Nuts and Bolts of Cartography with ArcGIS

The goal of this tutorial is to provide hands-on experience with the techniques of producing context maps n ArcGIS, and turning them into graphics that can be inserted into presentation documents. We assume an understanding of our firts tutorial, Beginning your GIS Database and the second, Working with Map Projections in ArcMap.

Required Reading

Understanding how to use software is important, but it is even more important to have a clear idea of what you are trying to communicate and an idea of how to communicate ideas clearly. For work handed in for GIS and Site Representation courses at the GSD you must follow the guidelines described in these documents:

• Elements of Cartographic Style (This tutorial covers the elements that every map should have. Thematic mapping will be discussed in future tutorials)
• Guidelines and Techniques for Analytical Documentation

Objectives of this Tutorial

• Begin your map recalling basic data handling and transformation concepts
• Develop simple statements about a few critical aspects of Local and Regional Context
• Choose and portray data to create a graphical hierarchy as described in Elements of Cartographic Style.
• Create a map layout & scalebar and captions
• Add labels and graphics to map. Experiment with ArcGIS annoation
• Export a layout as PDF, JPG
• Use your contextual framework as a template for a another thematic map exploring some data.
• Compile multiple pdfs as a single document

Deeper Reading

• Using ArcMap Section 2.
• How Maps Convey Geographic Information

---

Download the Tutorial Dataset

Right-Click here to Open this Tutorial Dataset and extract it to your C:\temp\your_username folder.

---

Remember Critical Prerequisites for Mapping

We will open some layers from the data collection that we started with Beginning a Place-Based Data Collection This same tutorial provides the techniques you need in order to simply portray some of the data in your map.

References

• Beginning a GIS Database

---

Choose an Apropriate Transformation for your Map

From our Map Projections you are aware that you must always be aware of how ArcMap is portraying the geometric relationships in your map. If you let ArcMap choose the method for transforming the geometry in your data, you will very likely be portraying the sizes, shapes, and relationships of the entities in your map in a substantially distorted way.

References

• Map Projections
• Data Frame Properties

---

Think About Critcal Aspects of Site Context

Your job is to frame the terms of discussion of your site. Try not to leave out anything that is obviously important. Frame the context map to show these details. For example:

Our site, Fields Point, lies on the western bank of the Providence River, about 3 miles South of Downtown Providence, Rhode Island. It is best accessed from Route 1A, which is known locally as Naragansett Boulevard. The site is bounded on the west by the neigborhood of (what is the name of this neighborhood?) which sits on top of a bluff of approximately 40 feet. Accross the river, the neighborhood of (East Providence?) has good views of our area of interest. To the north, the site is dominated by the facilities of the Providence Water Treatment Plant and the Oil and Natural gas (check this) terminals of the Port of Providence. The large park a mile to the west is Roger Williams National Park.

References:

• Working with Spatial Bookmarks

---

Create a Layout

To make a nice map for presentation, we will need to be able to model a sheet of paper that will give us room to include our paragraphs of text, scalebars, projection information and source notes in the margin of the map and all of the other things discussed on the page, Elements of Cartographic Style. This layout can also contain text and graphics that are fixed to the map. There are several ways of storing annotation with a map or in a geodatabase. For this tutorial we are going to stick with the simple method, in which the annotation is saved with the map document. If you feel like studying the deeper more sophisticated ways of treating annotation as data, you are welcome to do this.

References:

• Map Layouts
• Adding Text to a Map
• The Draw Toolbar
• Adding Map Elements

A legend? In these general context maps it is best to stick with portrayls that follow basic conventions of symbology. Water should be blue, protected openspace should be green, roads should be displayed in a graphical hierarchy. IN this case there is no need for a legend. But since you will use this same framework for thematic maps later, you should leave room for a legend in your layout.

---

Exporting your Map to JPEG or PDF

ArcMap documents are good for exploring data and authoring graphics but not great for sharing graphics. TO do this we will want to be able to save our maps to jpeg files or pdf or oter formats that can be opened in Acrobat Reader or desktop publishing applications like illustrator. In this, you should be able to adjust the various options so that you can control your resolutions and avoid common problems with fonts.

References

• Exporting a Map

---

Making a Thematic Map to Explore some Data

Misinterpreting data is about the easiest thing in the world. We need to be wary of this at all times, we particularly want to avoid making statements in our maps that are nopt supported by the data. IN order to avoid this, you should get into the habit of speaking in terms of what the data actually say, before you discuss what the map means in terms of your analysis. This habit will help you to show your users that you understand what you are doing. To practice this, we wiull make two thematic maps that explore two sets of data that purpotedly show the same thing. This will also get us some practice creating Categorical Symbology based on feature attributes.

A couple of the important things to remember when you have a legend on your map is to make sure not to confuse your audinece by showing too many categories (learn to combine categories in your legend) and to always rename the legend headings and labels to words that make sense to a normal person.

We will practice speaking clearly about data by making two layers to illustrate the difference between two datasets that each represent the Protected Open Space around our site. We will use the representation from ESRI and from the Rhode Island GIS.

References:

• Drawing Features to display categories
• Changing a layer's text description

Creating an Ocean Polygon

Clipping an Ocean Polygon