Author: jvfondran

This section was harder and more complex than the previous assignment.  I ran into a few problems where I don’t think my final maps were correct but I tried my best to work through them.

Chapter 4:

The first tutorial in chapter 4 focused on importing data into a new ArcGIS pro project. At first, this was easy but soon I realized I had messed up somewhere. I realized that I missed the your turn portion and was completely lost when the second half was talking about tracts. I did not realize this until I had already left the lab and thought that it must have been a problem within the program. Comparatively to last week’s assignment I felt like I didn’t fully understand the work I was doing in some of the tutorials and was really just following along with what the book said. I understood that different tools helped find different results but I wasn’t really exactly able to understand how they were doing that work.

Chapter 5:

Chapter 5 begin by working with world map projections. It taught us how to change the given map into a different type of projection such as the Albers equal area projection. In tutorial 5-3 we worked on setting projected coordinate systems. It was mentioned that there are many ways for setting a maps coordinate system and regardless to the coordinate system apply you can always change it in the map properties menu. I enjoyed tutorial 5-6 about downloading geospatial data from the USGS National map viewer. I found it interesting that we can download data and input it into our own ArcGis program. I encountered a problem while trying to download the correct document as it was not working. I tried various methods to extract the contents from the downloaded file and then put it into the program but it was just not working. So I was unable to complete this tutorial. I still read through the tutorial and have a general understanding of what I was going to have to do.

Chapter 6:

Chapter 6 started off with a tutorial about dissolving features to create neighborhoods and fire divisions and battalions. We used skills we had learned in the first part such as opening attribute table and sorting different fields. We learned about the pairwise dissolved tool and what it is used for. We learned how to merge features and created a new NYC water layer that included all of the water features into one. I found this chapter to be less intriguing than others that I have completed.

Chapter 7:

Chapter 7 was the most fun tutorial chapter for me during this section I liked being able to actually move things around on the map rather than just him putting data into different tools like the last couple tutorials. It was fun putting the correct shapes of buildings back where they’re supposed to be and learning how to rotate them and change their size. Learning how to use the vertex points was a little bit of a struggle at first but I understood it after messing around with it for a little bit. We learned how to smooth a green space polygon. The result was a new feature class of smooth polygons for the golf courses. Tutorial 7-4 was a little bit harder than the last few. I had trouble transforming my building to fit into the smaller shape. I had to redo this step multiple times for it to finally work.

Chapter 8:

Chapter 8 was the easiest set of tutorials I’ve done so far because there was only two. It started off strong and I was able to complete tutorial one. However in tutorial two I ran into a problem when trying to use the create locator tool. I tried putting in the correct settings and running it multiple times without being able to get it to work. I attached a picture of what it looked like I am not sure what else I could have done.

Chapter 1

Finally being able to apply my knowledge to the actual program was very exciting. At first it was a little bit hard getting the hang of everything but the book was very spot on to the program. It was fun figuring out how to open and close different layers as well as being able to zoom in and out revealing different layers. There were so many tools used in this chapter but I was able to run through all these tutorials pretty seamlessly. I learned that patience is key when working on the software. Each step is very meaningful and if you miss one your result will not be correct or usable. I enjoyed the  “your turn” part because it really made me think and apply the knowledge rather than just reading and doing exactly what the book was telling me to do.

Chapter 2:

Chapter 2 was a little bit of a different story. This chapter took me more time than the first chapter and included steps that were more complex than the first. I think that the first chapter did a very good job at giving me a basic understanding and chapter 2 took it to the next level. The symbology tab was very daunting at first but I slowly started to get the hang of it. However, I was unable to change the symbology for “over age 60 using food stamps”. This was the first problem I ran into and I wasn’t sure exactly how I was going to fix it. Before completely freaking out, I went to the website and read some of my classmate’s posts. That’s when I found out that this was a collective problem and no one had an answer to fix it. Additionally, I could not find the out beyond button and checked posts for a possible answer. I used Henderson’s post as a guide to fix my problem. I followed their directions by going to visibility range> max/min> <current> in order to make the pop-ups appear. Overall this chapter was mostly easy to follow and I’m slowly getting the hang of performing these tasks much more easily then the first chapter.

