Lab IV - Basemap cartography in your study area

Due Apr 2, 2015 by 9:30am
Points 5
Submitting a text entry box or a file upload

While your final presentation involves two analytical methods the presentation of these methods and their results should be on top of a compelling base map. The goal of Lab 4 is to have everyone develop a nice looking base map for their study area that will be used in all subsequent labs and your Final paper and web presentation.

We've made some maps rather expediently as part of exercises. For example recall In-Class Ex 5 we downloaded SRTM data and ended by generating contour lines along with index contours and labeling them. In Lab 3 we acquired two historical maps for the region and georeferenced them.

Lab 4 is a combination of these steps. For your study region please develop a professional quality map using the various attributes we've covered in class and considering the design principal we read about from Dent. An added issue particular to this assignment base maps should be subtle. The design and coloration should be muted so as not to confuse or detract from the actual data. While you may need to remove some labels and rearrange things a bit, most of this map should be balanced and relatively muted to allow for results and eye-catching thematic information to be presented on top.

Use Page Setup and design your page at 11 x 17" (Tabloid size) and decide early on if your study area is wide (Landscape) or tall (Portrait) in orientation. At the end we'll produce a PDF sized appropriately.

1. Topography. High quality topographic data with shaded relief and a transparent hill-shading (recall the Callalli base map data as an example. Use SRTM we gathered before or ASTER or higher-res data if it's available.

Exercise 3 part 1 step 1a.png

2. Isolines. Contours on terrain with appropriate intervals and thick Index contours using custom labels on index contours. See this discussion on Stackoverflow Links to an external site. and in particular how the index contour labels should be grouped and "climb the hill" as shown in the last image. Either use the Maplex engine to control the automatic placement (for dynamic mapping this is best for a dynamic web map later on) or Convert to Labels to Annotation and edit the Annotation Layers as we learned in Exercise 9.

3. Feature Creation. Create a File Geodatabase and create a few Feature Classes including

Cultural features for indicating the location of at least a few features relevant to your research (archaeological sites or otherwise related features) with a label. Point, Line or Polygon

Hydrology (Line Feature) with a label and other features that occur on local government maps. Use RankSize integer field or some other attribute to scale the thickness of the linework approapriately to the river network.

Modern features "Settlements" (Points or Polygons)

Roads and Trails (Line features). Again use RankSize field to symbolize Eg. Big Highways = 1, Roads = 2, Streets = 3, Trails = 4.

4. Make it a map. Include a Title, Scale Bar, and North arrow

5. Reference Grid. Include a graticule or Grid (probably UTM) with clean labels on at least North and East edge.

6. Legend. Major classes of data should be shown without extraneous information. Again dynamic Legends are preferred for later web mapping.

7. Inset reference. Include an Inset Map (Insert > Data Frame) showing the location of the study area map on a national or regional map. We have generalized data vectors available in ARF Box Atlas under Links to an external site.ESRI World Data 2004 Links to an external site.. Links to an external site.It's recommended you use Country or Admin (first order boundaries (eg States). County vectors are also available if needed.