Percentage Distribution of Races in Continental U.S.

week 8 lab's main purpose is to use GIS program to relate and join with statistical charts and tables to create these distribution maps with given data. First group of pictures are percentage of distribution of Asians, Blacks and Some Other Race. 

First picture is the percentage distribution of Asians. From this map, we can clearly see that Asians are mainly cluster at the west coast, especially concentrated at California. Also there are some Asians clustered at north east United States, somewhere around New York. 

Second picture is the percentage distribution of African Americans. From this map, we can see that African Americans are mainly living at South East of United States. This trend is come from the history of United States, when United States used to allow slavery, and American people at South bought many Slaves from Africa to do labors. Many African American choose to stay at South even after civil war.

Third picture is the percentage distribution of some other races. These races are including Hispanic and middle eastern people. As we can see, many Hispanic people are clustering at south west area of America. This area used to be part of Mexico, until American has won the Mexico-U.S. war and bought the land from Mexico.

The second group of the pictures are census 2000 tutorial, which consists four major maps. From Number of people in 2000, we can see that most people are staying along the coast of U.S. and second picture the population growth shows that population in California, Nevada, Florida and New York is growing rapidly, while middle part of U.S. are leaving for the past decade. The third picture show the percent change in total population, to show that Nevada has the most dramatic population growth, follow by Florida and California. With population density at fourth picture, it shows that New York, California, and part of Florida are the most crowded place in U.S.

By using the GIS system to the distribution map, I found out that it is very easy to combine the table data with landscape map and create these informative distribution maps, when you learned how to properly combine the data and apply them. However, the data chart itself has a very restricted formation, and you have to have the correct formation in order to let the data to relate and combine. Overall, I had a very easy time to create these maps and this skill is very useful in the future.

Tryout GISArc10 different analytic functions

   The first Picture has the original DEM projection, with the following data:

extend information:

Top:41.4905555551

Left:-122.677500001

Right:-121.661111112

Bottom:40.9288888884

geographic coordinate system:GCS_North_American_1983

Datum:D_North_American_1983

Angular Unit: Degree (0.017453292519943295)

  This sector is chose at northern part of California, in the mountain valley. I choose this particular sector, because it has many mountains with steep slopes, which is helpful and informative when I am trying to analyze and learn from making GIS hill shades, slope, aspect and 3-D projections. 

Map Projections

This week in lab 5 we have done the Map projection with 3 different type of map projections, including confrontal, Equal Distant, and Equal Area. With each different map projection, we also measured the distance between Washington D.C. and Kabul. With this exercise, we will see each map projections' advantages and disadvantages. The top map is the original map that was given. follow by the second row which are two confrontal projections. Third row are two Equal Area projections, and the fourth row are two Equal distant projection.

The Confrontal projections are very pleasing to read, as every major continents are appeared to be on the map. when perpendicular gradients, you can find any place with accurate latitude and longitude mark with confrontal map. However this map has distorted proportions of area and distance. South pole becomes extremely big comparing to its actual size, and Africa became extremely small comparing to the actual size. This is a major draw back of confrontal projection. If someone want to study the general geographic shapes and actual areas of continents, the confrontal map can be very misleading, such as Africa is very large continent, but in Mercator projection, Africa is very small.

The Equal Area map projection is my most favored map projection type. because this map has every continent in its real shape and area. It is most applicable to people who wants to study the real geographic size of the Earth. However the disadvantage are that the continents appear to be narrower and end up disappear towards the top and the bottom of the map. Also some maps are not a cylindrical projection, but rather elliptical. Some places such as Australia will also become distorted in shape. The shape distortion towards the pole is inevitable in this kinds of map projection.

The Equal Distant map has accurate distance measure between two points and this map is greatly used in measure of missile lunches and traveling flight. This kind of maps are not for daily uses for ordinary people. most of these maps are appear to be spherical shape and all of the continents are concentrated on one side of the earth, and oceans on the other side of the sphere projection. the location and area of continents are distorted in this case. Sometime Equal Distant map can be hard to read when the true north is not available too. In general, there is no perfect map projection, but different map projections have different uses with their own advantages and disadvantages. 

GIS Application Tryout

    I have spend 5 hours to create the how poster with the help of the tutorial. Unfortunately my ArcGIS10 has crushed during the time span of creating a picture file out. Therefore, my file became corrupted and forced me to do this project again, which took me about another 4 hours. The ArcGIS10 is a great program with lots of functionality to create the maps that are needed. However there are some draw backs with its complexity and huge memory spaces it takes to run some of the calculations and creations. 

   There are lots of advantages of using GIS program to create maps. First, there are many functionality within the program to help you create maps. just as loading some of the given layers of the county map. Using the existing data to help you make your own map with your own purpose. Second, there are many features that will make your map look more complete, such as the legends, scare bar and the North Stars. You can change to different symbols to represent schools, and change colors to population density coverage. GIS program has very strong editing capability. It is able to help you create new streets and name these streets on your already existed map. Lastly, it has features like Excel to help you create charts and do statistics for you with its calculator and graph functions.

   With all the great functions and features GIS has to offer, it has some downsides to its nature. GIS program is very complex comparing to Neogeography programs such as Google Map. I am a beginner with GIS program, and I would not able to finish this project without using the tutorial guide. The user interface is friendly, but with some professional terms and many buttons, the program is still very confusing when I start using it. Various functions come with complex multiple steps to achieve it, such as create a population density coverage. This program is very limited to professionals who are seeking for creating formal maps and scientific data. Beginners are not able to pick up this program very easily, and this program is certainly not for everyone who wants to create a personal map on his own leisure time.

    Although GIS program is very limited to certain group of people and requires professional education and high skills to run it as its full potential, it has some great functions and features to help professional geographers to create very good maps. I have only begin to use this program, therefore there are many more functions that I have not known yet. I think GIS program has great depth and potential to help professional geographers to complete any mapping tasks that are given to them