Lauren Chaphe's Geographic Information Science (GIS) Portfolio

For the first assignment for this Computer Cartography course, we were asked to choose one well designed map and one poorly designed map and evaluate both on the design, map elements, and overall delivery of the the map's intended topic.  Well Designed Map Example: South Carolina Wildlife Management Area Map The map above is an example of a well designed map. The map's topic is clearly defined by the title and is supported by the symbology and labels that depict the different game zones of the state. More specifically, each zone is a different color and numbered logically from 1 to 6. The legend includes each color shown on the map, the font is legible and the elements are ordered numerically. Each county's name is labeled and the county boundaries are visible, but not too distracting from the game zones. The scale is appropriate to show the entire state of South Carolina and the scale bar is in appropriate units (miles). The map's title is centered at the top of the pa...

Hello! My name is Lauren Chaphe. I began my GIS journey in graduate school, where I took a few classes in geographic information science and remote sensing. During my last semester before graduation, I did a summer internship with the Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission's Division of Marine Fisheries, where one of my projects included working with artificial reef geospatial data. This experience opened my eyes to the option of going into the field of GIS for natural resource management and conservation. After graduation, I did another internship as a GIS Intern with the City of Orange City Public Works Department where I got to use GIS to map and update the city's public utilities geospatial database. I then used this experience as an environmental scientist in the environmental consulting field. This involved researching any potential environmental issues within a specific project area, such as mapped wetlands or mapped endangered species habitats, that may req...