02.21.10_Deliverable

This is a map of Flagler County, Florida, U.S.A. What do you think?


Wow! What a lab project this was and I still have to find and prepare my raster map. Oh boy!

Things I learned:

1. Do not reorganize your H drive while still creating maps. This results in map drawing errors as ArcMap cannot locate the original link. I started over many, many, too many times as a result to trying to get my files organized. Also on this topic, the H drive should be well organized and labeled for each lesson. I wanted to insert files from previous lessons and spent quite a bit if time navigating the R drive to locate what I needed to copy again.




2. Arc Catalog is a great tool! After I lost my links on my first, second and third maps I decided to make sure my files were not corrupt and all located in the same place, so I deleted all the unzipped, reprojected and clipped files I had used to date. I then unzipped again (into my nicely organized file) and used Arc Catalog to reproject and clip before I even dumped the files into ArcMap. What a time saver!!




3. I finally figured out the fixed scale option which eased quite a bit of my frustration and I exported as a .png file at a 125 resolution. I don't know what any of that means but it was suggested and seems to have increased my map size considerably.




4. I learned that I have forgotten how to add the little red box (area of detail) so I added a neat line and reduced the box size as small as I could.




5. I wanted to move some of the icons off the coastal areas so they did appear over the county boundary but was not sure how to accomplish this.




6. Also, I could not figure out how to add the ocean to the map.

Please let me know what you think! I appreciate any feedback!

Sue

02.10.10 Deliverable #2

This map shows the population migration out of the devastated city of Port-Au-Prince. Since this map represents where the people have moved to relief operations, police and government officals will know where to direct relief efforts.

02.10.10 Deliverable #1

I really liked the repetitive tasks in this exercise. I am a firm believer that when learning software, you either, "use it or lose it" and the more I repeat a task the greater chance I will have to remember it. Three maps in one exercise is great!

This lesson required we analyze the differences in Florida county boundary layers using three different coordinate systems; Albers, Universal Transverse Mercator and State Plane N. To redefine coordinate systems, we accessed the Project tool found in the Projections and Transformations toolset in the ArcMap Database Management Toolbox. To assist in the analysis of the maps, we also learned how to add a new field to an attribute table.

With the exception of Escambia County, the sq mile area totals in the UTM projection are higher than seen in the other two coordinate systems; however, the differences are slight with the largest variation of 19 square miles. Yet these differences in area emphasize the necessity of using the same coordinate system in each map layer. Layers with different coordinate systems will locate data in the wrong place.

Given the small variances in area, I wanted to try to make them stand out as much as possible so I decided to keep all the other variables in the three maps uniform and used the same background colors and fonts in all three maps. Well, at least I tried. I continue to struggle with uniform fonts and think the larger font on the Albers map make the polygons in this map falsely appear larger. I also wanted to present the area data within the polygons. To do this, I needed to use a scale that prevented the use of data frames or borders; otherwise, I could not fit all three maps on one page. Since my tired old eyes could not easily make out these numbers, I also included the chart.

Please provide feedback -- I really want to learn!!

Peace~Sue