Announcements

• Project Skydrop found 🔗
  • using weather patterns seen in the live webcam.
• Y'all walked a lot of miles for Lab 2.
• Midterm review and quiz next week.
• Virtual geocache extra credit back up with 5 locations 🔗

Hurricane Helene

• Helene was catastophic. How can maps help? For people without internet?
• HOTOSM humanitarian team 🔗 and collaborative mapping 🔗
• Mapping risk from 2022 floods 🔗

Powers earned 🐉

• Create (and own) data
• both on the computer and in the field.
• Solid foundation on which to create unique maps.

Virtual geocaching extra credit

• Less than 10% of class submitted geocache guesses.
• Pretty low for low hanging fruit.
• Make your best guesses before October 5.

Maps in the wild

• Find a public map and critique it.
• Begin to think about effective map design.
• Link to instructions.
• My recent maps in the wild (these are videos, but you'll submit a photo): 🔗 🔗

GIS

• Geographic Information Systems
• The capture, storage, manipulation, analysis, and presentation of spatial data
• using a computer.

History

• Pre-1960s maps were drawn on clear plastic sheets.
• Havard's SYMAP (1963) was the first GIS. 🔗
• ESRI ARC/INFO (Now ArcGIS Pro) was released in 1981.
• QGIS was released in 2002.
• Following YouTubes explore using QGIS.

1990s GIS debates

• Computer and data revolution. Desktop computers, the World Wide Web, and GPS become widely available.
• GIS and maps promise unbiased decision-making tools.
• Data from above vs. data from below.
• The Ethics of GIS (1995) 🔗

Aura of accuracy

• Locational fallacy: simplification of spatial characteristics.
  • Modeling houses as points instead of polygons in a flood plain analysis.
• Ecological fallacy: the whole represents the one.
  • Most of this class drinks RC, so y'all like country music.
• Challenge analyzing nuanced observations 🔗

Define y

• Regions are socially constructed.
• Sometimes we agree on them, sometimes we don't.
• The first critical step in GIS analysis.

Let's draw the "real" extent of campus 🔗

Let's visit campus

• Launch Google Earth 🔗
• Drag and drop campus into Google Earth.
• Explore!

A definition must be made

• You must define the area you are mapping.
• Tip 💯 find a polygon that represents your area of interest.
• It's not always easy.

Stereotypes

• How we think about an unfamiliar region.
• The way people look, talk, and live.
• Stranger with a Camera 📽️

Migration

• Map of foreign born by county, 1850-2020 🔗
• People move and take their culture with them.
• Diaspora: the dispersion of any people from their original homeland.
• The Eastern Kentucky Social Club 📽️

A definition?

• Wikipedia 🔗
• Appalachian Regional Commission defines 423 counties as Appalachia 🔗
• How does your county compare? 🔗

Lab 2 analysis

• Let's visualize the data we collected
• and see what questions we can answer.
• Downloads: travels and campus

Symbolize

• the travel layer to see 'how much'
• Layer Styling Panel > Layer Rendering > Feature > Addition
• Travel layer glows brighter in areas with more.

How much

• did we travel
• inside campus?

Steps

• 1. Clip travel lines to campus extent.
• 2. Add geometry attributes to new travel lines.
• 3. Do statistics on the newest travel lines.
• 10-minute demonstration video. 📽️

Which area has the most?

• Zoom and pan to find the area.

Steps

• 1. Draw a new polygon for desired extent.
• 2. Clip travel lines to new polygon.
• 3. Add geometry attributes to new travel lines.
• 4. Do statistics on the newest travel lines.
• 4-minute demonstration video. 📽️

🔨 Geoprocessing

• Manipulate spatial data
• using a chain of tools.
• Output of one tool is input to the next.

Essential workflows

• Shaded relief, aka hillshade
• Clip
• Buffer
• Bonus workflows

Digital Elevation Model

• Often called a DEM.
• One of the most used raster datasets.
• Each cell has a number representing elevation.

Kentucky elevation

• ky-250.tif is a GeoTIFF
• with each cell representing 250 x 250 feet.
• Use Menu > Identify tool to see elevation.

Shaded relief

• Techniques to visualize elevation
• by simulating a light source.
• GIS tool is called Hillshade.

Hillshade

• Menu > Raster > Analysis > Hillshade...
• Input layer is a DEM.
• Tool settings to experiment with
  • Vertical exaggeration
  • Light's azimuth (direction in sky)
  • Light's altitude (height in sky)

Clip tool

• Remove features outside of a polygon.
• Answers 'how much' questions.
• Makes it easier to work with large data.

Two versions

• Vector Layers
  • Menu > Vector > Geoprocessing Tools > Clip...
• Raster Layers
  • Menu > Raster > Extraction > Clip Raster by Mask Layer...

Vector clip

• Find polygon to define extent: campus
• Clip your locations to the campus extent.

Buffer tool

• Create a polygon within a distance of another vector layer.
• Input: point, line, or polygon
• Output: polygon

Buffer tool

• Vector Layers
  • Menu > Vector > Geoprocessing Tools > Buffer...
• Buffer campus roads to 50 feet.

🔍 Geoprocessing Gotchas

• Creates a lot of output layers. Name them appropriately.
• Some tools require the same projection.

Change a layer's projection

• Right-click a layer > Export > Save Features As...
• Pick one of our five coordinate reference systems discussed in Module 2, depending on your area.

Detailed DEMs

• They are available for free.
• Often comes in tiny tiles that need to be merged.

Merge tool

• Creates a single DEM from many tiles.
• Input: DEMs
• Output: DEM
• Menu > Raster > Miscellaneous > Merge...

Remote sensing

• Imagery from satellites and aircraft.
• Captures 'light' that humans can't see.
• View 2022 aerial photo (large file 400 MB) to find healthy vegetation.

Healthy vegetation

• Extract pixels with high near-infrared reflectance.
• Shown as bright red in image.
• Used to predict plant health, crop yield, and wildfire risk.

Attributes without geometry

• Most Census data is available as tables without geometry.
• Relate these tables to geometry
• using an attribute join.
• Download: states, counties, and census data.

KAMP GIS Conference

• Ky Association of Mapping Professionals
• October 8-10, 2024
• Showcase of GIS projects in state

Some topics presented

• E911 addressing 🔗
• Search and rescue tools 🔗
• Finding endangered species in Ky. 🔗
• Is social distress related to coal mining?
• Grants to plant trees in distressed areas. 🔗

Combine workflows

• to ask more complex questions.
• Identify areas with high rates of poverty AND low rates of healthy vegetation.
• That's the promise of GIS.

Critical GIS

• Seize the means of mapping production:
  • Expose counter-narratives
  • Question or resist power

Gentrification

• "The process whereby the character of a poor urban area is changed by wealthier people moving in, improving-housing, and attracting new businesses, typically displacing current inhabitants in the process."
• Everybody wants to live in a nice neighborhood.

Critical mapping examples

• Mapshop Community Atlas 🔗
• Mapping Inequality 🔗
• Anti-Eviction Mapping Project 🔗
• Urban Displacement Project 🔗

Requirements

• Documentation
• Use two layers to ask a question.
• Let's do it live in class!

GIS

• What is GIS?
• What kind of question can a GIS answer?

Geoprocessing

• What is it?
• What is required to do it?

Tools

• What can a clip tool do?
• What can a buffer tool do?
• What can a hillshade tool do?