Ichthyology and GIS critical to streamlining data collection in field endeavors and generating more accurate data sets. Ichthyology requires an understanding species geographic requirements. Fish require different abiotic environments or sediments for successful completion of biological life cycle based on species. Serious examinations of species should always include habitat because habitat differences create changes in population. Sediment could thereby be mapped and changes in sediment could easily be verified using previous records while simultaneously showing changes in resident fish populations. Various factors relating to the fish life cycle, such as food sources, migration patterns, changes in spawning grounds, could all be more accurately
Nature study students, who were influenced by this philosophy, went on to provide the nature study knowledge in public schools. It was Agassiz who coined the phrase, "Study nature, not books." Nature study can be described as "conceiving of the movement as a loose coalition of communities composed of individuals, societies, and institutions able to find some common ground in the study and appreciation of the natural world". In "Leaflet I: What Is Nature-Study?" from a 1904 collection nature study lessons, Liberty Hyde Bailey presented the following description of nature study: NATURE-STUDY, as a process, is seeing the things that one looks