The purpose of this lab exercise was to showcase the skills learned in previous week of the GIS I class, specifically with various spatial data sets and manipulating them to display the information appropriate to the exercise. The lab instructed me, a hypothetical intern at Clear Vision Eau Claire, to use such spatial data sets used in public land management, administration, and land use to prepare a basic report and develop base maps for the Confluence Project. The Confluence Project is a plan for the development of a community arts center, a mixed-use space for retail, commercial, parking, and university housing apartment complex. The space for development is located at the confluence of the Eau Claire and Chippewa Rivers.
Methods
Constructing the report and base maps took several different steps. First and foremost, I familiarized myself with the feature data sets given and reviewed basic skills I thought I would need for this project. Then, I needed to digitize the Confluence Project's proposed site. Finally, I built several data frames to showcase the information I gathered from the geodatabases and created this report.
Familiarizing myself with the spatial data sets and information consisted of going through both geodatabases within ArcCatalog and previewing all feature data sets and classes. The geodatabases contained spatial data pertaining to the census features, development, parcel features, PLSS, and the roads within the city and county of Eau Claire. I also reviewed certain skills for this lab such as how to digitize, manipulate the layout frames, and add pertinent information like legends and scale bars.
Next, I digitized the site for the Confluence Project. This process began with creating a new, blank feature class named Proposed Site in the geodatabase I created specifically for this exercise. In ArcMap, I added the Imagery basemap, the parcel area feature class, and the Proposed Site to a blank map, zoomed to the location of the Confluence project, and turned on the editor toolbar. I used the editor toolbar to create a new feature in the Proposed Site feature class outlining the location of the Confluence Project and made it a bright blue color so it would easily be visible next to any other feature classes added to a given map. This gave me my digitized site.
Finally, I built six data frames with information pertinent to the exercise. Each data frame displays the location of the Confluence Project within different maps of the local area and what is important legally and spatially. I used different skills developed in previous weeks, such as manipulating data frames in the layout view of ArcMap, to make the maps look presentable and aesthetically pleasing.
Results
Figure 1 below presents the data frames created to present the information on the Confluence Project. The first data frame displays the civil divisions, separating the city of Eau Claire from the towns surrounding it and Chippewa county to the north. The second frame shows the census boundaries with each section represented by their populations and normalized by square mile, ultimately showing the population density of the surrounding area. The third frame presents the location of the proposed site in terms of the PLSS quarter quarter divisions; it's legally described as residing in Section 20, Township 27 North, Range 9 West. The fourth frame shows the city of Eau Claire's parcel data and the proposed site location is highlighted. The fifth frame displays the zoning data in Eau Claire; each zoning class is highlighted in a different color with the proposed site located in a red zone, which represents a central business district. The final data frame includes the voting districts for the city of Eau Claire and the location of the proposed site within district 31.
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| Fig 1. Base maps displaying varying information. |
Sources
City of Eau Claire and Eau Claire County 2013.
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