GIS 1 Lab 1

Goals and Background:
The main goal of this lab is to demonstrate an understanding of the differences between coordinate systems and apply them to GIS data in an organized way.  In order for some data to be usable in GIS, projection errors must be identified and projected or reprojected to match the data.  The last few weeks have been an introduction to the very basics behind GIS, including information on scale, formatting, presentation, and importing and exporting data for use.




Methods:
To begin with, I added the shapefile layers countries and geogrid to ArcMap.  I changed the symbolization of the layers and then changed the coordinate system of the data frame to WGS 1984.  I then added four more data frames with the countries and geogrid shapefiles and changed their coordinate systems to different types of Projected coordinate systems including World Mercator, Sinusoidal, Equidistant conic, and equidistant cylindrical.  Next, I added the data frame Wisconsin UTM and selected Wisconsin from the states layer by using the select by attribute table.  I then created a new layer with the selected feature Wisconsin and exported it to my data folder with the same coordinate system as the current layer.  The Wisconsin data frame was set to NAD UTM 1983, Zone 16N.  Another new data frame was created and states and state roads shape files were added.  The two shape files line up but are in different projections so I changed the projection of state roads to match States by using the Project tool from ArcToolbox.  The data frame was changed to North American Lambert Conformational Conic.  To finish, I organized all the data frames in the map by adding titles, scales, and a north facing directional (Figure 1).
For the second map I created, I first added the Central Wisconsin counties shapefile.  The layer was missing spatial information so I used the define projection tool to set the coordinate system to GCS_North_American_1983.  I then added the shapefile Lower Chip rivers with the same coordinate system.  I added labels to the counties and a legend and scale to make the map more presentable (Figure 2)


Results:




Figure 1: Projections
 This map demonstrates the use of different types of projections and coordinate systems with multiple data frames to show their variability and function.



Figure 2: Central Wisconsin Rivers
This map demonstrates layers of rivers and counties in Central Wisconsin with defined projections.

Sources:

Price, Maribeth. Mastering ArcGIS. 7th ed. N.p.: McGraw Hill, 2016. Web. 15 Feb. 2016.

Michigan Department of Transportation. (n.d.). Retrieved February 15, 2016.

roads

Becker, K. (2016, February 16). Kelly's Geog 335 GIS 1 Blog [Web blog post].

kellysgis1blog.blogspot.com