Hello,
I am a French (close from Paris) PhD student – I therefore apologize for my bad english.
I am doing a research on the federal government’s GIS about canadian forest: NFIS (National Forest Information System). I have been quite suprised to learn that native communities were not involved in the process of creating NFIS, eventhough they are fully engaged in GIS technologies (and nativemaps.org is a good example of that)…
I find it suprising because it means that aboriginal knowledge about forest won’t be taken in account in the national representation of the canadian forest.
I therefore have two questions to which some of you may have answers: are they any important data, range of data, classifications etc… concerning forest that are usually stored in native GISs that are not retrieved by NFIS? Do you know if native GISs use the same data standards (compatibility) as the federal’s one does?
If you have any idea about this, or if you know anyone that would have an idea, I would be very happy: it would greatly help me to pursue my research !
Thanks for your help.