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