GIS 1 Lab 3

Goals and Background: The goal of this lab was to build good maps both dynamic and static, and learn how to work with external online data in the process. I went through the process of downloading, converting, and joining data tables with state and county boarder shapefiles to be able to map the data.

Methods: 

Part 1-Static Mapping

I first went to the U.S. Census Bureau website and used the advanced search tools on the left hand side to refine my search to 2010 SF1 100% data for all counties of Wisconsin. I next located and downloaded the P1 - Total Population 2010 Census Summary File in the .csv format. This file I opened in Microsoft Excel, saving the file again as a MS Excel workbook file, and converting all number data columns to the number format by right clicking the column once it was highlighted and clicking Format Cells. I next downloaded the Wisconsin counties shapefile by selecting the shapefile format and download, after clicking on geographies then map, after I had selected all counties in Wisconsin and the 2010 SF1 100% data dataset. 

I then opened ArcMap, and after setting my appropriate workspaces under Geoprocessing - Environments, imported my Wisconsin counties shapefile and my edited MS Excel table. Observing that both the stand alone table and the attribute table for my Wisconsin counties had GEO id fields, which matched states, I right clicked my shapefile in the table of contents, and clicked Join and Relates and then Join, then joined the tables using the GEO_ID and GEO#id fields as keys, selecting 'Keep all records". After checking that all my data was properly joined in the attribute table, I right clicked on this shapefile in the table of contents and clicked data, then export data. I saved this as a new shapefile, which included the old shapefile's data and my joined data. I next deleted the old shapefile and the old stand alone table after double checking that my exported data had all of the data that I needed.

I next mapped this new shapefile. I right clicked on the shapefile in the table of contents, selecting properties, then clicking on the symbology tab. On the symbology tab I choose the correct value field (D001), the graduated colors method under Quantities, then classified the data with Jenks Natural Breaks with six classes and an easy to understand color ramp. Under the coordinate system tab of the data frame properties I then chose an appropriate projection, the central Wisconsin state plane projection. I then worked in the layout view to craft a cartographically pleasing map, including scale, a neatline, a legend, and north arrow, and appropriate title and reference data. These were included using the buttons on the insert drop down menu. To clean up my map further, I turned of the map's boarder and tinkered with it and the other elements' scales. My map of population in Wisconsin counties is shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1

I next choose the average age data set  to map Wisconsin counties with. I found this data on the same Census Bureau website, under the same geography and dataset search criteria. I then edited this data the same in Excel, and imported it into ArcMap, as well as the same shapefile used for the population data, joining the two using the same key and exporting the new joined data as a shapefile all the same. After removing the old data from the data frame, and dragging in my new shapefile with all of my data, I symbolized this average age data with graduated colors and the same easy to understand color ramp. I did, however, change the classification system. This time I chose the equal interval classification with 5 classes due to the more normal but relatively flat distribution. I then also projected this data frame to the central Wisconsin state plane projection and edited the map for viewing under the layout view. This map of average data is shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2

Part 2-Dynamic Mapping

I logged into my ESRI account by clicking file, login, then signed in using my UWEC enterprise account. I then clicked file, share as, then service... In the wizard I clicked publish a service, chose my school's connection, then named my service (without spaces). I next turned on Feature Access and turned off Tiled Mapping, which would have taken up a lot of my schools credits in ESRI's online service interface. I then entered in descriptors under the Item Description tab, and shared my service with my school's geography department under the sharing tab. Clicking on the Analyze check mark in the upper right hand corner, I encountered no errors and published my service. I then went to My Content on ESRI's website in my browser after logging in, and clicked the down arrow, then add layer to map on the feature layer I had just published. I now clicked on the more options ... symbol in my data under Contents, and clicked Configure Pop-up in order to correctly configure pop up data for my map which can be seen on my map below (Figure 3).

Figure 3

Results: My resulting maps are shown in figures one, two, and three. 

Sources:

  Price, M. H. (2016). Mastering ArcGIS (7th ed.). Dubuque, IA: McGraw-Hill.

  

  Median Age by Sex (2010) [Downloaded File]. United States Census BureauURL: http://factfinder.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/productview.xhtml?pid=DEC_10_SF1_P13&prodType=table

  Total Population (2010) [Downloaded File]. United States Census Bureau URL: http:/factfinder.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/productview.xhtml?pid=DEC_10_SF1_P1&prodType=table