GIS 3015 Final - Cartographic Skills

Here is my submission for the Final Project for GIS3015.

This is a map that was created to show the participation rate by state as well as the mean scores by state for the ACT standardized test available to High School seniors nationwide.

Google Earth Lab

Here is my summary of my Process Summary (The complete version was turned in via Dropbox):

Site Selection Justification

The reason I chose the site I did was to get a steady stream of electricity while minimizing impact on local residents.   Some of the factors I had to consider were wind speed, Ornithology, Noise, Shadow Flicker, Shipping Impact, and Landscape and Visual Impact.

The site I chose was near Harbor Beach, Michigan.     I chose this site by researching some of the buoys located here :  http://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/maps/EastGL.shtml  

I noticed that the area near Buoy HRBM4 had good wind generation based on the previous 45 days’ worth of data (was generating over the 5 m/s needed over 52 percent of the time).   I also noticed that slightly north of this area, there is a lot of forested land that is a good distance away from local residents.   In researching the town, I noticed that they pride themselves on being the home of the world’s largest man made harbor, so it shows the residents are open to the idea of harvesting the environment,.

I also researched some of the migration paths of birds (there will be some impact on all species in the great lakes area.   It is important to make that known and debate the impact before proceeding with the project. 

I also researched the impact of noise and shadow flicker and determined that this will be mitigated somewhat by the distance to populated areas as well as the vegetation.  Shipping lines should not be impacted as the primary lanes are over 20 miles offshore.

Landscape and visual impact should not be affected too negatively.   I think that the wind farm could actually serve as a tourist destination for teaching schools how a community has helped mold their environment to harvest the natural resources of wind (this new facility) and water (The world’s largest man-made harbor)

Here is the map of the location:

And zoomed out further to see location:

Dot Mapping

Here is my map and Process Summary for this week's assignment

Process Summary

1.       Copied the files from the R: drive to the S: drive
2.       Read through the instructions completely
3.       Experimented with the layers in the Illustrator file a bit to get familiar with them.
4.       In Excel, made a new sheet only including: Manatee County, Sarasota County, Hardee County, Desoto County, Highlands County, Glades County, Hendry County, Charlotte County, Lee County, Collier County,St. Lucie County, Martin County, Palm Beach County, Broward County, Miami-Dade County. Monroe County.  This will let me base my stats on just these counties.
5.       The majority of my time was spent trying to determine the best dot size for my map.    This was based on a lot of trial and error.     Originally I wanted to try to do 2000 total points, but at this scale I couldn’t get the dots to fit into my Dade County.   So I tried making a smaller dot size with no luck so I decided to bump down the number of total points
6.       I determined with my legible dot size that I could get a little over 400 dots of this size into Miam-Date county so I started with that.   And I also wanted to make sure I had a few points in the most sparse county so I took my original number and determined it was about 66% of that.   So my final numbers for each county came out to be:

Glades County	2
Hardee County	5
DeSoto County	6
Hendry County	7
Monroe County	15
Highlands County	17
Martin County	24
Charlotte County	27
St. Lucie County	36
Collier County	48
Manatee County	50
Sarasota County	62
Lee County	83
Palm Beach County	214
Broward County	307
Miami-Dade County	426

7.       Using some simple math I determined that each dot represented 5288 people.
8.       So now the fun began.    A LOT of cutting and pasting, arranging, re-arranging to get the dots to fit my counties given special consideration to avoid rivers and wetlands.
9.       If I had it to do over again, I probably would have zoomed in on the area of interest of South Florida a bit before starting to place dots.
10.   This exercise makes me appreciate how hard these procedures would be without some of the software tools that we rely on.

Lab 10 - Flow Mapping

Here is my map and Process Summary from this week's "Flow Mapping" lab.

Process Summary:
1)              Read the lab materials
2)              Added the world.shp and states.shp shapefiles to the mxd
3)              Added scale, neatline, north arror etc… to the mxd
4)              Exported this out to an Adobe Illustrator file
5)              Ordered my layers in Illustrator
6)              Applied countries to each of the regions that will be addressed in the map.   Chose to include Greenland as part of Europe color-wise based on its Wikipedia article
7)              Ran my calculations on my Excel data to determine my line widths
8)              Added my lines to the map.   I felt that one of the things that the chapter emphasized that I didn’t see on some of the other blogs was the concept of making sure the line widths kind of added up together to form the new line width.   I tried to do this but it involved making my custom “arrowhead” instead of the built in ones that Illustrator provides.    Logistically I couldn’t get all my arrows to come into one place, so I broke it into two arrows coming into the US.
9)              Cleaned up the various map elements to get it ready for submittal
10)          Completed Metadata
11)          Uploaded to Dropbox and Blog

Lab 9 - Isopleth Mapping

Here is my map and Process Summary for this week's lab.

