GIS for Beginners

Coming Soon

What this page covers

Almost every serious piece of river work — pollution mapping, catchment analysis, monitoring station planning, habitat assessment — involves maps and spatial data. GIS (Geographic Information Systems) is the technology that makes this possible. You do not need to be a specialist to benefit from understanding it.

This page will cover:

• What GIS is and why it matters for rivers: the concept of spatial layers, why combining a river line with land-use data with pollution points reveals things no spreadsheet can
• Key concepts without jargon: layers, shapefiles, rasters, basemaps, projections — explained with river examples
• QGIS: the free, open-source desktop GIS tool used by most NGOs and researchers — what it can do and what a beginner’s first session looks like
• India-WRIS as a GIS interface: how to use its built-in WebGIS without installing any software, and what its most useful layers are for pollution work
• Google Earth and Google My Maps: what casual users can do without any specialist tools
• Where to get Indian river spatial data: basin boundaries, river network shapefiles, administrative boundaries — free sources and how to download them

You do not need to master GIS

For most volunteers and NGO workers, knowing how to read a GIS map, interpret layers, and understand what spatial data is saying is far more useful than being able to create one. This guide is written for that majority.

Full page coming soon

This page is a placeholder. The complete guide will include annotated screenshots, a beginner walkthrough of India-WRIS, and a curated list of free spatial datasets relevant to Indian river work.