Lab 5

1. How many counties does the State of Iowa contain? (2 pts)
99 Counties

2. Which county in Georgia contains the largest number of people, as of the year 2001? (2
pts)
Fulton County

3. How many cities, with populations greater than 15,000, are located within the State of
Washington? (2 pts)
39 Cities

4. How many miles long are all of the interstates that are crossed by the outline of Los
Angeles County? (2 pts)
3851.137043 Miles

5. Simplify the UrbanBoundaries feature class so that only the urban areas of Los Angeles
County are visible (Hint: you will use one of the overlay functions: clip, intersect, or
union). Include a screenshot of this new layer in your blog. How many acres of urban
area lie within Los Angeles County? (2 pts)

1367445.890625 acres

6. How many zip codes have their centroid in Los Angeles County? (2 pts)
522 Zip Codes

7. Create a layer displaying the provinces of Canada using the data provided to you in the
Canada dataset. Save this new layer under the Canada dataset using the name
Provinces. Include a screenshot of this new layer in your blog. (2 pts)


8. Which Native American Indian Reservations lie within 75 miles of the City of Thurso in
Quebec, Canada? (2 pts)
Doncaster Indian Reserve 17
Kitigan Zibi Indian Reserve
Kahnawake Indian Reserve 14
Kanesatake Indian Reserve 16
Akwesasne Indian Reserve 15

Lab4

Lab 2b

Lab 2b: ArcMap Tutorial

Geographic Information Systems is amazingly useful for not only spatial analysis, but also for demographic research, urban planning and a host of other sciences and studies. GIS gives researchers the ability to view geographic information visually, highlighting the attributes they wish to know more about and query information from the stored data. This opens the door to easier data queries, quicker research, and more accurate analysis.

As a result, GIS contributes to furthering many fields that rely upon geographic data and cartographic information. The more GIS advances, the more these fields that rely upon GIS advance themselves -- because GIS helps them access the necessary tools and resources that drive their own studies. Thus, as a multi-field tool, GIS is bound to continue to develop as quickly as it has been, because the demand for quick information gathering software is so high.

Although GIS is an amazing tool for many fields of study, it does have its limitations. Researchers cannot rely upon its models as complete truth. They are, after all, only models and therefore only provide representations of the data they are equipped with. Researchers must be careful not to rely upon GIS too much, and must continue to fact check their models and perfect them as new data is inputted. In addition, GIS is limited by the data it builds its models upon. Therefore, new advances must be made in data collection technology to improve accuracy and decrease the labor time and effort that is currently necessary to build accurate data models.

Regardless, GIS is changing the world. It gives us the ability to look at our world from different angles and perspectives, cut layers out of it, highlight aspects and most importantly -- ask questions about the globe and its inhabitants. The ability to access cartographic and demographic information is priceless to countless academic and productive fields that drive our global processes. The faster GIS grows, the faster we can work, build and deconstruct this globe we call home.

Lab 3b

Lab 2a

View Mexico City Highlights in a larger map

There are plenty of advantages to neogeography. Mobile technology allows us to not only locate exactly where in the world many monuments and important places are, it allows us to post pictures of the street level view of the area, link videos, hours of operation, facts, notes and pretty much any kind of information you would like to attach to the point of interest on the google map. This shrinks the world, mentally, and allows for massive geographic collaboration. In so doing, neographic maps are much more accurate because every time a possible error arises, users can edit the error or at least post discrepancies.

However, problems arise in neogeography when massive ammounts of users disagree on locationality all the time. This negates any possibility for a locational authority to insist on a true location. The question arises whether in the future consensus building will remain the authority, or whether a greater authority will arise to consolidate locational edits and discern a true geography for GIS usage. Otherwise everyone will be using different GIS systems based upon different authorities and it will become more difficult to collaborate.