Process Summary

1)               Read entire lab first
2)               Copied my data from the R: drive to the S: drive
3)               Opened up the Georgia.ai file in Illustrator
4)               Created a new layer called CONTOURS
5)               Looks like there is very little data in the lab to tell you how to complete this lab.   Looks like we are supposed to use the textbook to create this assignment.
6)               Did my required reading and understood a lot more about the process.
7)               Used Illustrator to create the contour lines, primarily using the pencil tool
8)               Worked on labeling and creating the standard map features.
9)               I modified the scale bar (while maintaining the scale) to end at 50 instead of 100 miles
10)           I transformed the size of the diagram to use more space
11)           Answered the lab questions and filled in the metadata
12)           Turned in the assignment and posted to my blog.

Lab 8 - Proportional Symbol Mapping

Fellow Argonauts,

Here is my submission for Week 8.   I struggled more with this lab than I have with the other labs.   It really makes me appreciate the power of ESRI's ArcGIS software to automate some of these features rather than doing them by hand like I did this week.



Process Summary

1)               Copied the data from the R: drive to my S: drive
2)               Read through the entire lab once to see what I’ll be doing
3)               Watched the Shape Tools video about Illustrator
4)               Started ArcMap
5)               Added the WHO European region to the map (from ArcGIS Online)
6)               I struggle with the process of re-projecting this.   I discussed it with a few students on the forum and finally Anne posted that you actually have to re-open the system fresh and add that re-projection as the first item in order to see the benefits of it.   Good to know for future labs and real-world use !
7)               Visited the wineinstitute.org site and went to the statistics area to download the PDF for the World Wine Consumption by volume
8)               Copied all of the data in to the Excel spreadsheet that was provided.
9)               Prepared my map for export to Illustrator by setting up my scale bars, titles, information, neat lines, etc…
10)           Exported to Illustrator
11)           Opened in Illustrator
12)           Set up my layers
13)           Arranged the Map in Illustrator to clean up some non-essential countries (Greenland, etc)
14)           Worked on my Excel file to calculate next
15)           Set the SQRT column
16)           Entered a fomula to compute the MAX of the column and then used this to help build the column with the parameter size.
17)           Placed my circles in Illustrator.  
18)           This lab fought me every step of the way.   If there was something wrong to be done, rest assured I did it.   I guess that is why I am taking these classes, to learn.

Cartography Week 7 - Chorpleth Maps

Here are my two maps for this week's assignment.    I feel much more comfortable with the layers aspect of Illustrator now.   Next week I am going to really try to concentrate on some of the design features of Illustrator to make my maps a little less plain.

Here is my Process Summary for this week's lab:

Process Summary

1.        Copied the data from the R: Drive to my S: Drive

2.       Started ArcMap

3.       Added the state_pop shape file

4.       I used the PROJECT tool to change to North_America_Albers_Equal_Area_Conic

5.       Changed the symbology to “Quantities” and chose a graduated color scheme

6.       I looked at the natural breaks.  Whenever I tried to adjust the breaks then it said that the classification was “Manual” rather that natural breaks.   So I left this at the 5 natural breaks it recommended.

7.       I set up my layers including breaking our Alaska and Hawaii to their own layer as well as the continental US.   Next I will get the scale bar to work with the continental US

8.       I really feel like I have become more familiar with Illustrator over the last couple of weeks.   It seems like making sure you have your layers set up really simplifies things.

9.       Now starting Part 2

10.   Opened Excel and the tab.xls file

11.   Set up a column called Population change and set the formula to =C2-D2

12.   Set up a column called Percent change and set the formula to =F2/D2

13.   Changed this column to a percentage

14.   Next I copied the data to a new tab and totaled my state values based on the region for the gray scale map.   These are my results:

New England	5.4%
Middle Atlantic	5.5%
East North Central	7.5%
West North Central	8.9%
South Atlantic	18.8%
East South Central	12.2%
West South Central	17.8%
Mountain	33.0%
Pacific	15.1%

15.   First I worked on my Deliverable 1 (Color).   I made sure to move the colors in the legend together like the text recommended.

