Cartography Overview - University of West Florida Map

 Following several days of anxiousness following the formation and movement of Hurricane Idalia, I finally was able to resume work on the second Lab assignment for GIS4043. This week's focus is on cartographic basics and design, something I have familiarity with having worked for three map companies. However my experience goes back to ArcMap, and the ArcGIS Pro system definitely requires some time investment to acclimate.

The general purpose of the map is to show the location of the University of West Florida (UWF) Main Campus located north of Pensacola in Escambia County. We were tasked with creating two maps, a small general overview map showing Escambia County's location relative to the whole state of Florida, and a larger map showing Escambia County in more detail with the placement of the campus location.

An early step was to add a folder connection via Arc Catalog. Previously in ArcMap, Arc Catalog was somewhat separate. Now with ArcGIS Pro, catalog is more seamlessly worked into the main functions of the software. A nice improvement.

Using Catalog, the metadata is easily viewed. Collapsible ticks next to section headers aid in better parsing the data for locating desired information. The only drawback is that if you exit from a particular metadata for one file, upon return all closed ticks are again open.

Upon reviewing metadata for the six shape files downloaded for the Lab, discrepancies with how detailed the metadata with each respective file becomes apparent. Some metadata is extremely detailed while other metadata is more limited. Reviewing the metadata for this project, data sources included U.S. Census Bureau Tiger files, the University of Florida GeoPlan Center and FGDL among others.

Moving forward with the Lab, creating and editing the map layouts in ArcGIS Pro was next. The basic elements of this map include Florida County lines, the Interstate Highway system, major rivers and populated cities, towns and census designated places. The idea is to present a simple map conveying where the UWF Main Campus is located without being overly busy with unneeded information.

This Lab involved Clipping Layers, something that I had prior experience with at my cartography job. The clipping aspect was previously located within Arc Catalog on ArcMap. Having it more readily accessible with ArcGIS is convenient. For this map, Escambia County was clipped from the overall state file showing all 67 of Florida's Counties. The Interstates shape file was also clipped to only display I-10 and I-110 within Escambia County, as were the rivers within the Major Rivers shapefile. Lastly the cities shapefile was clipped to only show Pensacola and the census designated place of Ferry Pass, the more specific location of UWF.

Queries were also introduced in the Lab, first with a simple equal statement to select Escambia County from the Florida Counties shapefile. A subsequent query was created to select Pensacola and Ferry Pass from the Cities shapefile. I have previous experience using queries for labeling feature classes, and some knowledge of query structure from managing the mySQL database for AARoads.

Editing the symbology followed and color suggestions were provided. I used green for Escambia County, with a darker shade on the inset. The rest of the counties were set to gray, to minimize their attention. That background could be left white (blank) or a Basemap could be selected from the Layer group. I opted for the World Light Gray Canvas on the UWF Campus Location map. However with selecting that base, a "Reference" entry appeared at the top of the Drawing Order. Unchecking that preventing it from superseding the map.

Labeling included placing a Title, creating a Legend and adding map elements such as a North Arrow, Scale Bar and Source information. There were some differences in the verbiage used to describe actions in the Lab PDF document versus completing those processes in the current version of ArcGIS Pro. This was noted on the Lab discussion board, and previously caused some minor issues with Lab 1.

The final aspect of the map was placing the PNG of the UWF logo. Where to place it and at what size were considerations made as to not have the graphic complete strongly with other map elements. The resulting map in PNG format:

ArcGIS Pro Overview and a basic World Map

Well it's been awhile since I completed a formal assignment such as the Lab 1 for GIS4043! While I have partaken in some ESRI Training, which included exercises, this is the first time working on a GIS project with a grade in mind. 😬

The bulk of this Lab was pretty much a rehash of my existing skill set with GIS from my days using ArcMap... But with that in mind, and as the orientation document suggested, many things with ArcGIS Pro look different or have different names. So getting back to the basics is not necessarily a waste of time as might be imagined.

