Lab 2: Mapping

Learning Goals

• Understand geographic concepts
• Start working with geographic data
• Make your first map!
• Start working with map attributes and styling
• Practice organizing files

Introduction

This assignment consists of three parts. Written responses, tutorials, and a short project in which you will make a map.

Make a Folder called NR218 in your home folder. Make a subdirectory, lab_2 inside of NR218

agustov
└──nr218 
   └── lab_2

All of your work for this lab will go into the lab_2 directory. You will zip it and submit the zipped file on Canvas

Written Responses (3 pts)

Provide written responses to the following Questions in a pdf. Name the document answers.pdf save it in yourNR218/lab_2 folder.

1. Map Scale Analysis: Determine and discuss the most appropriate (approximate) representative fractions for the following verbal map scale descriptions: (a) individual person, (b) neighborhood, (c) urban, (d) regional, (e) national, and (f) global.

2. Map Projections Research: Go to the National Atlas website and read about map projections (archived link). Define the following terms:

   1. datum
   2. developable surface
   3. secant
   4. azimuth
   5. rhumb line
   6. zenithal

3. Projection Properties: Describe the general properties of the following projections:

   1. Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM)
   2. State plane system
   3. Robinson projection

4. USGS Topographic Maps:

   • Download a map for your place of residence from: https://ngmdb.usgs.gov/topoview/
   • What are the scale, projection, and contour interval of the USGS topographic map that you downloaded for your place of residence?

5. Coordinate Systems: Find the latitude and longitude of your hometown. Explain how you can convert the coordinates from DD to DMS or vice versa.

Tutorial Assignments (3 pts)

Make a subdirectory called tutorials within your NR218/lab_2 directory.

agustov
└──nr218
   └── lab_2
       └── answers.pdf
       └── tutorials

Complete the following tutorials. Put screenshots of the final product for each tutorial within NR218/lab_2/tutorials. Give the screenshots reasonable names (e.g. attributes_tutorial.png)

• Working With Attributes
• Basic Vector Styling
• Calculating Line Lengths and Statistics (in the first step of this, it tells you to use a file that is still inside of the zip file. Do not do that. Extract the file first!)

Making a Map (3 pts)

Make your first (production quality) map! - Make a subdirectory called map within your NR218/lab_2 directory in which to store files for this part. - Complete the Making a Map tutorial - Submit a PDF image of the final map you created at the end of the tutorial

Show your directory structure (1 pt)

In the terminal navigate to your NR218/lab_2 folder. Use tree (or in PowerShell tree /F to show the directory structure). Paste the tree output into a text file called tree.txt (or .rtf) and save to you lab_2 folder.

How to submit

Make a zip of your lab_2 folder. Submit it on Canvas.

How to zip stuff on OSX

How to zip stuff on Windows

On Linux, in terminal

zip -r lab_2.zip lab_2