16.   Since it also had negative values, I also used the word “to” instead of dashes.

17.   I made sure to note that Alaska and Hawaii were NOT to scale

18.   I made sure to include all of my required map elements

19.   I copied this project over to start my gray scale map

20.   I consulted Color Brewer and it suggested these five colors for a black and white system:

21.  

22.   I actually pasted that screen shot into my map and used the eyedrop tool to get the colors for each level

23.   I exported both my maps to JPG and created my blog post

24.   Updated all deliverables to dropbox

25.   I feel like I am comfortable with the layers aspect of illustrator now, and now I want to start working on the tools in Illustrator that will make my maps look a little less “plain”

Map Lettering and Typography Lab

Here is my map and process summary for the Week 6 lab.   It really made me appreciate all the things that ArcGIS does for you automatically compared to having to do things by hand.   Illustrator has some quirks that I am still getting used to....

Map:

Here is the Process Summary:

1.      Tried to open the 3 videos to view tips on using Type tools in Illustrator.   They all seemed to go to an incorrect link so I posted this issue on the forum

2.       Copied the data for florida_key.ai off of the R: drive

3.       Opened up adobe Illustrator

4.       Opened the florida_key.ai document

5.       Looked up the Florida Keys on Google Maps to use as a reference point

6.       First I am going to switch to a Landscape mode to maximize the map area

7.       I was able to find this under the Artboard settings

8.       I made a simple neatline using the rectangle box and the “Arrange” function to send it to the back

9.       I held the shift key to resize the map to get the maximum size I can get in this landscape page

10.   On page 190 of the text, it mentions the order you should place things.   First was the neatline, then the mapped area, then the inset (which I may com back to if things are too close), and next is the title and subtitle, so I am adding it next

11.   The next things it says to add are the Legend, Data Source, Scale (We will put “not to scale” in this case, and Orientation.

12.   I am adding “placeholders for each of these elements now and cleaning up my Illustrator Layers.

13.   Now I have the following layers on my map:

15.   Next I am tracking down the water bodies via Google Maps to see where they belong

16.   Chose a light blue background for the whole map to represent water in general

17.   Used a Blue Italic font as mentioned in the text to represent the water bodies

18.   “Shelter Bay” was difficult to find and pretty small to label

19.   Next I started labeling the National Parks/City Features

20.   I am going to try to shade the area that makes up Hammock Park

21.   I had to research how to use the “knife” tool in illustrator to achieve this

22.   I also learned about the Symbol Toolbar when placing the airport symbol

23.   Next I added my “Cities” (again just as placeholders)

24.   Finally added my Islands (I chose to use ALL CAPS here)

25.   Now that I have everything on my map, I experimented with a lot of different text options.   If nothing else, using Adobe Illustrator instead of ArcGIS really makes me appreciate the people that did their mapping for years by hand.   I think we take ArcGIS for granted

26.   Now I have all of my text in place and set with a solid color with a white stroke fill.

27.   Next I am going to review the text and see if there are improvements I can make in each area.

• a.       Frame and Neat Line – It emphasizes using a thin black line so modifying mine slightly
• b.      Next for the mapped area – I need to maximize the area for my map.   I think Landscape was the right choice but even with that there is a lot of empty space that concerns me.   Not sure how to fix it, and will be interested to see how others dealt with it
• c.       Inset – N/A – If I was in ArcGIS, I might have made an inset map but in Illustrator I don’t have additional data to pull from for the inset.
• d.      Title and Subtitle – It says it should be a succinct description of the theme.  It says the title should be plain and it should be the largest text on the map and horizontally centered.
• e.      Legend – Should be clear and straightforward with a subtle bounding box.  Representative symbols should be on the left and defined on the right.  Symbols should be vertically centered with their definitions.  The legend heading should further explain the map theme.
• f.        Data source should be plain and subtle with text centered.  Optimally it will be right under the legend.
• g.       Scale – Since this was not to scale, I indicated as much for the scale portion of the map.
• h.      Orientation – It should be relatively small as to not attract too much attention to it.

28.   Next I revisited my text elements to make them look as professional as possible.

Posted to Dropbox and Blog