Madelineclaire's Weblog

Project Update

madelineclaire — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 19:25:22 +0000

With about a week left to work on our class project, here is where I stand…

I have completed a map of the greenspaces in Delaware county. This map, compiled using the Delaware Data, displays the parks, bicycle trails, cemeteries, and golf courses of the county. Each is depicted by a standard symbol.

greenspaces1

Secondly, I have completed a map of the Top 8 Pollution sources in the county. (It was originally going to be the top 10 polluters but the website from where the data was obtained only listed eight polluters) PlanetHazard.com provided the information in a dataset from 2002. It listed, in order, the industries/companies that are doing the most polluting in the county. This part of the project proved rather difficult as once I had worked on the map some, then returned to it at a later date, I could find no way to combine my two layers. One layer had 7 polluters and the other layer had only 1 and how to combine the two remained a mystery. After lots of confusion, I re-made the map, finding again the street address and selecting each polluting point and then creating a layer, one all 8 were selected, from the selected features.

polluters1

Project Update

madelineclaire — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 18:34:12 +0000

Progress was made on maps involving the county’s environmental aspects as well as the county’s pollution. The map of Delaware’s green spaces was pretty straight forward and we decided to include parks as well as golf courses, cemeteries, and bike trails. Once these layers were added I chose appropriate colors for all four and found appropriate symbols for the golf courses and cemeteries. Finally, the map was finished off with a title and legend detailing what was on the map.

In regards to the pollution in the county, I took a deeper look at the Planet Hazard website and found that the set of data is from 2002. Deeming this not too outdated to work with I began to copy down what each of the top polluters were and then googled each company/industry/etc to find an address. Precise addresses were found for all but two. Next, I took a look at the top air polluters listed on the site. These turned out to be all of the same companies/industries but differently ordered. The next step will be to find these addresses in the master shape file and place markers on the map where each is located and hopefully include a description of how many pounds per year of pollution each emits.

Preliminary Project Report- Environment, Toxins and Pollution

madelineclaire — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 17:20:16 +0000

After doing some preliminary web searching we have come up with a few good sites that I think will prove quite useful to our group. My favorite site so far, simply for its “cut and dry-ness” is Planet Hazard found here. I propose to use this site to locate the top 10 polluters, industries etc in Delaware County and then put markers on a map layer of the county to indicate their presence. This, overlaid with other layers, such as demographic information, will be useful in creating a picture of environmental justice or injustice in the county.

MapCruzin.com states that they have available Free Toxic Release inventory maps that are in ESRI shapefile format and free to download. This is something that we will definitely look into further to determine if we could obtain them for use as it seems the site could prove very helpful to us.

The ODNR website is another site that we know has some useful information but we have not yet been able to get our hands on it.

Finally, I read a bit about the Olentangy Watershed and the problems with nonpoint source pollution found there. This information, though not in any kind of map format perhaps could be delved into further or at least included in the background information subsection of our project.

Chapters 17-20

madelineclaire — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 21:22:57 +0000

Chapters 17-20 dealt respectively with Geocoding Addresses, Making Maps from Templates, Making Maps for Presentation, and Creating Models. The main problem encountered in these four chapters was the fact that the folder “Address Locators” did not seem to exist. Dr. Krygier helped me to create such a folder in a new location and I was able to move on from there with no further problems. The rest of the chapters went smoothly.

Chapters 14-16

madelineclaire — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 19:25:06 +0000

Chapter 14′s tutorial pages did not match up with what was happening in the ArcGIS software and thus had to be skipped over. Chapters 15 and 16, were respectively about creating features and editing features and attributes. Exercise 16a had to be put on hold due to a problem selecting the vertex of line segments. It appears that something is perhaps wrong with the file as I was not able to accomplish what I needed to accomplish.

Delaware Data Mapped

madelineclaire — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 17:50:27 +0000

The following is a brief description of the many layers included in the map created from the Dalis Project’s Delaware Data.

annexations: This layer shows Delaware County’s annexations (added land) and conforming boundaries ranging from 1853 to the present.

Census-Block: census blocks within Delaware County… census blocks are areas broken down by the US Census Bureau to aid in conducting the decennial census.

