Data Searchin'

Week 7 and 8 was all about hunting for the data. That meant (literal) hours of downloading from the various websites (FGDL and Labins). Given the fact I'm in the People's (non) Republic of China, the internet is not the fastest especially when I have my VPN running to get to most of the data.

Once I had the data I wanted, it was time to build the map in Arc. The first issue I encountered was the projection. Initially, I added the vector data I wanted and then projected that data into State Plane. I then added the raster data (aerials) and it ended up somewhere in the atlantic despite having the same datum and projection as the frame. This was well, annoying. I did a lot of research and a few GIS blogs mentioned that with projections, UTM and state plane were troublesome in ARC. After some troubleshooting of my own, I decided to see if the order in which I "layered" the map would make a difference...and it did. Hopefully this wasn't something I glossed over in this course. So I put in the raster data first, then the vector and it all lined up. I could project and reproject to my heart's content and all was well.

St. Joseph Bay Invasive Plants:
I decided to go with wetlands in my map, however, Gulf county Florida seems to be nothing but wetlands...I then added a managed (conservation) layer (that I clipped). I clipped the wetlands layer to the managed layer. So now my map only shows wetlands inside the managed areas (surprisingly, not much given the sensitivity). I used this in my St. Jospeh bay map. I then layered the invasive plants layer on top. I finally added an aerial of St. Joseph state park (with the plants on top).  I added a insert to show the location within Gulf county. Everything is projected in State Plane.

 

Invasive Plants in Managed Areas, Gulf County, FL
I overlaid the managed areas with the state park layer and the Fish and Wildlife Commission managed areas layer so in my invasive plant wide Gulf county map, you could see who owns what. The pink is privately managed land. In the southern portion of the FWC area, the invasive plants clump up, so I created an insert to make out it better.    Everything is projected in State Plane.  

DEM Gulf County

This one was pretty straight forward. Also, I didn't reporject. The DEM is in Albers Conical. I realized though, I should've added a blue background Gulf of Mexico and St. Joseph Bay). My original thinking was that the 0 elevation would line up with the Gulf. However, not a great idea.