Nicole's Geographic Journal

  Part 1 Add XY Part 2 Geocoding     This week's lab was another two-part lab. The first part of the lab was an introduction to how coordinates transfer into ArcGIS, and how to move data from Excel into ArcGIS. As shown above, part 1 had much less data than part 2, which made it easier to understand on a smaller scale. Part 2 used Manatee County schools to show how physical addresses transfer into ArcGIS via Excel. I'm not sure if all of the schools transferred over properly; being from Manatee county I know for sure that there definitely should be some schools showing up in east county. The geodata table is showing that there are 85 schools included in this map though, so it should all be correct. I enjoyed this lab because it is about an area where I used to live, so I could relate more to the data more than previous labs. Due to hurricane Helene, the class did get a one-day extension on this lab, so I was able to spend some extra time working through it. 

Part 1    Part 2     In this week's lab, I created two different maps. In part 1, I created a map of different utilities in Escambia County, FL. I learned about different types of queries, how to organize geodatabases, and how to find features in my map. In part 2, I created a map of De Soto National Forest in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. In this part of the lab, I learned about buffer analysis and performing unions. Buffer analysis is helpful because it helps you compare different objects and their distance from each other. This lab took a while and I got stuck in a few different places, but I worked on a little bit every day to break it up a bit. Part 1 was a bit easier than part 2, but I enjoyed part 2 of the lab because I enjoy being outdoors in nature, so being able to make a map of different campsites in a national forest was interesting. 

Part 1 Field maps   Part 2 Projections     This week's lab was in two parts; the first part being an introduction to Field Maps, and the second part being projections. I had a slight issue starting the field maps portion, but I really enjoyed being out in the field collecting data. It was also fun to see how those data points I collected transfer between ArcGIS Pro, Field Maps, and Google Earth. The major problems I ran into came with the projections part of the lab. For some reason, just this second half of the lab took me two days to complete, because I kept hitting roadblocks. I am not fully understanding the concepts of projections, which is probably one of the reasons why I was having trouble in this lab. 

       For this lab, I was tasked with creating a map of Escambia County, Florida, and highlight the UWF main campus, along with two local cities. I enjoyed learning about how I can customize my maps to make them unique and stand out. I used lighter colors for background items, such as counties, and brighter, bolder colors for important items that need to stand out more, such as interstates. This lab definitely took me longer to complete than the last one, but after some time I started to get the hang of it. I am beginning to be able to navigate ArcGIS on my own with the help of the lab procedures. I am still having some trouble with the layout page and resizing the maps.