Making Maps: Week 7/8

This week marks the middle of my first semester of GIS coursework. To celebrate, I spent hours searching for and downloading data to create a series of maps about Lafayette County! Party time-GIS style! Ok, it was actually fun because this lab assignment and midterm was an opportunity to have a go at map making and data pulling on our own. With just a few parameters about what types of data we needed to include (at least 5 vector, 2 raster, and 2 environmental layers), suggestions for where to find reliable GIS data, and a discussion board to reach out to classmates, the data search mapping madness was on.

I was assigned Lafayette county, the second least-populated county in FL, a dry county - no alcohol - and a surprisingly wet county - wetlands and swamps cover much of the county's surface. I used LABINS to obtain aerial images of USGS quarter quads, but most of my other data came from FGDL, or from files we had used in past assignments (no reason to reinvent the wheel). We could arrange the data across 1-3 maps, and after a lot of rearranging, I decided that three was more effective than two. I really didn't have any data complications other than trying to reduce some of the water body files to a more managable, relevant dataset and trying to figure out how to display multiple road symbols in one layer (ended up separating them. I think I need more experience with expressions before conquering one layer road labeling). I enjoyed experimenting with the software tools, using both the help menu and online resources to find answers to my burning "How do you do that? There's gotta be a way!" kind of questions. I did some selecting by attribute and location, displaying data with unique values, and clipping with the Clip tool versus within the data frame- all with success.

In the end, I'm not sure if I am starting to get a handle on mapping or if I was just lucky, as things went relatively smoothly. I certainly do not expect it will always go that way!