Intro to GIS: Weeks 7 & 8 -- Data Search

     This assignment is the culmination of the work I produced over the past several weeks. Thus far, I have learned various skills within each lab such as cartographic design and data projection, as well as searching/downloading GIS data. These skills are put to the test in this week’s assignment through the acquisition, organization, alteration, manipulation, and presentation of GIS data for a given county in Florida.

     I generated three maps for Brevard County, Florida using ArcMap. Each map has a different subset of information portrayed to meet the data requirements of the assignment (that is, particular vector layers, environmental data, and raster data). I tried to organize them in a logical, cohesive manner. I will briefly discuss the process and design of the maps and which skills I reinforced during each preparation.

Map, the First

     I thought it reasonable to include invasive species information with conservation area data since these often coincide in environmental studies. On the left side of the map, water bodies are shown in relation to the habitat conservation areas. On the right side, the locations of various invasive plant species are shown. In the background I have included major roads for context and noted the regional hydrography. To prepare these maps I had to clip various data layers since they originally included information at the state level. Symbology for invasive plants was customized within the layer properties Symbology options. The legends were also customized to fit in limited spaces. For the conservation and hydrography map, I excluded those conservation areas that were not found within the extent of the county (that excluded two priority levels - 5 and 6). Another key process was creating new shapefiles from selections within a layer. For instance, there are a multitude of invasive species in Brevard County. From examining the attribute table and consulting outside resources (check this nifty website out), I decided to only keep ten of the most problematic plant species.       

Map of Brevard County, FL displaying major roads, hydrography,
strategic habitat conservation areas, and a selection
of invasive plant species. 

Map, the Second

     This map shows major cities in Brevard County in relation to parks and recreational facilities. Again, I made new layers from selections based off of certain criteria (excluding towns with no reported population information and parks that were essentially beach access points). For this map I included an inset map of a quarter quadrant. It is also included on the base map. I altered layer transparency in the previous map but for this map I altered the display settings of a raster (a slightly different process). I also included an extent indicator on the base map to emphasize the area from which the quarter quadrant is derived. I designed the legend to fill the majority of the empty space on the right hand side of the map. In a previous lab, Cartography Design (Week 3), we converted labels to annotation so that they could be manipulated. I did just that for this map and also included leader lines since many of the cities are along the coast.  

A map of Brevard County, FL showing various cities along
with parks and recreational areas. A quarter quadrant of the Titusville region
is displayed as an inset with the location of public parks noted.  

Map, the Last but not Least

     The final map is a topographic map of the county. The digital elevation model (DEM) has a 1-arc second resolution (assignment specification). In order to display the data properly I had to project the raster using the Project Raster tool in the Data Management portion of ArcToolbox. I used a diverging color ramp and clipped the DEM to the county boundary. I included an inset map as well as some of the surrounding counties for additional context. The units are noted in the legend. 

A topographic map of Brevard County, FL. 

     The data for this lab was gathered from Florida Geographic Data Library, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (labins.org), and US Geological Survey. This assignment provided practice in accessing these resources and gaining familiarity with how to access GIS data. While this more time consuming than previous labs, it was fun to bring it all together.