Chapter 3:

Chapter 3 was definitely much harder than the first two chapters considering we had to learn how to share our post as well as make a dashboard. It was fun to be able to learn how to actually post our work to the online website as well as learning the process for how to publish a story/dashboard. This definitely took me a lot longer because I have never used this online ArcGis program. I felt like the first two chapters were more of a follow step by step with extra hints whereas in chapter 3 you had to apply the knowledge you already knew without much help from the book. I did run into one problem when trying to format my dashboard . I am not sure I added my table element correctly. I tried following the steps again in the book but could not quite figure it out. I think I would benefit from possibly starting over and practicing this again in the future . Hopefully, when I have to make another post I will better understand how to without any hiccups

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Chapter 4

Chapter Four covered Map density and its purpose. By mapping density, we can see where the highest concentration of a feature is. Mapping density is important to show the number of people per census tract. Density maps are something I am familiar with and have used before in different classes. What I found interesting was that you can map the density of features or feature values. For example, you can map business locations or the number of employees at each business. You can also map density graphically, using a dot map, or calculate a density value for each area. The operation of creating a map by a defined area or by density surface varies greatly. The density surface method may provide better information however it requires more effort. The chapter concludes by reviewing the methods and features of each. It explains what GIS is doing when creating density surface maps, like how the software will total the number of features that fall in an area and divide it by the area of the neighborhood. The calculations GIS creates are determined by the parameters specified by the user. Such as cell size, search radius, calculation method, and units. After reading this chapter, I have learned a lot more about the niche parts of GIS. There are so many important factors that go into map making and it is important to be diligent.

Chapter 5

Chapter 5 started by discussing why we should map what’s inside an area. This is important to mapping because it tells us if we need to take action on a certain topic. Many organizations and people rely on this type of mapping to complete their jobs and make communities better. When mapping, you must determine if you are looking for something inside a single area or each of several areas. Single areas include a service area around a central facility and a buffer defines a distance around a certain feature. As well as a natural boundary, an area you draw manually, result of a model (ex.boundaries of a floodplain). When finding something in several areas you are able to compare them to each other. These areas include contiguous (ex. zipcodes), disjunct (ex. state parks), and nested (ex. 50-100 year old floodplains). You can either have discrete or continuous features in your chosen area. Discrete features are unique and identifiable like locations. Whereas continuous features represent seamless geographic phenomena like precipitation or elevations. There are three ways of finding what is inside a given area by drawing areas and features, selecting features inside the areas, and overlaying the areas and features. Each method explains what it is good for and what information you need for the method . I found it interesting that there were so many options when finding what is inside and what the tradeoffs are between them. They discuss how to choose the best method and how to complete each. Each method has its own criteria and process different from the others. Finally, the tools in GIS can help us create summaries for our results, including a count, frequency, and a summary of a  numeric attribute (most commonly a sum). A count is the total number of features in an area and the frequency is the number of features with a given value or within a range of values. You can display frequency in the form of a bar chart in order to read the data better. I found this helpful to know for the future, because it may be easier to read for me. The summary of a numeric attribute (sum) can just be the overall total of something in the map.

Chapter 6

This chapter begins with asking why map what’s nearby. When using GIS you can discover what is in traveling distance and find out what is occurring within a distance or feature.  I found the example of the wildlife biologist interesting because that is something I resonate with. It discussed that they may want to know what is in a certain traveling range around a stream. They would use the features in this area to determine prime deer habitat.  I found the following paragraphs to be interesting.  It discussed that distance is one way of defining how close something is but nearness does not always use distance. You can actually measure something nearby with cost, for example time, money, and effort expended. By mapping costs rather than  distance you are able to find a more precise measure of what’s nearby. This was interesting to me because I have noticed that sometimes somewhere that is 15 miles away is actually closer than somewhere that is 10 miles away. So seeing that being measured and explained through a GIS standpoint was intriguing. Next the chapter went over three ways of finding what’s nearby, straight line distance, distance or cost over a network, and cost over a surface. Each method is good for certain things and requires different data. I found it very helpful that this chapter gave a list of guidelines for choosing the best method. It helped me better understand why you would use different strategies for different problems. This chapter built on various previous concepts which made the question of why map what’s nearby much easier to understand.

Chapter 1

The first chapter was able to give me a better understanding of what GIS is. It is a process looking at Geographic patterns in data and relationships between features. It was able to tell me the process I will go through when performing an analysis; the steps are as follows frame the question, understand your data, choose a method, process the data, and look at the results. It is important to look at your data and figure out how it can be analyzed before beginning in order to make the process easier. There are three geographic features they are discrete, continuous phenomena, or summarized by area .Each feature is used differently to find answers to a question. These geographic features can be represented in two different ways vector and raster. The vector method shows features of discrete locations and can even be used to pinpoint that spot of a crime. The raster model looks much different, features are represented as a matrix of cells in a continuous space. Depending on the size of cell for a raster layer it will affect the results of the analysis. I found it interesting that in each model certain features are better represented. Next the chapter talked about map projections and coordinate systems. It discussed that map projections can distort shapes of the features being displayed but generally when making maps of small areas that error is negligible. I found it interesting that the type of analysis you preform depends on the geographic attributes. The attribute values are categories, ranks, counts, amounts, and ratios.  Finally, the chapter ends by talking about an important part of GIS analysis this is the data tables that contain attribute values and summary statistics.

