Lab 7

This lab uses the 2000 Census data from www.census.gov and reveals the settlement patterns of various races living in the United States.



Asian American Census Map
This map shows the population density of Asians living in the United States in 2000. As we can see, the West Coast, like San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Seattle are all home to burgeoning Asian populations; as well as New York. From this map, we can see that the highest populated areas is in California, with 30,84% of Asians living in CA. This is probably due to historical reasons since the 20th century; Asian immigrants have been flocking to the West coast due to better employment opportunities and room for economic mobility. And after the immigration act of 1965, even more Asians immigrated to the West coast and built communities.



African American Census Map
This map shows the population density of African Americans living in the United States in 200. In total, there are over 37 million African Americans in the U.S, which makes them the second largest minority group in the country. As we can see from the map, the counties that have the largest population density of blacks are in the South-Eastern parts of the United States. According to this map, the population in concentrated in areas like Virginia and Mississippi, while in other places, there aren’t many clusters of high population. We see, that the country with the highest population density has a percentage of 86.49%.



Some Other Race Census Map
This map shows the population density of other races, or those people who did not fall into white, black, Asian, and American Indian, in the United States. It’s interesting to see how diversified the west coast is compared to the east coast and the south. Places where there are diversified races, are all clustered together, like little pockets of diversity, whereas places that aren’t as diversified have low population density of “other races.” This reflects the human nature of going to a place that people can relate ethnically more with. Asians tend to groups with Asians, and other races tend to go with other races.

Conclusion:
While these maps are useful in giving a general overview of racial categories within the United States, it still lacks a lot of information about ethnic dispersion in America. First, these maps don’t show any trends from previous or future years, but rather shows us a frozen moment in racial population density in 2000. Secondly, it doesn’t really explain trends in ethnic dispersion, or give us any historical contexts. Lastly, it would be nice to have these census maps become more specific on the different types of ethnicities within a category. However, it does provide us with an easy way to understand the spatial components of the information we need. GIS visualizes the data and helps us bring thee data sets together. We could use these maps for a political campaign team to see what tactics they could use to gain their votes based on ethnicity.

Lab 6: DEM Maps

1. A one paragraph description of the area you selected AND the extent
information (in decimal degrees), as well as the information about the
geographic coordinate system (this can be found under the „Source‟ tab
of your original DEM);

While I was watching Survivorman, a reality tv show that teaches you how to survive in extreme conditions, the host found himself in the Moroccan mountains. This episode, interestingly coincided with our lab for the week and decided to do the DEM map on the High Atlas Mountains in central Morocco in Northern Africa. The High Atlas mountains are Africa's largest mountain range, and it can have extremes of both hot and cold weather. The specific episode, occurred in the southern half of the mountains in the arid desert; although it is dry, the northern half of the country tends to be more temperate. The mountain range is quite large and can peak over 10,000 feet, and like many other mountains over the world, it supplies the water for many valleys in North Africa.

The region of the mountain range below lies between 33.085 (top), 32. 420 (bottom), -5.010 (right) and 5.906 (left). The geographic coordinate system was WGS 1984 and used geocentric ellipsoid.

2. A shaded relief model of the area using a color-ramped DEM layered
above a hillshade model;

Shaded Relief





3. A slope map of your location;

Slope Map


4. An aspect map of your location;

Aspect Map





5. A 3D image of your location;

3D Image

Lab 5: Map Projections Part 2

Map projections are extremely valuable resource of geography due to it's ability to turn a 3-d object, like the earth, into a 2-d object that can be utilized for navigation and different uses for mapmaking. Typically, map projections fall into 3 categories: equal area, equidistant or conformal.

Equal-area map projections maintain the relative distance and size of the geographic features. This type of projection is ideal for accurate representation of the surface area of the countries. Equidistant projection preserve the distance between points and is proportional to the surface distance on the earth. Lastly, the conformal projections preserve angles locally, which are useful for navigation. Each of these categories have their own advantages and disadvantages.

For instance, conformal maps, like the Mercator projections, are indispensable tools for navigation and used to chart courses. Unfortunately, while conformal projections display correct angular relationships, people can develop an incorrect idea of the actual size of the countries. For example, on the mercator projection, certain countries look bigger and closer to the poles than they actually are.

Equidistant projections, like conformal projections, have their advantages and disadvantages. Because equidistant projections preserve distance at the cost of area and angles, they can only preserve distance from a central point. As a result, the more one deviates from that point, the less accurate the measurement will turn out to be.

Lastly, equal area projections are useful because they convey geographically accurate features on the map as they are in real life, which can prove to be accurate when features are changing like polar ice caps, or rivers. However, at the same time, it becomes difficult to represent all of the earth in a rectangular form, which makes it difficult to compare geographic features.

Lab 5: Map Projections Part 1

Equal Area Maps
Goode's Homolosine: The distance from Washington D.C to Kabul is 10,193miles


Mollweide (World): The distance from Washington D.C to Kabul is 8,049.82 miles

Equidistant
Plate Carree: The distance from Washington D.C to Kabul is 10,196 miles

Sinusoidal: The distance from Washington D.C to Kabul is 8,107.57 miles


Conformal Projections:
Mercator: The distance from Washington D.C to Kabul is 10,356.17 miles

Gall Stereographic: The distance from Washington D.C to Kabul is 7,224 miles

Lab 4

Pros

ArcGIS is an excellent program for visualizing data into a map format. It was extremely easy to follow the ArcGIS tutorial especially with the illustrations helping every step of the way. If it wasn't for the tutorial, I would be completely lost and would have thrown the computer out the window. It was considerably easy for me to create a map by illustrating a possible airport expansion and by even graphing the noise consequences. The most enjoyable part of the map was the snapping edit. It was simple, easy to use and made it easy for me to label all the roads.

What I really liked about this program was the ability for me to do anything on it. I can calculate population density while adding legends and making maps and roads in one program. Unlike other programs where it's one or the other, ArcGIS is both data and maps in one.

Cons

It is plain and simple difficult to use. Unlike google maps where I watched a youtube video and learned the steps, I spent a good hour and a half going step by step to learn how to use the ArcGIS program. Because there were so many steps, without the tutorial, it would have been extremely hard to follow and wouldn't even think about touching the program outside of school.

Also, because the design of the program is so gray and mundane, I found myself easily bored and because there were so many options on each window and toolbar, I also found myself undoing a lot of things. Overall, it was really complicated without the step by step tutorial, which was straightforward. But I don't think this is something everyone can and will be able to use. I definitely enjoyed google maps much more because I included things that I was interested.