplinary work in science has been driven in recent years at least partly by new technologies that meet the needs of several disciplines simultaneously. Geographical Information Systems (GIS) technology is used by geographers, archaeologists, geologists and a wide range of others in the social and natural sciences for storage, manipulation and mapping of data with a spatial reference. To illustrate the inherently interdisciplinary nature of GIS, a case study of an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) using GIS is presented in this paper. The environmental issues dealt with relate to archaeology, land use, transport, water, geology, ecology and noise. An initial GIS study identifying major environmental concerns suggests that the site is unsuitable. However, implementation of suitable mitigation measures, as evaluated using GIS, allows such concerns to be alleviated. The GIS approach is thus useful not only in site selection but also for evaluating the acceptability of mitigation measures.
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