Wk 9 - Vector Analysis II

This was a really valuable lab that taught some important and powerful analysis tools.  I look forward to trying the rest of the tools in the near future.  I was pressed for time having spent last week in Emmitsburg, MD attending a course at the Emergency Management Institute so I used the minimum amount of tools to get the lab done.

Q1. I used the intersect tool to join the water and road buffers and ended up with the same results as I did with the union tool.
Q2. I used the erase tool to remove the campsites that intersected the conservation areas. After adding the conservation areas layer, I was expecting a few more sites to be eliminated since there were six conservation areas.  Only three sites were completely eliminated while other sites reduced in size.

Q3. 79 potential campsites remained. The largest was 7,765,034 square meters and the smallest was 748 square meters. The smallest site looks like a sliver that should be removed with topology rules.

What I did on my Spring Break

This is a map of Gulf County showing the four largest land owners and their acreage owned.  I also calculated the sum of the remaining acres and included that in the legend.  This assignment was free reign with regards to which features to include.  I chose to not display any parcel lines because the data was about total acres.  After selecting a blue background, the gaps in the parcel layer showed several water features which added some nice contrast.  I added a county boundary but chose not to add any other layers since the objective of the map was met without any clutter or additional labeling.

Wk 7 - University of West Florida - Editing

 

This exercise used a couple of editing skills: adding new features and modifying a feature using screen digitizing. We also created a new feature class to add athletic fields.

I have a quite a bit of  experience with screen digitizing points, lines and polygons but was still able to learn a few things from the ESRI exercise.  I used the smooth feature with a 1 pt allowable offset for the road feature I added.

University of West Florida - Georeferencing project

These two images were geoferenced onto a rudementary buildings and road layer base.  I chose to display the buildings with a 60% transparency to allow the color to merge into the similarly colored roofs.  I chose a segmented road line so it would clearly show the imagery's road.  I am going to try exporting this map into Adobe Illustrator to clean up the line between the two images. 

Nassau County, Florida - Raster Sampler

This map was created using State Plane NAD 83 Floria East Projection.  The challenge was finding the raster data.  I struggled with the digital elevation model because I didn't recognize what I was downloading was a zipped file (no zipper) and I didn't have WINZIP installed on my computer. I chose raster files along the coastline hoping for the greatest variation in elements, e.g. cities, ocean, beaches.  Digital Elevation Models seem to have less impact in areas with limited elevation change.

I set the hydrology layer on top of the raster files with a 50% transparency to show how well the data lined up.  I placed a USGS 1:24,000 grid as a base which helped me fit map elements and show the alignment of the raster files.  I think the unique legend format works with this map given the blank spaces I had to work map elements into.  The DEM and DRG raster file extend into the next county which throws off the shape of the county.

Nassau County, Florida - Transportation & Conservation Areas

This map of Nassau County, Florida shows the cities, major transportation routes, rivers, wetlands and public lands.  When I first looked at this county outline I couldn't believe how windy the county boundary was until I added a hydrology layer and discovered the Saint Marys River is the county boundary for the most part.  I was considering off-setting the river from the county boundary but quickly discovered this would be a difficult task since the river crosses back and forth over the county line many times.

Haiti Map

I found this map on a Bing search for Haiti Map Images.  Both of the maps I found in the ESRI & US Army link were too big for me to upload to my blog.  This is a good map showing entrapments, medical facilites and encampments.