GIS Portfolio: Ross Wygmans

"At the source of every error which is blamed on the computer you will find at least two human errors,  including the error of blaming it on the computer." ~Anonymous The art of debugging is arguably one of the most important skills for any programmer. Procedures for debugging include:  Reviewing error messages  Inserting print messages at select locations within the script Commenting out lines or sections of code Using a debugger  Our task for this week's lab was to debug two pre-written scripts using some of the above procedures and add a try-except statement to a third script to catch the error.  Script 1 Script one contained two errors and/or exceptions that needed to be fixed in order for the script to run. Once fixed, the script printed out the names of all fields within the parks.shp attribute table.  Flowchart for Script 1. Script 1 output.  Script 2 Script 2 contained several errors/exceptions that needed to be corrected in order for the script to run. This scri

This week's lab provided a solid introduction to the fundamentals of programming in Python, working within an IDE, and setting up file paths to manage data and outputs for the remainder of the course. In Step 1 of the lab, we learned how to work with strings and lists by splitting our full name into a list of strings. We then used indexing to print our last name, the last item in the list. In Step 2, we learned some of the basics of debugging by fixing two errors in a prewritten dice game program. Steps 3 and 4 had us create a list of 20 random numbers and then remove a chosen integer from the list.  The screenshot below shows my outputs for these steps. 

Google Earth is a great way to share geospatial data with users who may not have the knowledge base or software to otherwise access GIS data. In this lab, we learned how to convert shapefiles and feature classes into .kml files within ArcGIS pro so that these files can be easily added to Google Earth. We also learned how to create and share a virtual tour within Google Earth.   The map below was created in Google Earth and shows water features and population densities of South Florida. The data was first converted to the .kml format in ArcGIS Pro and then added to Google Earth. The legend was added as an image overlay.  The video below shows the virtual tour I created within Google Earth highlighting several metropolitan areas in South Florida. 

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