Heaven’s eye view of area cemeteries

A constellation of satellites circling the Earth may soon help pinpoint on maps the locations of almost forgotten cemeteries in the Digby area.

The Admiral Digby Museum is the first local organization to take advantage of an offer to loan portable hand-held GPS (Global Positioning Systems) units to map important features in their communities.

The loan also comes with a one-day training session in use of the units, and museum curator Sheryl Stanton is lining up a dozen volunteers to take the training session.

Stanton wants to use the GPS units to precisely map the location of as many cemeteries as possible, and the hand-held units provide locations accurate to within a few metres, which will enable the museum to map even specific grave sites.

So Stanton was quick to take advantage of the offer by the Applied Geomatics Research Group (AGRG) in Middleton. The group is part of the Nova Scotia Community College System.

Heather Stewart, a research scientist with AGRG, and coordinator of the Community Mapping Project in Annapolis and Digby counties, met recently in Digby with Stanton and explained the project allows local interest groups to present and share their knowledge of the landscape with the wider community.

In outlining the project, Stewart said, “We anticipate those who may be keen to take part are natural history groups for mapping invasive species or biodiversity, 4-H groups for mapping land use within the 4H coverage area, church groups for mapping abandoned grave sites, and hiking clubs who would like to map trails.”

There are 10 GPS units for loan. Any group in Digby and Annapolis counties with a need or desire to learn about GPS technology to map local features is encouraged to apply and a one-day training session will be set up to give community volunteers training in data collection for mapping.

Training will include data collection, and the downloading and viewing of mapped data.

“The goal of all of this work is to build up a rural features database for future community mapping,” says Stewart. “After data is collected, the use of the data will be determined by each community group, and NSCC's Applied Geomatics Research Group will archive copies of all the data and data attributes.”

Interested groups can download an application form at agrg.cogs.ns.ca