Friday, February 19, 2010

Module 5 - GIS Data Search

The purpose of this assignment was to collect the required data for my assigned county in Florida (Leon), and display them on one or more maps. I had to organize the layers to have the information show clearly. Between finding and downloading the proper data and creating the maps, this was the most challenging exercise yet but I did learn A LOT.

My first map has majority of the required data. I found the layers at Florida Geographic Data Library. I didn't have to change the projection on any of them as they all had the projection of Albers. It was fun using the clip tool. It came in very handy. If I had to give a tip on this assignment, I would say to be very organized when saving files.

This map is of the strategic habitat conservation areas. The map looked kind of bare, so I added the pictures.

I became very frustrated when looking for samples of the raster datasets but finally found my way through LABINS. Searching, downloading and clipping the required data took me the longest.

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Map of Haiti

This image released by the U.S. Geological survey shows a shake map of the Haiti area. (U.S. Geological Survey/Associated Press).
I found this map on the CBCnews webiste (http://ww.cbc.ca/canada/montreal/story/2010/01/13/montreal-haiti-canada-support.html) which shows the instrumental intensity of the quake.

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Week 4 - Projections

What you see are three projected layers used to compare area for a couple counties in Florida. By far, this assignment took me the longest. I got stuck on page 3, when asked to create a county boundary layer in the Florida State Plane North (HARN Feet), but once I got past the confusion (on my part), I was able to get through the rest of the assignment.

Coming up with how to display the square miles to show the comparison was a challenge. I decided to use a legend for each projection but could not figure out how to display both the county names and square miles. In each layer, I selected the counties needed for comparison and exported them into a separate layer. (I did this for all three projections). Since I could not figure out how to show the county names and square miles I figured out a work around.

Now, I don't know if I did this the correct way, but it was the only way I knew how. I wrote down the area for each county in each projection. When I was working on the symbology for the counties, I typed in the name and area for each value. It displayed the way I wanted it but again, I'm not sure if I did it the right way.