Vector Analysis: Finding the Best Campsites

-

 




Have you ever tried to find that perfect camping spot? In this assignment, we were asked to locate possible campsites within the De Soto National Forest near Hattiesburg, Mississippi. These sites had to be within 300m of existing roads, within 500m of rivers or 150m of lakes, and could not be located within existing conservation areas.  

To accomplish this task, we used three primary geoprocessing tools: Buffer, Union, and Erase. The roads layer was buffered to 300m using a fixed distance buffer, and the rivers and lakes were buffered to 500m and 150m respectively using a variable distance buffer. These two buffered layers were then overlaid using the Union tool to locate all the areas that fell within both the roads buffered layer and and the water buffered layer. Areas that fell within conservation areas were then excluded using the Erase tool. Finally, the campsites polygons were ranked into three different classes (Good, Better, and Best) based on the size of each polygon, with larger polygons ranking higher than smaller polygons. 


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Isarithmic Mapping: Annual Precipitation in Washington State

-
Image
The second most common type of thematic map behind the choropleth map is the isarithmic map. While choropleth maps are great for mapping phenomena existing within hard boundary lines, also known as enumeration units, isarithmic maps are perfect for mapping continuous data such as temperature, precipitation, or elevation. In isarithmic mapping, contour lines are frequently used to connect locations with equal values. Hypsometric tints can then be added to color the areas between contour lines with different shades so that map readers can easily distinguish between areas with high and low values.  In this lab, our task was to create an isarithmic map showing average annual rainfall in Washington State. This rainfall data was interpolated using the PRISM (Parameter-elevation Regressions on Independent Slopes Model) method developed by Oregon State University. The map below was created using ArcGIS Pro. Areas with low precipitation (less than 10 in/yr) are shown in red, and areas with the
Read more

Final Project: Bobwhite-Manatee Transmission Line Analysis

-
Image
The Bobwhite-Manatee transmission line is a 230kw line that connects Florida Power & Light’s (FPL) Manatee Energy Center in Manatee County with a substation about 3 miles south of the Manatee-Sarasota County border. Although this transmission line has already been installed, for the purpose of this assignment we assumed this project was still being planned.  Our task was to use ArcGIS Pro to analyze FPL’s proposed location based on four primary objectives identified in a survey conducted by FPL: (1) environmental impacts, (2) number of homes and parcels affected, (3) number of schools and daycares affected, and (4) total length and cost. The final project incorporated many of the processes and concepts we have been working with throughout the course.  Below are my map outputs for this assignment. Links to my presentation and transcript can be found at the bottom.  Link to Presentation Video Link to Presentation Transcript
Read more

Development Suitability Analysis

-
Image
For one of the scenarios in this week's lab, I was playing the role of a GIS Analyst for a property developer. My task was to create a map showing suitable land for development based on the following criteria:  Land Cover Soils Slopes Streams Roads  My general process for this analysis was to first convert all of these layers into rasters if they weren't already. For the rivers and roads layers, I used the Euclidean Distance tool to calculate the shortest distance from each cell to the nearest river or road. I then reclassified each of these layers based on a suitability scale of 1 - 5. Lastly, I combined the results of each of these five criteria using the Weighted Overlay tool. Below are my results.  The first map is an equally weighted average where each of the five criteria have an influence of 20% (or 1/5th). The second map shows an alternatively weighted output where each of the five criteria were weighed as follows:  Land cover (20%)  Soils (20%) Slope (40%) Distance to
Read more