Sharing GIS Maps and Data

So this week's lab, while time consuming, really wasn't that hard.  Which sometimes is a good thing. 

This week we used ArcGIS Online (AGO) for the first time.  There was some moving of data back and forth between ArcGIS and AGO.  We also used data created in ArcGIS to create a .kml which was imported into Google Earth.  Again, while long, it was fairly simple. 

Here is a link to the map I created on AGO:  http://arcg.is/1z4fHm

That's it for now, see you next week!

Ground Truthing and Accuracy Assessment

Whew...this lab was somewhat exhausting.  Mostly because I was really not happy with how the previous lab turned out.  Since this lab was supposed to use last weeks lab as a baseline, I felt the need to redo last weeks lab and give myself a better start point.  Ultimately, many lessons were learned and more experience with the different tools of ArcGIS was gained.

So this weeks lab focused on ground truthing and accuracy assessment.  As we were not able to properly visit Pascagoula to conduct our In-Situ assessment, we used Google Maps and in particular the Street View feature built into it.  This allowed us to get down to "street level" and verify whether our LULC codes that we used in Lab 3 were accurate or not. 

Overall, I had an accuracy of 81.25%, which isn't too bad given my limited experience.  The majority of my inaccuracies came when the point I selected happened to be by a small church or something similar that originally appeared as part of the neighborhood developments.  Also given the small point, the overall LULC that was assigned overwhelmed it. 

This was a frustrating exercise at first, but then it all clicked and I was able to get through it fairly well.  Below is a copy of my output.  See you all next week!

GIS & Cartography

This lab focused on mapping skills using GIS software.  There was some learning reinforcement of different tools like the essential elements as well as using inset maps.  Also so additional advanced features like highlighting within the inset what region we are focused on as well as adding the raster maps to the mix.  Personally for this lab I would say that the maps will speak more than I could ever do, so here they are. 

Map 1 shows the states of Mexico and what the population is in each state

Map 2 focused more central Mexico and brought in the elements of roads, rivers, railways, and major urban areas

Map 3 simply shows the topography of Mexico using a red (low land) to yellow (high land) color range

As I preface everything, if the colors seem off, please let me know in a constructive comment as I am color blind and what makes sense to me most likely doesnt make sense to most others.  If it works, great, if not, suggestions are always welcome.  

And with that, I will end this post.  Happy GISing!!!!

Land Use, Land Cover Map

This lab was a test in my patience and a wish or desire to have a digital pen vice a mouse for completing it.  The purpose of this lab was to identify certain areas of a map and label them with the appropriate Land Use/Land Cover (LULC) code.  Using the skills we learned the previous week for  identifying certain land features along with our own personal knowledge of what different pieces of infrastructure looks like, I was able to go through and mark the key points in the map.  Some things I learned going through this lab and will need to apply (redo) for next weeks lab: 
1.  Large to small - definitely need to mark larger areas, like residential, first and then create the smaller areas, like commercial/reservoirs/etc, within the larger area.  I think this will create a cleaner look for future maps.  For this map I dove right into marking the marsh areas and then other smaller areas I easily recognized.  The order should have been something like big water area -> marshes -> beaches or residential -> commercial -> industrial -> reservoirs or something along those lines. 
2.  Work through zooming in and out and panning while creating the larger polygons.  More vertices will create a cleaner look and leave you less prone to overlapping polygons.  Despite using the snapping tool, I'm pretty sure I had some overlap in there. (Yes, I just dimed myself out)
3.  Something I need to figure out as I think in the future it would make for a more interesting map presentation is how to do different color polygon borders within the same shapefile.  Now this may not be feasible and multiple shapefiles would be needed, but I think color coding the different LULC types would make for a better map presentation as it would make it easier/quicker to identify different entities.

So that is it.  I will definitely be reworking this for future use.  And without further ado, here is my map:

 

Owning Your Map - Take 2

One of the joys of taking multiple GIS classes at the same time is that sometimes the assignments are duplicated.  While some may balk at this kind of rework, I took it as an opportunity to reinforce my learning through repetition.  This map again is doing the Own Your Map lab, however this version had more elements that the previous version.  The main addition to this map was using the Florida cities shapefile and weeding that down to only what we wanted to show on the map.  Not much else to say about this version over my previous Own Your Map lab.  So without further ado, here is my map!

Photo Interpretation - Lab 2

If I have to say one thing about doing this course with no GIS experience, it is definitely helping my Intro to GIS course that I am taking at the same time.  I constantly have to bounce between lesson materials from both classes so I can figure out how to do what I need to do.  It is a lot at times, but the more I do this, the more familiar I hope to get with the tools.

So Lab 2, Visual Interpretation.  This lab was all about learning how to identify features and attributes on a photograph.  Different photographs were used to include grey scale, true color, and false color.  The first exercise focused on a grey scale photograph and the objective was to identify different tonal and texture levels on the map.  The map below illustrates what I identified for the different tones and textures.

The second exercise focused on identifying different features based on shape, size, shadow, pattern, and associations.  This I found to be more fun as I quickly recognized the map to be Pensacola Beach from what appeared to be 1970.  It was interesting to spot the key features that are still there and also take note of what is no longer there as much has been developed in 47 years.  Have a look at what I came up with in the map below.  

While the final exercise in this lab did not require an output map to be created, I still went through and identified 5 features on a true color photograph and noted what I thought they were and what colors they were.  The interesting point came when the false color photograph was put over the top and seeing how the features I selected changed colors.  While I am sure my interpretations of what the colors are slightly skewed due to my color blindness, there were clear shifts in color going from the true color photograph to the false color.  

Over all this lab was fun, albeit a little tedious as I am still learning ArcGIS.  But the more I work with it, the easier I am sure it will be further down the road.  

Owning Your Map

Well, this was my second foray into ArcGIS.  This one was simply creating a map showing the location of our beloved UWF within Escambia County.  The map included an inset showing where Escambia County is in relation to all of the other counties within Florida.  The map building exercise was fun but I really struggled with the metadata.

Through the help of Amber Bloechle, I was able to find alternate means of finding the information I needed within the metadata.  This was a huge help and is a key piece of information that I hope to retain for future use.

So here is my map, hope you all like it!