Geographic information system (GIS) software maker ESRI has launched a website to commemorate the exploration of North America by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark's Corps of Discovery. Two hundred years ago, using compass, sextant, and the help of native peoples to guide them, the explorers started on a journey that would alter the face of the United States and significantly impact all the peoples within.
Today, 21st-century geospatial tools and processes are being applied to chronicle and explore numerous aspects of the 19th-century event and its impacts, which ripple across two centuries. The Lewis and Clark Web site provides an introduction to these modern analyses as well as a detailed history of mapmaking-from the tools used by the Corps of Discovery to modern cartographic methods such as GIS, a computer-based tool for mapping and analyzing places and events.
The ESRI site offers many resources for exploring geography today including classroom learning guides and links to Lewis and Clark maps and journals. The expedition and its bicentennial commemoration provide an evocative jumping-off point for geographic inquiry, as well as an opportunity to use geographic technology to understand change and learn how to manage change wisely. Geographic technology today is far more advanced, and is used not just to explore but to fulfill a modern mission: to understand the location of people and landscape features, to carefully manage the use of resources, and to plan for sustainable development.