Vector Analysis Unites for Week 4!

A challenging and rewarding week involved two assignments for Vector Analysis in GIS Lab!

The second assignment is one I will remember. An exciting element of this assignment was the freedom to create a map with little stipulation, as long as the correct data was represented. We were finding areas for camping in the De Soto National Forest, in the State of Mississippi, that were near water, roads, and outside of conservation areas. We did a series of geoprocessing activities to sort out the data, and learned a few things along the way. It has been a while since I have needed to use the Union tool!

• First, we built a buffer around the roads, rivers, and lakes. We used a variable buffer for the water, and then experimented with a compound buffer - although we did not need it for our map. Instead, we used a fixed buffer for the roads.

• Second, we used the Union tool to overlay the buffers and find areas in them that are close to both water and a road. We assigned 'yes' or 'no' values using '1' or '0' and learned file-naming techniques to stay organized with a tool that gives a wide variety of results.

• Third, we removed conservation areas from the results so that areas with sensitive flora or fauna would not be included in the viable campsites. I used the Erase tool for this, because it simply removed portions of (and closed) any polygons that fell within conservation areas.

The only thing left was to create a map showing the possible campsites, near water and roads, away from any conservation areas, and symbolized by size. We made the multi-part feature into a single part, which broke the polygons into 81 different 'sites' for camping. They are now organized according to percentage of total hectares, so that a potential client or visitor would be able to choose the perfect campsite for their needs. The final result is seen below:

The Viable Campsite layer has a light transparency to allow more details to show, and I decided to use simple yet bold formatting to compensate for the busy data. For the Basemap, I experimented a bit and found that ESRI's Community Map seemed to fit well, with some river, road, and city labels included. Graduated Colors were used to separate the different sites. The yellow represents the smaller campsites, representing 3% or less of the total hectares, with the dark grey showing the largest campsites by percentage of total hectare at 12 or less. I had a challenge here, because the option for 'percentage of the total' required me to scroll up on the drop down, instead of down. I kept believing I had chosen something wrong and that the option was not there, but eventually I realized I could scroll up and then I found it. Next time, I will be sure to check that.

Another great week, and feeling more confident with ArcGIS Pro, Overlay tools, and cartography.

Three more weeks of GIS lab left!