Lab 7 Census

Census maps that show different percentages of different races
In this lab, we are to make three different maps that show of  ‘Black’, ‘Asian’ and ‘Some Other Race Alone’ across the continental US, ranked by percentages, by ‘joining’ spatial and attribute data and setting the color ramp which makes it easier for the reader to understand the map without really looking at the attribute table in ArcGIS.

This is a map that shows the data of counties with a black alone population that is greater than zero all over the United States, ranked by percentage. We can tell the distribution of black alone population by seeing the different colors on the map. The lightest yellow represents the lowest percentage and the reddish orange represents the largest percentage. As you can see on the map, the southeastern part of the United States got the highest percentage of black alone, for example in places like Alabama and Georgia, since they have the darkest color in their areas on the map.   

This map represents all the minority group, which excludes the Caucasians, Blacks and Asian, population percentages in Census Bureau in 2000 all over in the United States. From the map, it shows that the other races alone population are mostly concentrated in the Southwestern part of America,  places like New Mexico, Texas and California, since they have the darkest purple in those area which indicates the largest other races only population.

This map shows the Asian population percentage throughout the United States Continental area. It depicts that highest percentage of Asian is located around and in California. And in some Northwestern areas, like Washington, have  some considerable amount of the Asian population too!

Overall, from those three maps,  they show that different groups, the blacks, Asians, and other minorities, tend to be having high percentage of their specific ethic group in a certain region. And also, the bigger cities of the country tend to attract bigger percentages of minorities. And coastal areas seems to have higher percentage of ethical group population, too. 

My overall impression for GIS is that it makes everything simple, it is time-saving way to introduce some kind of specific data since we can analysis things by looking at a map instead of reading a lot but still not know what it says. It is a professional program as well as user-friendly, it is hard to use GIS for the first few times since I am totally not a computer person, but it is fun to make stuff by myself and I really enjoy doing maps in GIS. Through the visualization and symbology, we now do not even have to get back to the Excel file or attribute table in order to find information, it is clear on the map showing different colors that represents different percentage. GIS is a really useful software. 

Lab 6 DEM in ArcGIS

         In this lab, I picked a place in Utah near Salt Lake City to be my selected area for this project of digital elevation models or DEMs. It is somewhere near the Wasatch National Forest which is also next to the Strawberry reservoir and Solider Creek Recreational Area. There is a freeway nearby .And it is basically middle of nowhere. I choose this area because it is a more rural area with more ups and downs and I would love to explore places like this since I love to be around the nature. The Wasatch Range is a mountains range that go across Utah and Idaho. It is considered as the western edge of the greater Rocky Mountains.Different colors from the slope map shows the degree of the slopes and the directions of that the slope is facing are also shown in the aspect map.

The Extent Information

top: 40.1802778degrees, 

left: -111.042778 degrees, 

right: -110.539444degrees,

 bottom: 39.926111degrees

Geographic Coordinate System:

GCS North American 1983

Lab 5 Map Projection

Conformal Maps

This figure shows the two different conformal projections, Gall Stereographic and Stereographic. The distance between Washington, D.C. and Kabul, Afghanistan are 7,151.14901 miles and 10,223.114052 miles respectively. 

Equidistant Maps

 This figure shows the two different Equidistant projections, equidistant cylindrical and equidistant conic . The distance between Washington, D.C. and Kabul, Afghanistan are 5,061.578567 miles and 6,972.480093  miles respectively.
                                                                     Equal Area Maps

This figure shows the two different equal area projections, Hammer Aitoff and Equal area cylindrical  . The distance between Washington, D.C. and Kabul, Afghanistan are 8,329.886632 miles and 10,050.793381  miles respectively.

None of the projections is prefect for every task. There are different pros and cons for using different projections, which depends on the intention of making that maps, so we have to think carefully before choosing the projections for our maps. It could be very different and data could be wrong if we used the inappropriate projection for a specific task. There are different distortions of maps. The graticule could be a guide to distortion.

We have to consider what matters the most for us in order to get the right projection. We have to think about some questions like is "the distances accurate?", "is it easy to obtain the shortest path between two points?", "are the directions correctly oriented?", " is the shape of the land right?", " are the ratios preserved?" etc...

In this task, we have two equal area, two equidistant and two conformal map projection. They all have their own kind of distortion of the presentation of the Earth, they are named and classified based on the properties that they contain! Conformal have the correct shape and preserve angular relationships but not distance. , it is useful for finding the size and the shape of specific area. For example, environmental scientist might use it for checking the size of the ice caps or land area .  Equal Area has preserved the area, this type of map would be useful for observing the changing of the size of an area or feature. Also, equidistant projection only preserve preserve distances along the parallels of different places on the map, distance over a short area .


Overall, there is no best map for all purposes since none of the projection can show equal area, distance, and shape all at once. But projection is really important since we can present people the wrong impression and wrong information when we use the wrong projection and there is any distortion that affect the observation or the main point of creating that map.