This final lab called for the student to design their own
research question that they could solve using geospatial tools within ArcGis.
The research question that was thought of was; where is the best place to build
a cabin in southwestern Wisconsin? In order to come up with the desired
locations, there were a few parameters that needed to be set. It needed to be
located in deer management zone 61, but only in Buffalo, Pepin or Trempealeau
counties. The location also needed to be within 20 miles of the Mississippi
River and at least 2 miles away from a major highway. People that may use this
information may want to know where to build a cabin that would give them some
solitude for a weekend get a way. Deer hunters who hunt in the deer management
zone 61 may also be interested in this type of information.
Data Sources:
Once all the data was on the map, it needed to be analyzed
for possible problems it may have. The data sets appeared to be complete and it
seemed to be reliable. After taking a closer look, the first concern that
appeared was the consistency as to when it was updated. All of the data from
the ESRI database is updated annually. There should be little concern with how
up to date their data is, since it is updated every year. The Wisconsin DNR
data on the other hand, did not specify when it was updated or how often. This
could cause problems if some of the data sets had changed and there were
different boundaries in present time. Without knowing how often this
data is updated may cause for an irrelevant map to be made from outdated data.
The second major concern about the data is noticed by
looking at the map. All of the boundaries do not line up perfectly. There also
seems to be gaps within the southern portion of the map. This could cause for
some areas to not be mapped that should have been included in the study area.
Methods:
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| This is the work flow model that was used to obtain the answer to the question being asked. |
The first step in answering this question was to narrow down
the map to the selected area of interest. The states layer needed to be queried
in order to make Wisconsin its own layer. Once that was done, it was clipped
with USA counties in order to have the state of Wisconsin with all of its counties shown on the map.
The Deer management zones needed to be added to the map and
queried as well. This allowed for zone 61 to be selected and shown individually
on the map. Once a new feature class was made with management zone 61, it was
then clipped with Wisconsin counties in order to get the larger area of
interest. With the area of interest located, it needed to be narrowed down one
more time. An attribute query needed to be done in order to locate where the
desired counties were located within the deer management zone 61.
The next step was to select the Mississippi River from the
Wisconsin Hydroflow data. Once it was selected, a new feature class of just the
Mississippi River needed to be made for future use. A 20 mile buffer needed to
then be made around the Mississippi River in order to see where a potential
cabin could be built. Since the Mississippi River borders more than the three
desired counties, the buffer needed to be clipped by the desired counties
feature class. The result of this process only showed the buffer around the Mississippi
within the desired counties.
The major highway feature class also needed to be narrowed
down to the study area. The major highways were clipped by the desired counties
in order to just have the highways in the desired counties visible on the map. Once
the highways were clipped, a two mile buffer was needed around all of
them. This buffer showed where a cabin
could NOT be located. An erase had to be used in order to eliminate the buffer
around the highway, but show everything beyond 2 miles of a highway.
The result of the erase was then intersected with the
Mississippi River buffer. It needed to be intersected in order to show where
the ideal hunting cabin would be located in the deer management zone 61.
Results:
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| This map shows the ideal hunting cabin locations within deer managment zone 61. |
The results of this project are very interesting. Most of the ideal cabin locations are located in the central part of the study area. The highest amount of possible cabin locations are in Buffalo County. This is somewhat expected since it is the largest county in the study area. It is also interesting to see where the major highways were located and where the buffer from the Mississippi River cut off. There seems to be a major highway running along the Mississippi River with different highways branching off from it at different points. In the northeastern portion of the study area there is not many possible cabin locations. This is due to the Mississippi River buffer not reaching that far. Therefore, it automatically eliminates it from being a possible cabin site.
Evaluation:
This assignment allowed for the student to create their own project in their area of interest and use all the GIS tools they have learned throughout the semester. The assignment made the student come up with a real life geospatial question that needed to be solved. Critical thinking was needed in order to figure out which tools would yield the result the student desired in order to get the result that was wanted. If I were to do the assignment over, there would be more criteria involved. That would narrow down the ideal cabin locations and not give as general of a result.
Sources:
Esri Database
Wisconsin DNR Database
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