GIS 4043 Lab 2 Cartography

 


In this week's lab we created a map showing the University of West Florida main campus's geographic location. To start this map, I wanted to make sure the information I was trying to convey was obvious. In the very top in bold black text is "University of West Florida Campus". Immediately the viewer will know the primary purpose of this map. Just to the right is a pane which shows the state of Florida with its counties. I went with a tan color that way the red which Escambia County is highlighted in really pops. The viewer will know that the map they are looking at is a map of Escambia County.  When viewing the map, you can see that Escambia County is colored as a light green color. This color contrasts nicely against the rest of the map but is not so bold that it draws your attention from the map details. For the details in the map legend, you will see that each individual location whether it be the cities, interstate, or major rivers are all in brighter colors, so they noticeably contrast against the base map its apparent that these features are important information to the viewer.

Overall, I found this assignment to be quite challenging. It took me about 10 hours total to complete this map due to some of the issues I ran into. The primary one being that I could not find out the correct way to show the extent for EscBoundary in Degrees as required per question 3 in the process summary. The instructional showed how to do it but the only coordinate system available to me was in meters. Because of this I spent around 2 hours trying to figure out the correct way to get the information required. I eventually created a new coordinate system using the NAD 1983 Florida GDL Albers as shown in the instructional. Once I did this it gave me coordinates in degrees, I am not sure if they are correct, but it was the best I could come up with at the time. 

While this lab was difficult, I am pleased with product I produced. It's far from perfect but it conveys the information it needs to. I am already seeing things I would like to change that would make it a little more visually pleasing and even certain things that will help the viewer to understand the information better. I am looking forward to the next project.   

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