Georeferencing and Data Quality Lab

 

This lab was a challenging experience for me. Although the ArcGIS Collector map isn't depicted here, it was my first time creating a database and collecting data with it. That part of the lab was quite rewarding and I loved seeing my finished product at the end. The Projections portion of the lab is where most of my time went. The beginning steps were pretty straightforward, especially because of the mini-lab I did in Dr. Hu's GIS4043 class. When it came to filling in the area table for each selected county in each projection (shown in the image above), I was a bit anxious about having to calculate the area for each individual cell. I was pleasantly surprised to learn a new and creative method for getting area information in GIS. The most difficult part of this entire lab for me was making the map. Making the map with very little guidelines and for the first time when I was truly on my own was very daunting. I struggled with removing some extraneous information from the legend and formatting the individual map layouts the most. I went back to the Cartography Lab instructions in order to relearn how to do these things and review the essential map elements. Overall, though, I think this portion of the lab really solidified my understanding of cartography from the last lab. The most interesting part of the projections lab was seeing the noticeable differences in each projection. This lab taught me how important it is to keep a consistent projection for comparative data analysis.