Making the most of GIS mapping

1
Making the most of GIS mapping

• You can spend a week analyzing a project and
  destroy the results with a bad map.

2
Maps
A map is a representation, normally to scale and
on a flat medium, of the selection of material or
abstract features on, or in relation to, the
surface of the Earth. (International
Cartographic Assoc.)
3
You have several objectives

• Design objectives
• Manipulate the graphic characteristics
• Fulfill the intended purpose

• Map objectives
• Share information
• Highlight relationships
• Illustrate analysis results

4
Who is your audience?
5
How are you representing reality?

Is a single center line more appropriate than the
curb line?
6
What is the scale of your map?
7
Scale is very important

• What is the purpose of the map?
• At 1250,000, a 7mm pencil line for a road or
  stream represents 574 ft.
• At 124,000, a 7mm pencil line is equivalent to
  7.87ft.

8
Detail?
9
(No Transcript)
10
Technical Limits
11
Mode of Use
Travel map
Wall Map
12
There are different map types

• Thematic Maps
• Distribution of an attribute
• Attribute relationships

• General maps
• Topographic maps
• Show locations
• Variety of uses

13
You use different design techniques to accomplish
different objectives.
14
The Good, the Bad and the downright Ugly.

• You can easily avoid making a really ugly map by
  following some basic map making guidelines.
• By the way, its usually very easy to spot a
  novice map maker bright colors and lots of it,
  or too many things on the page.

15
What areas have the highest populations in this
map?
16
What about this map?
17
Color makes a very big difference. The darker
shades, in this case, represent higher values.
18
Color standards
19
Intense, primary colors are hard on the eyes and
do not attract serious attention. Save it for
your T-shirts.
20
Pastels, or using transparency, is much easier on
the eye.
21
When you make a color map, it is a good idea to
print it out in Black and White to see how it
looks. Very often your map is going to be copied
for wider distribution.
22
If you are not happy with ESRI color ramps, you
can create your own.
Choose the colors you want for both ends (double
click)
Then Click Sym and choose Ramp Colors.
23
BAD!
24
Better
25
The eye cannot typically see more than 7 shades
of gray. In reality, we have a hard time with
more than 5 shades.
26
Consider polygon shading but be cautious because
it can become very busy and hard to read. Many
journals require BW maps for reproduction.
27
Map Elements

• Neat line
• Graticule / Grid
• North Arrow
• Legend
• Title
• Verbal Scale?

• Index map
• Date
• Author
• Pertinent Meta Data
• Scale Bar
• Representative Fraction (RF)

28
(No Transcript)
29
(No Transcript)