Introduction:
The purpose of this lab is to answer a simple question by
applying the skills learned this semester.
Research question: What areas are ideal for building a
remote cabin in Minnesota? And which Minnesota
counties have the largest remote areas?
Data Sources:
Citation: Mastering ArcGIS, Tutorial Data, 7th edition by Maribeth Price (2015)
[DVD-ROM]. McGraw-Hill Higher Ed: Dubuque, Iowa.
The data used to answer this question was from the Minnesota
geodatabase from the Geography 335 folder in the Q drive. The feature classes used were: counties,
majorroads, State, and cities.
Data concerns: The cities feature class includes
cities with a population of 10,000 or higher.
Smaller cities could have made the map information more specific and
accurate. Also the majorroads feature
class only included interstates, major highways, etc. A more comprehensive set of roads could also
make the map more specific and accurate.
Methods:
Objective 1:
The first step was to add the feature classes to a blank
map. Then use select by attributes from
the cities feature class to choose Minneapolis and St. Paul. These are the Twin Cities, which have the
highest populations in the whole state.
Create a feature class for the twin cities.
Since the cabin is to be in a remote location, it must be
far away from the twin cities metropolitan area. Use the buffer tool to set a buffer around
the Twin Cities with a distance of 100 miles.
Intersect this new feature class with the State feature class, so that
only areas within Minnesota are shown on the map.
The rest of the cities in the cities feature class has a
population of 10,000, so the cabin shouldn’t be near any of those. Use the buffer tool to set a buffer with a
distance of 30 miles. Intersect this new
feature class with the State feature class, so that only areas within Minnesota
are shown on the map.
Create a union between the buffered cities feature class and
the buffered Twin Cities feature class.
Then use the dissolve tool to remove all the boundaries within this new
feature class. Figure 4.1 displays the workflow for this objective.
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| Figure 4.1 |
Objective 2:
Intersect the major roads feature class with the State
feature class to only display the roads within Minnesota. Then use the buffer tool to create a buffer
around all the major roads with a distance of 10 miles. Since major roads can create loud traffic,
the cabin should not be too close to any major road. Use the dissolve tool to remove all the
boundaries within this new feature class.
Intersect the new feature class with the State feature class
in order to only display areas within the state of Minnesota. Figure 4.2 displays the workflow for this objective.
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| Figure 4.2 |
Objective 3:
Erase the new cities buffer/dissolve feature class and the
new major roads buffer/dissolve feature class from the counties feature
class. This is the resulting area from
the work done so far. It will be shown
with county boundaries within it. In the
attribute table, choose the shape area field and sort descending. The three counties that have the largest
remote areas will be at the top of the table. Figure 4.3 displays the workflow for this objective.
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| Figure 4.3 |
Objective 4:
Create a visually pleasing map with all the necessary
cartographic features. Figure 4.4 displays the resulting map.
Results:
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| Figure 4.4 |
This map shows that most of the ideal areas for building a remote cabin are located in Northern Minnesota. The counties that have the most remote areas are St. Louis County, Lake County, and Beltrami County.
Evaluation:
This project was a good way to incorporate all the skills learned so far in this class into solving a question that we came up with individually. It was also nice having the freedom to choose the topic of our research. Throughout the labs in this class, I have been learning to work in an orderly and organized fashion. In this lab I was able to work much more efficiently than in previous labs because I had performed all the skills before and knew the order of operations. It is satisfying to know that I can now manipulate data and create valuable maps that can answer spatial questions.
If I were asked to repeat this project, I would include more data to start the research. Having other environmental data like lakes, forest cover, etc. would be helpful in designating good locations for a remote cabin in Minnesota. In general, I would just add more data because there are a lot of factors that determine good places to build cabins in remote areas. It would also make the map information more accurate and specific.
