Geography 59May 31, 2007

Administrative stuffMaine Map Review: Some Important Concepts

Shaded-relief maps, Proportional Symbol Maps, Review: Choropleth Maps

Review: Projections

Remaining classes – Geog 59

● May 31st : More maps, Review trouble areas + Maine map critique. Review Projections and Lab 5 (Projections)

● June 7th : Review terminology and objectives of the course + Map critique exercise (in-class)

Remaining classes – cont'd

● June 14th : Read topographic maps, and review important rules that must be followed in your final project. Extra Credit #2 DUE (10 points)

● June 21st : Current topics in Cartography + Any early final project presentations.

● June 28th : Final Projects

Maine Map

● The maps looked good● Key issues:

– Rules of type placement– Type convention– Element placement– Element balance

Maine – The rules of type placement

● K & W, page 235 only hints at rules

● Monmonier hardly touches on it

● What are the RULES!??!?!

● They were mentioned in class and are in the slides from May 10th

Type placement: Point features

Type placement: Line Features

● Some ambiguity● Generally, use repetition ● Sometimes spreading out the text slightly will

cover needs of the map● Abbreviation is ok for rivers

Labels on line features

● Avoid upside-down type

● Avoid stretching out too much

● Place text from bottom-to-top, but first try to place horizontally to ease reading

These are good practices

Map Elements

● Achieve “harmony” in your map by:– Looking for big empty white space(s) – how can you

move elements around to fill that space?

– Being bold about moving around elements to places you might not think are best

– Align objects whenever possible. Create guides to align elements or use alignment tools.

Moving on....

More Maps!

More Maps – Topography

● Shaded Relief Maps– Presumes an oblique

light source – Digital Elevation

Models (DEM's) are the main component needed to produce these maps

– ArcMap has good shaded-relief map production capability

More Maps - Topography

● Contour maps– Can be used to

generate surfaces in ArcMap (interpolation)

– Methods must be understood

Review: Choropleth Maps

● Good maps for showing changes, percentages, demographics

● Main task is data classification

● Color scheme is important too

Data-based maps: Proportional Symbols

● Data may be standardized, or may not be standardized

● ArcMap can produce on-the-fly

● Overlap may occur, though no rules exist to manage it

Dasymetric Maps● Dasymetric maps are

based on standardized data and use area as the mapping unit

● Takes changing densities into consideration – better visualization of diffusive processes

Dot Maps

● Use to show point events in space – point feature representation

● Use raw data to produce dot maps

● GIS products do not commonly produce dot mapsinto consideration

And last but not least...

Projections!

Review: Projections

See the guide on the website – it is based on a lot of detail, but ultimately practitioners use 1-3 projections over and over.

Today's lab exercise is meant to illustrate ArcMap's projection capabilities.

Decimal Degrees

● The basic unit of latitude and longitude is the degree (°)

● One degree covers a large area. They are most common on GPS units and topographic maps.

Decimal degrees are...

● Used in many electronic mapping applications. ● Often used (not always) to define a single point

in space● Sometimes in need conversion to Degrees,

Minutes, Seconds ● AND – (important for lab #5)● 1 degree is about 69 miles

Latitude, Longitude + Minutes + Seconds

● Each degree is subdivided into 60 minutes('). Each minute is divided into 60 seconds('')

● Express as: 1) lat or long

2) minutes

3) seconds

Quadrangle divisions - Wisconsin

End of lecture – May 31st