Lab 7 Week 8

The first map focuses on the percent of asian in Us counties based on 2000 census data. The concentration of Asians in the Northeast, Northwest, and especially California shows that heavy asian density is on the coast and is relatively heavy in cities, especially gateway cites such as the San Francisco bay area and Los angeles where their are heavy dense quantities of asians, along with cites like New York and seattle to a lesser extend. However the asian population the percent of the asians population in the interior of the united states is very low except in cites such as Denver and Chicago.

The second map covers the percent of african americans in us counties based on the 2000 census data. There is heavy population percent concentration in southeastern and southern states excluding florida. Their is also a pocket of African Americans in southern California surrounding Los Angeles and in and around the cities of Chicago and Detroit. The Highest percentage of african americans in America appear to be in the areas to the east of the appalachian mountains and around the lower Mississippi river.

The final map is of the percent of the Other race according to the 2000 census data. The Label of other is a lose definition of the hispanic population in the us. The heaviest percentages of Hispanic population in the US in along the mexican american boarder running from southern texas along the rio grand to Los Angeles and up the central valley in California. This indicates the heavy amount of hispanic immigrants coming from central america and south america, traveling to parts of the us close to the boarder. Their is also a small pocket of hispanics in florida showing the large cuban population there.

These Census maps do a great job of illustrating the distribution and concentration of different minority groups in America county by county and their majority representation in a few select areas. while creating the maps it can be easy to alter the appearance just by changing the percent scales to highlight or disguise the percent of the group population across the county. ArcGis has been tedious to learn and can be frustrating but overall produces interesting and practical results.

Lab 6 week 7

When retrieving data online I found that if I took data from the 200,000 to 400,000 range it resulted in two data sets so I took one data set from the 1 to 100,000 thousand range so I only had to work with one data set. The area I focused on were the rocky mountains on the western side of the city of Denver in Colorado. This area has a rise in elevation which is interesting because Denver sits right next to the planes so there is a dramatic change elevation. The extent of this map goes from 38.9983333 to 40.001666 bottom to top and -106.0016666 to -104.9983333 left to right.  The data comes from the GCS North America 1983.

3D rendering of western Denver

Lab 5 ( week 6)

Mercador Confomal

Distance: 10,112 miles

Stereographic Conformal

Distance: 9,878 miles

Bonne Equal Area

Distance 6,731 miles

Mollweide Equal Area

Distance: 7,926 miles

Azimuthal Equidistant

Distance: 8,341 miles

Sinusoidal Equidistant

Distance: 8,098 miles

 In this lab we used Arc Gis to create different projections that represented the world. The three different projection types are Conformal, equal area, and equidistant  the conformal map projections preserve the shape of all land masses as the should apear on earth, equal area preserves the actual area that all landmasses should have on earth, and equidistant focuses on preserving all of the distances on the map in relation to the actual distance on the planet. This exercise illustrates how different projections can radically change the distance between two points on the planet. 

The two conformal maps, the Mercador and Stereographic, preserved the shape of  land and water bodies. Conformal maps preserve  oriented angles between curves with respect to there orientation, allowing the maps to preserve the angles and shapes of figures, without preserving the size. This type o map is not effective for making quantitative measurements due to the nature of the map however it can be beneficial when identifying land masses and other objects through their appearance.

The two equal area maps, Bonne and Mollweide, preserve the actual area of continents and water bodies  This leads to the distortion of some of the images and can be inaccurate for makeing measurements across large areas. These maps can be used when the area of an object takes precedent over the distances between objects or the shape of the land masses. It is used effectively when looking at small maps that depict global distribution. 

The final two map, Azimuthal and Sinusoidal, are equidistant maps that the focus on representing the distance between objects while sacrificing their shape and area.This type of map would be most effective for measuring the distance between Washington DC United States and Kabul Afganistan even though the the shape of the countries they are located on and their area's are incorrect  This exercise helps to identify the strengths and weaknesses of different map projections and underlines the importance of understanding the differences between them, otherwise measurements and images can be drastically inaccurate. 

Airport Expansion Lab 4

I used a tutorial for ArcGIS to create the following maps. The tutorial and software was complex and had somewhat of a learning curve that was a bit frustrating to overcome at times but overall was very helpful in learning how to utilize the system. The first graph I creating focused on schools and how they were oriented in relationship to the airport expansion. The tutorial walked me through some of the basic steps in importing data to ArcGIS along with labeling the different data sets and individual schools on the map. It explained how to change the orientation of the map along with expanding and resizing it. The tutorial also showed me how to import a legend for the map along with a distance bar and compass star. It was difficult to utilize the many different tools bars at first mainly due to the depth of the soft wear. There was always a large amount of options when it came to settings and adjustments so it was helpful to have the tutorial, to guide me through the finer details.

The second map that I created in the tutorial focused on land use and how to select and focus on different zones that would be possibly affected by the airport expansion. This part of the tutorial walked my through selecting different zones that where influenced by the future noise ring that would surround the airport expansion. IT then walked me through how to identify these zones by there use, whether it be agricultural, industrial, residential, and then color code then. The graph creation process was a bit difficult, once again due to the vast amount of options available, however by following the tutorial precisely, I was able to create a bar graph of the different land uses affected by the airport expansion.

The bottom map was created by mapping the population densities surrounding the airport and in the county overall. This required the use of the filed calculator which allowed me to calculate population density by going into the data and creating a new category. The tutorial also walked me through how to draw exact lines and curves while drawing a new feeder road for the airport. After completing this map one of the finale steps was to create a small scale map for the first map I created, that focused on schools near the airport, in order to  show its' location in relation to the county as a whole.

ArcGIS is an amazing software that allows users to manipulate and construct maps in infinitely many ways all from geographic data. It was frustrating to learn at some points but the Tutorial is very detailed and takes the user through all of the steps, leaving you with the basic information necessary to complete stunning, informative, and professional looking maps. ArcGIS, though sometimes complicated, makes GIS as a study much more intricate, and precise.