Lauren Chaphe's Geographic Information Science (GIS) Portfolio

This week's module was focused on the process of geocoding and adding point feature data from a data table with a spatial component (i.e. coordinates or street address).  Part 1: Adding XY data Part one included adding coordinate data from a table. The following coordinates were taken from available Bald Eagle nest location data for Santa Rosa county:  LATITUDE LONGITUDE 30°33’50”N 87°08’33”W 30°31’43”N 87°06’59”W 30°31’02”N 87°05’54”W These coordinates are written in Degrees, Minutes, Seconds format. In order to plot these points with ArcGIS, the coordinates were converted to Decimal Degrees format with the following formulas: ycoord = (latDD + (latMM/60) + (latSS/3600)) xcoord = - (longDD + (longMM/60) + (longSS/3600)) (Note the negative) The conversion was completed using Microsoft Excel, saved as a .csv file, and then added to ArcGIS Pro. Finally, the "Add XY Point Data" tool was used to create points based on the tables x (longitude) and y (latitude) coordinates. See...

  This week, the lab was focused on vector analysis, specifically overlay tools and attribute table modifications. The main purpose of this map was to identify potential campsites that meet all of the following parameters:  -Within 300 m of a road AND -Within 150 m of a lake OR Within 500 m of a river AND -Not within a conservation area Data :  Road, Water, and Conservation Area data was provided. The BUFFER tool was used to create a 300 m buffer surrounding the roads polyline data. A variable distance buffer was created to do two different buffer distances within the water data. Rivers received a 500 m buffer and lakes received a 150 m buffer. The UNION tool was used to combine the water and roads buffers to create data that show the areas that overlap (i.e. meet the roads AND the water criteria). Then the ERASE tool was used to exclude the areas that overlap with the conservation areas. This produced only the areas that meet all three parameters.  Symbology : ...

  This week was focused on the introduction of projected coordinate systems. In this map, three different coordinate systems was used to display the same data, specifically counties in the state of Florida. This map is intended to compare the differences in data distortions for different coordinate systems.  Data:  A Florida County Boundary shapefile was downloaded from the online Florida Geographic Data Library.  This shapefile was then re-projected in three different projected coordinate systems,  Albers Conical Equal Area, NAD 1983 HARN State Plane Florida North FIPS 0903 (US Feet), and NAD 1983 UTM Zone 16N  using the Project tool in ESRI ArcGIS Pro.  Symbology:   Four counties were selected: Alachua, Escambia, Miami-Dade, and Polk county. Each county was highlighted with a different color, while the counties that were not selected were set to white.  Layout:  The required map features learned from the previous week was also applied ...

This week's lab focused on the topic of cartography, or the practice of creating maps. We were tasked to create a map showing the location of the University of West Florida's main campus location. Data : We were provided shapefile data of Escambia County, Florida Interstates, Florida Major City Locations, and Major Florida Rivers. Since we only wanted the data specifically within Escambia County, the  CLIP tool in ArcGIS Pro was used to clip all these data to the Escambia county boundary shapefile, like a cookie cutter. In this case, our final "cookie" is shaped like Escambia County and decorated with cities, interstates, rivers, and the UWF main campus location. Yum! Symbology:   Cartography often uses symbology to convey information. To start with, choosing symbology that the viewer can recognize is helpful. Water is usually shown as blue in most maps, so the rivers were changed to blue . The main focus was the location of the UWF Main Campus, so the point was chan...