Julieta's GIS Blog

In this week's module, we covered various terrain visualization techniques, including contour lines, hillshade manipulation, and the use of digital elevation models (DEM) on a 2-dimensional surface. The main exercise required to overlay a land cover layer of Yellowstone over an elevation raster layer. Seen below is my final result. On the left is land cover, with some transparency, over a traditional hillshade effect. I selected a traditional effect because it best represented land cover features. On the right is the elevation with a multispectral hillshade effect.  I went through a few color ramps to test which best complemented this DEM's physical features. I also went ahead and grouped many of the original land cover features into Pine Trees, Douglas Firs, etc. in order to generalize the different types of tree types. As for the map layout, at first I only had a single map frame and tested ways to represent elevation alongside land cover since I would otherwise have to mak

Our second module dealt with coordinate systems, their development throughout history, and why they matter. I really enjoyed reading through this module's discussion since our discussion leaders selected unique coordinate systems to analyze. Antarctica's preferred coordinate system was interesting to consider since it's such a unique location. We are used to seeing maps in Mercator projection, which distorts all landforms to form a flat frame. It great learning more about how that projection works. Canada in the Lambert Conformal Conic projection For the lab, we went through a series of different minor exercises to view and apply various coordinate systems and projections in ArcPro in order to grasp a better understanding of each distortion and best uses. Lastly, the main exercise had us apply a ‘graticule’ in geographic coordinates and a measured grid in projected coordinates for a state in the U.S. I selected the state of Colorado as it’s one of my favorite st

This first module served as a great refresher for key concepts in map design and typography. Admittedly, in day to day practice, I use ArcMap 99% of the time. Using ArcPro instead for this course has definitely been a welcome crash course on any and all updates to many familiar tools and features. The lab required to go through the process of compiling a simple map of Travis County, Texas, without labels for now, and develop a comprehensive understanding of what goes behind our own reasoning for certain design choices. In retrospect, I think there's a better way to symbolize Golf Course areas as they're not very prominent in the final map below. I would also modify the major roads symbology to be slightly thinner, and provide a faded drop shadow effect to the county shape so it does no feel flat.