Working through the Lab, the first step was acquiring the project data for ArcGIS Pro. I have a robust PC that I use for my daily work running AARoads.com, so for class, I choose the option of setting up ArcGIS Pro, Citrix and Google Drive locally. As far as the Lab instructions go, this resulted in a little level of confusion, as I had to keep in mind my local file folder structure versus what is on the Virtual Desktop through ArgoApps. So when checking the project save options on ArcGIS, the default location is obviously different on my PC than the S drive on the UWF server.

Acquiring the data from the R drive was simple, but having both the folder ArcGISOverview with the Data folder containing OverviewArcGIS threw me a little off when it came to zipping up the completed project file and where to place it on my S Drive.

The actual work on Lab 1 involved importing some basic World Map features including polygons for countries and points for major cities. The only hang up for me working with ArcGIS Pro on this was  placing the map in the Layout view. The instructions called for setting up the Layout so that no country was cut off. However my map was slightly zoomed in so that eastern Russia and western Alaska were outside the Layout view.

Watched the Overview video to see if the same scale difference occurred, and it did not. However with my prior knowledge of ArcMap, I recalled changing the Scale Properties to fit the World Map within the Layout. The Overview video also showed the map with the World Cities points reduced in size from 10 point size, so I followed suit and scaled them down on mine to 3 point size.

Spent three and half hours working through the Lab, including a helpful phone call with my wife on how to use the Activate Map Frame option within the Layout. The finished product:

The last aspect was to export out the map as a JPG. The instructions indicated to select the Share tab within the Export group. However, the Share tab is now found within the Output group. Another noted change with ArcPro was that the green Layout arrow button within the Share tab was replaced. Switched in its place is the "Export Layout" button with a smaller green arrow and a dropdown with Export Presets.

ArcPro did prompt me for an update when I started the Lab, so perhaps the upgrade from 3.1 to 3.1.2 resulted in some of these changes.

17 years of GIS

I am not new to the GIS world, but have been out of practice for quite some time. First worked with GIS as a researcher and cartographer for Mapsource, Inc. out of St. Petersburg, Florida. Later worked for Universal Map Group, LLC out of DeLand, using GIS exclusively as part of my job as map researcher. Followed those jobs by joining GIS Cartography and Publishing Services, LLC, where I aided in the conversion of raw GIS data into a stylized map product (mostly Zoomify maps for client's websites).

I cofounded AARoads.com, a website covering roads and highways throughout the United States, in 2000. AARoads led me to my first cartography job in 2006. I eventually incorporated some maps made with GIS onto the site, and developed some personal Geodatabases so that I could update them as desired.

Grew up having a love of road maps, drawing them in childhood and eventually collecting them. Several historical map scans found throughout AARoads are from the over 2,500 fold maps and 100 plus atlases in my collection. Gousha Maps were my favorite, and with digital mapping I tried emulating some of the styles used from the long gone map company. This was a map I made in 2011 for the Mid Bay Bridge Connector, a toll road built around Niceville, Florida: 

I also started implementing some digital elevation model graphics into maps of Western U.S. cities and states. Having recently gained access to ArcGIS Pro as part of my classes and wanting to get some familiarity, I sifted through one of my external hard drives and found my old GIS files. I imported the geodatabase I made for Hawaii back in 2011 and exported the map I made of Maui. While the fonts did not carry over from the original annotation, the symbology mostly did! I extracted the PDF into Illustrator and made a PNG out of it:

My wife is a Senior GIS Analyst II. Through glimpses of her work on various dashboards, applications, Storymaps, etc., I learned that cartographically styled maps are only one facet of GIS. In fact she told me that it is somewhat rare that she actually has to produce just a cartographically stylized map.

There are so many applications and presentations that use GIS. I encounter them routinely when researching road construction projects for AARoads, such as the GDOT site for the I-16/I-75 Interchange. Also most DOT web sites offer their function class data for their state maintained network of highways on ArcGIS online. Data provided by NCDOT and others have proved to be invaluable as a research tool for the site.

Going forward I realize that I only ever scratched the surface of what can be created with GIS. I enrolled in the University of West Florida's GIS Certificate program with the goal of expanding my skills and knowledge with the software.