Weeks 7-8 - Data for GIS, Data Quality, & Data Search (Midterm)

It's midterms week! There's no denying we've covered a ton of topics the first half of the semester, and boy were we put to the challenge in this weeks' lab assignment by putting to practice everything we've learned so far.  It entailed searching, downloading, organizing, cataloging, and spatially defining raster and vector data sets. There is nothing difficult about clicking a download button, but the key here is that we want to make sure we are 1. downloading quality data (if not, then it's 'garbage in and garbage out'), 2. that we are familiarizing ourselves with the different formats in which GIS data is provided to the public as well as the different interfaces and sites used to download GIS data, and finally 3. that we are organizing our folders in the back end from the very beginning to cultivate good habits that will help us in our professional GIS endevours.

For our Data Search Midterm assignment, every student in class was assigned a county in Florida. As you can see from the maps below, I lucked out with Hillsborough County. I really love the Tampa Bay area, and the west coast beaches nearby, I had a lot of fun designing these maps and working with all the neat data I downloaded. We were tasked to download a total of 9 datasets (5 vector, 2 environmental, and 2 raster), project all data to one common coordinate system, and display the layers in 1-3 maps while ensuring that data was clipped within the county boundary.

My first map below displays 5 vector layers as point, polyline, and polygon shapefiles. Additionally, I added an inset map for location reference.

My second map displays 2 environmental datasets; the invasive plants location data layer is a vector point shapefile, and the landcover data layer is a raster file with unique values symbolized by class. The county boundary (clipped) is technically a 3rd vector dataset displayed that I didn't emphasize in the legend because it would constitute as an unnecessary item, given the map title.

And finally, my third map displays 2 raster datasets and 1 vector point shapefile (major city/town) that I added as an extra touch. The raster layer displayed on the left-hand side of the map is a digital orthophoto quarter-quandrangle (DOQQ) imagery specifically depicting that area in Hillsborough County indexed as DEP Quad #3220 named "Tampa". The raster layer displayed on the right-hand side of is a digital elevation model (DEM) dataset.

I downloaded my data using the interfaces provided in these websites: Florida Geographic Data Library (FGDL), Land Boundary Information System (LABINS), and U.S. Geological Survey National Map Viewer. Lastly, whether by defining a spatial reference or re-projecting, I made sure all my data was projected to Albers Conical Equal Area coordinate system.