Census-BlockGroup: census block groups within the county… census block groups are

Census-Tract: census tracts within the county

Delaware_Address_Pts: this dataset consists of all building structures within Delaware County (labeled Master on the map legend)

Delaware_Buildings_1: shows buildings in the county
Delaware_Buildings_2: shows buildings in the county

Delaware_Cemeterie: shows the location of cemeteries in the county

Delaware_Farmlots: shows all farm lots in both the US Military and the Virginia Military Survey Districts of the county
Delaware_GolfCourse: shows the location of Delaware County’s golf courses

Delaware_Municipalities: shows the municipalities of the county

Delaware_Parcels: shows all parcels in the county.. created to facilitate and enhance the property appraisal process

Delaware_Parks: shows the location of the county’s parks

Delaware_PostOffice: shows the location of the county’s post offices

Delaware_Schools: shows the location of the county’s schools
Delaware_Subdivisions: shows the location of all subdivisions and condos in the county

Floodplains: shows the location of floodplains in the county, 100yr or 500yr options (100yr was included on the map)

Historical-Archeological: historic sites in the county archaeologically speaking
Historical-Delaware: general historic sites in Delaware County
Historical-National: general nationally recognized historic sites in Delaware County
Hydro-detail: a detailing of hydrologic features in the county.. rivers, streams, etc

Master-point: contains all of the addresses for the entire county- necessary for address matching
Natural Heritage ODNR: inventory of Delaware County’s natural sites… perhaps largely defunct

OrthophotoAp2006: this layer, which I have not yet gotten to function on my map is a photo of the entire county

Precincts: this dataset contains all of the voting precincts within Delaware County

Public Land Survey System: this dataset consists of polygons depicting the boundaries of two public land survey districts in Delaware County (the US Military and the Virginia Military Survey System)

RailRoad: shows the location of railroads throughout the county

School: shows the location of schools in Delaware County
Soils: contains the various soil types within the county

Topography: shows the contour lines within the county (elevations, depressions, etc)

Townships_historical: this dataset shows the historic boundary coverage for the townships of Delaware County (18 townships are included)

Traffic-MORPSE: this layer shows the traffic zones within the county

Watersheds-ODNR: shows the location of watersheds in Delaware County

Wetlands: shows the location of Delaware County’s wetlands
Woodland-ODNR: shows the location of woodlands throughout Delaware County
Zip2004: contains all zipcodes within the county

Zoning: contains the different types of zoning throughout the county

Chapters 10-13

madelineclaire — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 19:09:59 +0000

Chapters ten through thirteen went smoothly enough with the only problem being encountered in exercise 11b. This exercise, which dealt with creating graphs was a problem simply because what was happening on the computer did not match up with what was in the book. The book tells the reader to open the Graph Wizard and when I did this, something that looked nothing like the picture in the book came up and I was unable to figure out where to go from there as the buttons that the book said to push etc, did not seem to exist. Perhaps the book or the program has been updated without the other one catching up. I moved on from there, though, and did not encounter any other problems.

Chapters 8 and 9

madelineclaire — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 19:08:43 +0000

Chapters 8 and 9 dealt with querying data and joining and relating tables. The tutorials for both chapters were completed without a problem but joining and relating tables is something that was confusing to me in Geog353 and continues to confuse me. I hope that upon doing more of it I will gain a better understanding of what I’m doing with the help of the Getting to Know ArcGIS text.

Chapters 3-7

madelineclaire — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 02:21:17 +0000

The tutorial work for Chapters 3 through 7 all went smoothly and copies of each exercise are now saved on my lab computer. The tutorial thus far has been useful in helping me become more familiar with the software through various exercises. My favorite exercise thus far was labeling the locations of giraffes, elephants, and zebras on the continent of Africa. I was interested to find out that there were tiny giraffe, elephant, and zebra symbols to mark the corresponding locations of each animal.

Chapters 1 and 2

madelineclaire — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 00:35:50 +0000

The first chapter of Getting to Know ArcGIS was a welcome review of all of the concepts covered both in the Mitchell book as well as in Geog353. Chapter 2 however, talked about the different applications and what each one does. ArcMap is the application for making maps and analyzing data and ArcCatalog is the data management application.