Importance of digital spatial data in environmental education

Spatial data1 together with the tools for its visualization play a significant role in the environmental education. This issue is a point of interest to environmental stakeholders and GIS professionals. At the same time, however, it is also a point of interest to a number of social groups responsible for broadly sensed environmental education – both at the stage of school and academic education as well as the less formal education outside of school. The authors have adopted the following assumptions regarding the understanding of the term “environment” and its details, and consider the natural environment to be consisting of natural (both living and non-living) interrelated (systemically) and interacting components. Geographical environment is defined as a natural environment including some elements resulting from the human activity, i.e. anthropogenic elements (Jackowski, 2004). The aim of this article is to identify and summarize public spatial data sources available at the European and national level and to discuss some opportunities for implementing them into the environmental education. Furthermore, answers were given to the following two questions: a) which public spatial data resources facilitate research and education projects related to ecology and sustainable development, and b) which geoportals should be used in environmental education and in implementing and presenting the ideas of sustainable development.