Chapter 2

Chapter 2 begins by talking about why map where things are.  Personally I would like to work in conservation so this next part stuck out to me. It discussed how mapping can show you places where you need to take action and when applied to conservation that could be destroyed Wetlands or protected habitats. What really helped me understand each of these chapters better was the real life examples they used. Deciding what to map actually was an easy concept for me to understand. For example how a police department may use GIS in order to figure out where the highest concentration of crimes are in an area. Each section was very detailed and helped me understand how to properly use GIS maps in the most efficient way. Additionally this chapter thoroughly listed out each step before and after making a map which helped me better understand the process. An important note was about how even basic maps that show where features are can reveal important patterns. The GIS uses the coordinates that you put in to draw the features,  individual locations, linear features, and areas all will display something different depending on what you want to see .Although this chapter makes GIS seem easy to understand I’m sure there will be difficulties when using it in the future. I am excited to start the next step of applying my knowledge to the ARGIS program.

 

Chapter 3

In chapter 3 it’s really interesting to see what goes into mapping and how it is used to scale out the variety of businesses shown as examples on the first few pages. There are an endless amount of items you can map out, from the book we can see examples such as discrete features, continuous phenomena, or data summarized. From the text, most maps that show data summarized are expressed through shading each area that is also based upon its value or using charts to show the amount of each category in each area. It is surprising to me that business maps should not be grouped by employees because block groups vary so much in size. While on the other hand larger block groups should have more workers but can be more spread out. They would need to map workers by the square miles so that you can see some distribution. There is a way to use ratios in a mapping situation, it’s fun to hear the use of ratios can even out a difference in larger and smaller areas, or also areas with many different features even with the ones with a few. Some of the more common ratios that are used in a mapping setting seem to be averages, proportions, and even some densities. When classes are being represented there are features with some similar values by assigning them the same symbol. Having these makes you see some less features while also seeing features with similar values. Classes should be made manually if you are looking for a feature that has a specific criteria or a comparing feature in a specific meaningful value. The maps that are shown on page 69 and explained on 68 were really interesting to see because the similarities in visual representation in the natural breaks (Jenks) and quantile were so fun to look at because it seems as if they are representing the same thing. Also keeping the data simple while explaining and showing expressive topics seems very hard but with the GIS system it has to be done to help successfully make a map.

Hi! I am Jade Fondran, a sophomore studying Zoology and minoring in Environmental Science. I am from Euclid, Ohio a suburb of Cleveland. I have a dog, two cats, and three fish.

Before reading this article I was unaware at how prevalent GIS is in each of our lives. I was surprised to know that a company like Starbucks uses GIS in order to strategically place each of their locations. I found this specific quote explaining GIS to be interesting “It is not a piece of software, but a scientific approach to the problem: ”how do we define crisp boundaries to demarcate fuzzy and changeable phenomena?” ” I thought this was an insightful way to explain how GIS can be used for many different things.

The identity crisis of GIS began in the 1960s when Ian Mcharg was determining how to fit a highway into the landscape properly. He used overlays of paper with forests, streets, buildings, etc on each layer and determined the best route. This overlay method became the basis for GIS and other spatial analysis techniques.  This concept of overlaying paper was translated into one of the earliest GIS systems on a computer. I always find stories of how some of the first computers worked and how they were created to be very fascinating.

In a later section, What Does the Acronym GIS Stand For? The Two Faces of GIS , it explains how  important  the translation of spatial phenomena is made into digital terms. Slight differences can change the results for analysis, and it is important for GIScience. I found it interesting that GIS is multifaceted and is not just one thing. Overall, I found this reading insightful and thoroughly introduced me to what GIS is and how important it is to society.

1. “GIS Application on Endangered Sharks”

GIS is used very often when determining where animals are most threatened. Making it very important to those who work in conservation. For example, the picture I found shows areas in which habitats of certain animals are protected under the Endangered Species Act. This specific example was made by NOAA Fisheries in order to make it easier for the public to identify protected areas.

2. “GIS application on plants”

GIS application can be used frequently when dealing with agriculture. For example, it can be used to help determine crop growth while analyzing fertilizer, soil type, and terrain. This map shows “Fertilizer application assessment based on data from field equipment, processed with EOSDA Crop Monitoring.” GIS software is very important in many aspects of agriculture and benefits all who utilize it in order to have the most efficient practices.

https://sites.owu.edu/geog-291/wp-content/uploads/sites/208/2025/01/print.pdf

Sources:

https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/feature-story/new-app-makes-endangered-species-habitat-easy-find

https://eos.com/blog/gis-in-agriculture/