I was asked during my internship to conduct a presentation for the Colorado Coalition of Land Trust’s Conservation Excellence conference.  The presentation was about the possibilities of free and open source software, specifically QGIS, as an alternative to proprietary software.  I covered basics of the QGIS interface, how to create a boundary from a Legal Description, and how to do a viewshed analysis.

I contrived a very simple legal description of a conservation easement boundary, a rhombus in Teller county Colorado, used for demonstration purposes.  Viewshed analysis was conducted from three points along a road that passes through this sample conservation easement.  I symbolized each viewshed to match the corresponding point and rendered them with transparency so it is easy to identify where the viewsheds overlap.

Click the picture below to see a 3D model of the viewshed analysis.