Week 6- Reprojections and Excel Data

We dove deeper into projections and reprojections this week and then topped off the lab with importing spatially defined Excel spreadsheets into ArcGIS. At first this week was a little overwhelming with all of the information from the lecture and ESRI course but it began to come together with the lab work.

Before any reprojection occured we started with downloading data from labins.org. Fortunately the page before you enter the FTP site provides the necessary spatial metadata for the files you want to download. We downloaded aerial images (some are used in the graphic below) and had to define the spatial references in ArcGIS using the metadata provided by LABINS. It sounded complicated when reading the directions but is actually a pretty simple process. I wish everyone that created and shared shapefiles learned this information because it would be really helpful when sharing data.

Then we downloaded more data from the FDGL website. That site contains a bunch of useful metadata for each of the files you want to download and it lists the original publisher. Most of the files I retrieved from the site were reprojected at some point during the lab at least once. Since there are times when you have to create you own files from data you collect we also learned how to import spreadsheets into ArcGIS. Aside from just importing the data we also used formulas to add decimal degrees to the spreadsheets in addition to the degree minute seconds coordinates that were originally listed. I think this is a very useful tool since decimal degrees are easier to format than the traditional degree minute second format.

The graphic I included this week shows eight aerial images and several shapefiles all projected in NAD 1983 State Plane Florida North FIPS 0903 with measurement units in feet. As for the graphic I decided to try shades of red this week because of the color of the images. I realized the county lines should be a little bolder but the graphic looked a little different while working on it than it does in the final JPEG. Otherwise I am pretty satisfied with how it turned out. I have to admit I did some of the graphic editing (a lot of text placement) using CorelDraw7, not just the layout editor in ArcMap. I made sure to group the images and scale bar to ensure the proper ratio was maintained.