This was so much easier than the previous lab. I think, mostly because there was only one main task. Anyway, I did not have too much trouble getting the raster maps to come close to matching the vector maps. There is one area on the left where there was still some distortion, but there was not much to match to on the vector map in that area. It was kind of fun to watch the map change as points were added.

Week 5 Lab: Data Search

This was the frustrating map. As with all 3 of the maps, finding the data was easy. (An editor at work recently told me that if I can't find something, it probably does not exist.) My problem was that I had too much data. These files contained every road type and hydrography down to the level of a drainage ditch. I played with this as much as I could, even though the server was very slow. I was able to eliminate several categories, but then I had trouble simplifying the legend. I wanted one entry for all roads, one for hydrography line, and one for hydrography polygon.

This map went well until I got to the conversion of the DEM. Even with the guidance of the discussion board, I struggled with it, but eventually I succeeded by using ArcCatalog. For the DEM, I flipped the scale, so the highest elevation is the darkest. I think it looks pretty cool.


For this map, I decided to leave the "land use" categories off of the legend. I did this because there were so many that the legend would have covered the entire map. Also, there were many blank categories and I did not know how to remove them. Hopefully in the near future, I will become more adept at editing legends.

Haiti Earthquake Map

I found this USGS map through the web site of the University of Texas Perry-Castaneda Map Collection. The opening page of this site usually has links to maps of current events, so it is often the first place I go for this type of map. I also find that it is very difficult to find things on government sites, such as USGS, so the University of Texas site is especially helpful.

I chose this map because it is simple, yet provides vital information. It indicated where the earthquake was the most severe. I like that the color scheme is intuitive with red as the most severely affected area. This helps to focus any rescue and humanitarian efforts to the areas that were hardest hit.

Week 4Lab: Projections

This lab was a little more complex than the others. I felt like I still do not have the skills to design the map the way I would like. I was not able to label only the four relevant counties. I tried doing the SQL query, but was unable to format it correctly. Instead, I used color to designate each county.

Week 3 Lab: Mexico Maps

Map #1: This map went pretty well. I did not have any difficulties and had fun playing with the color choices.

Map#2: This map was more challenging for me. I kept using the scroll wheel on my mouse to move around the map (like I do when fact-checking in PDF markup). I learned the hard way that this is zooms in and out. The map reloaded each time, so this took much longer than it should have and it drove me a little crazy. I need to retrain the muscle memory. :)

Map #3: By the time I got to this map I was pretty comfortable with the concepts we learned in the previous exercises, so it was not difficult.