Lab 4 Mini - Final Project

Goal:
Propose a spatial question and then use the geoprocessing skills (vector) you have learned in this class to answer your spatial question.

Objectives:

1. A spatial question.
2. A report which will outline the scope of your project and include a discussion of the question, data sources, methods, results and an evaluation of the project. This will include the data flow model of your methods.
3. A color PDF map with the answer to your spatial question and other pertinent information (locator map).

Introduction:

My research question that I had was where the best location to put a hospital in Washington County, Oregon.  My intended audience was any company wanting to learn where to put another hospital, or the county government wanting to put in another hospital in the county. Washington county has a population of  554,996 people.

Data Sources: 

The data I needed to answer these questions was cities, county, parks, highways, hospitals, and waterbodies.  I was able to get all of these information right off of the ESRI data given for learning Arcmap with the Mastering Arcgis introduction book.  The data concern I have is the viability of how recent the data is because a lot could have changed in the ears since its creation, and there may have been more hospitals created since the data was collected making my map outdated.  I also am worried that some of the data may be different for the water bodies because of the shortage in water that is happening in the United States, although I am not sure if this affects Oregon or not.

Methods:































This figure above shows the data flow model I used to figure out where the best location would be for the new hospitals to be put in, in the county.  I first put a buffer around the Cities, highways, and hospital layers because I wanted my new hospital to within these zones at a certain distance apart. I then intersected them all to create a new layer that shows where they intersect each other.  I also created a union between the parks and water bodies because I wanted to know where people may be getting hurt from.  I then clipped the map with the counties layer and created the map that can be seen below.

Results:

The Results I got where actually what I was expecting.  As shown in the map most of the hospitals are in the eastern part of the county so I was assuming that the areas that would be needed of a map would be in the eastern parts along with some smaller areas that are shown in the purple.  This is my proposed new areas for hospitals to be built based on the criteria that I had. To make my map look well I had to make sure the results were easy to be seen on the larger map, and I wanted to make sure the audience viewing this map understood what part of Oregon I was looking at for this.  I was able to create a legend in the top to show the different products on the map along with the scale bar at the bottom to understand how large the area is.

Evaluation:

My overall impression of the project was that it was very fun, exciting, and was great way to learn how to solve problems.  At first I thought this problem was going to be slightly overwhelming because I have never not had any instructions on how to complete something in this class.  Well in this lab I was able to come up with my own Idea, my way of action, and my own way of styling the map.  I felt like I was finally let lose into the world of GIS to figure out this problem.

My overall impression of the project is very high and I would recommend anyone learning GIS to try this project for themselves because it is what is done in the real world, but the questions are usually proposed by the company.  If I was able to repeat the project I would change the question that I came up with to one closer to home.  I was dealing with Oregon, which is not too far, but I feel like it would have been a lot more fun and understanding to do a project near Eau Claire or just in the State of Wisconsin.   I would have changed it to figuring out where I would want to live in Wisconsin or another city in the area.

The challenges that I faced with this lab was that there was almost not guidance throughout the entire lab.  I was able to get my data-flow model checked off at the beginning when I created it on a piece of paper, but other than that the entire lab was all up to me.  I faced the challenge of some of my ideas not working, and having to improvise and improve the idea.  I also faced the challenge of making it look cartographic pleasing for anyone to view my lab.  The last challenge I faced was making sure the data-flow model worked correctly.  This was a challenge to me because it was my second time using it, and first time by my-self without any help.  I think in the future I would like to try doing this by using only python, but for not I think the data-flow model is going to be my go to way.

This lab has taught me very much in the last week.  Problem solving, making a data-flow model, and using the skills that I have learned in Geography 335 to finish this project.

Lab 3 Vector Analysis with ArcGIS

Goal:

To use various geoprocessing tools for vector analysis in ArcGIS to determine suitable habitat for bears in the study area of Marquette County, Michigan.

Objectives:

1. To map a GPS MS Excel file of black bear locations in the study area, central Marquette County, Michigan
2. To determine the forest types where black bears are found in the study area based on GPS locations of black bears.
3. To determine if bears are found near streams.
4. To find suitable bear habitat based on two criteria.
5. To find all areas of suitable bear habitat within areas managed by the Michigan DNR.
6. To eliminate areas near urban or built up lands.
7. Generate a digital data flow model of the workflow and cartographic output
8. Use some python!

Introduction:

The purpose of this lab was to understand how to use the different geoprocessing tools while accomplishing the goals of finding out the best places to create suitable bear habitat on already managed land by the DNR.  Then I was to create a map showing the results.  I chose to also add in the type of land found in the county to show what type of land would be managed, which can be seen below in the first figure.

Methods:

There were some new methods used in this lab than the previous one that we have learned since then.  These include intersect, dissolve, clip, buffer, and erase.  These tools have really brought to the table a new way of understand how we can manipulate data to solve more complicated problems.  These newly acquired skills on top of the ones previously were used to get to the correct answer for the question, which can be seen in figure 2 showing the flow model.  

            

To start this project I had to learn how to map x-y coordinates from an excel spreadsheet.  I then added the coordinates as an "event theme" and exported them as a feature class to my database.  Next I had to spatially join the bear locations with the cover data sets to determine which land cover the bears would be found in.  The next step was to summarize the dataset to get a count to find out what the top 3 types of land cover types bears preferred.  

Using the buffer tool allowed me to be able to create a feature class that showed areas withing 500 meters of streams, and I also used the buffer tool to create a feature class that showed an area of 5 km around urban land that would not make a good place for suitable bear habitat.  

Then, using the intersect tool  I was able to create a feature class that was using all of the specifications needed before I was able to use the erase tool at the end to get ride of any areas that I did not want to be part of the map.  

I then made a map showing the results I found that would answer the DNR's requests of where to manage the land suitable for bears.  

The last part of this lab was to use some python script inside Arcmap,which can be seen in the figure below. I found this to be extremely interesting and different way to use the tools that we have been using in the program.  I found myself picking up the ability to do the code very quick and even thought that this may be faster than actually going through and doing all of the tools on the program as long as I know all of my tools, what I need to do with each tool, and have it planned out ahead of time.  I look forward to using more of the python in future classes after this one ends.

Results:

The results that came through after figuring out how to solve the problem were really quite interesting.   The map I made shows the best location for the DNR to manage the land for the bears.  It has all of the criteria in the map I created along with showing the forest types it can be found in.

Sources: All of the data were downloaded from the State of Michigan Open GIS Data http://gis.michigan.opendata.arcgis.com/