Nicole's Geographic Journal

    In this week's lab, I had to determine the land use of Pascagoula, Mississippi from an aerial photograph. I then had to go through the process of  truthing, which means to verify the land use of a specific location. For the first part of the lab, I organized polygons into different land use types, based off what I could tell from the aerial photograph. In the second part of the lab, I chose 30 random points within those polygons and used Google Maps to determine if I was correct in my initial predictions. Truthing is normally done in person, but Google Maps has become a useful tool for GIS analysts who work remote. This type of ground truthing is called image data truthing, because an image was used to make the initial assessment.   

This was the first lab for GIS4035 Photo Interpretation and Remote Sensing at UWF. The purpose of this lab was to learn how to find and interpret various features in an aerial photograph. Exercise 1 tasked me with labeling different parts of an aerial photograph with different tones and textures. Exercise 2 tasked me with labeling different features based off of their shadows, pattern, association, and shape. The purpose of this exercise was to learn how to find key features in an aerial photo. I enjoyed this lab because I got to work with just a photograph instead of an actual map, which made things easier. This was a pretty simple lab, since all I was doing was labeling and creating polygons. 

    For this week's lab, I completed the final project for GIS4043. This lab pertained to the Bobwhite-Manatee Transmission line project. There were a few questions to answer for this lab: How many schools and homes are in close proximity to the transmission line, and are there any environmentally sensitive lands affected by the transmission line? The preferred corridor for the transmission line was given. The image above is the map for objective 3, which asked about schools. The results of this project can be found here:  https://arcg.is/11Cr5b  

      This week's lab was an introduction to georeferencing. I enjoyed completing this lab more than some of the previous labs, which makes me think I am starting to improve in using ArcGIS.  In this lab, I used georeferencing to create images of UWF’s main campus. Two separate aerial photos were used, one for the north end of campus, and one for the south end. In the georeference tab, you can move the image around independently from the rest of the map to line it up properly with other layers. The add control points tool allows you to scale one layer to size with another. This tool was used to line up and properly resize the buildings layer with the two campus image layers. I was also able to create a new building and road within the building layer using the Edit toolbar, and create features tool. I also used the Multiple Ring Buffer geoprocessing tool to create a buffer around an eagle's nest near campus (blue circle on right side of map).