wind farm options

I looked at two options and have selected a potential off shore wind farm site in zone 5 Excellent according to the Michigan reference maps for the US DOE NREL Sept. 2004 maps for 50 m wind speed. This site is located offshore south of Ludington and north of Muskegon. Due to the current economic conditions in much of Michigan, this could be an economic development option with possible national incentives as well as state incentives. The site appears to be north of major duck migration routes, but local state wildlife officials should be consulted for more accurate data. It is not located in any shipping lane. If it is sited 20 miles from shore, the turbines should not be visible due to line of site math and would therefore not cause problems with shadow flicker or noise. The costs for turbine transport are less over water but the transmission costs to shore would need to be considered.

I could not get the jpg files I saved in google earth to upload. I cannot believe I saved graphics in word, edited and then copied into Illustrator and created a map then exported to jpg. wow.

Lab 6 Proportional symbol Europe Wine consumption

I set the circles to 25% transparent to allow the viewer to see the country name and borders. I had to check the web to get units in the excel sheet and volume for Germany. I selected European Lambert Coformal Conic because tit was in mid latitude, and has the east-west extent of the region. This projection preserves shape which is more important than area for this map. I was able to copy the circles with the ctrl c ctrl v command and it was easy to keep the format of the circles size and transparency. It was odd where it makes the copy though. Still having trouble with the layers. I was able to center the legend symbols using the x,y coordinates.

Module 7 Dot Map housing density on S drive

I am so excited! I learned how to make dots into symbols and use them to copy from the symbol library into my document. Saved a lot of time, but does not look as evenly distributed as some of the other maps. Having dots in symbol blocks of 20, 18, 8, 10, 5, 3 and 2 made it go much easier for me. I had put off doing this map because I knew there was an easier way than I was doing with one dot at a time. There is a way to copy with the spray tool and one of the other tools but I could not keep a good count. With the symbol tool, I was able to spread them out a little, yet keep a count. I can see the aesthetic value of individual placement but found the symbol tool helped me to get caught up with my work and class load.

I re-read one of my previous posts and remembered pdf files are too large so I had to export as jpg insted of save as pdf!!! The map is also posted on the S drive.

I calculated the Housing density (housing units/total area) in the excel sheet by adding a column and using the formula. The highest density is Pinellas County with 793 units standardized by area. That compares to a low in Lavayette, Liberty and Glades County with 4 to 6 units/acre density.

In order to get 173 dots into the Pinellas County space, I sized them at .7 x .7 pixels. I kept the water and wetland layer on to assist in dot placent, near coastal areas and urban centers. After placing dots, I turned off the lables and wetland layers. I left the water layer to see where the housing density is in relation to the water.

Module 10 Georgia mean annual precipitation map

I got more experience with pencil and pencil eraser tool. Inserted text and rotated. Where are the ESRI north arrows? I could not find the info in the blogs or labs but I know you told us before. I had a hard time with the lines but found warp to curve them to fit in other directions. Cool tool!

If forgot it must be exported to a jpg file format. PDF is too large to transmit. It says internal error. I also saved it to my s drive.

Module 5 Choropleth black and white

I learned to use the slider bar with the color select option. I also discovered that the states could be selected and highlighted with the shift key. The percent change legend is continuous so the color bars are next to each other. I did a lot of the work in Arcmap and then spentmore time on converting it in AI.

Module 5 Choropleth map color

I found out I could not upload my pdf files as they are much larger. Instead, these are exported as jpg files.

I set the 5 natural breaks and colors in the select tab. Once I moved it to AI I determined that I could use shift and then select multiple states with the same color instead of having to set the color value for all 50 states individually. Yippee!

I used Albers Equal Area Conic since the extent was above the equator, mostly east and west and I wanted equal area so Alaska had a more natural shape. Higher values are set in the darker color for emphasis. Legend boxes are continuous. I was able to save this map, convert to gray scale color ramp and select colors in AI similar to those in Arcmap.

Module 9 Immigration Flow Map

I had so much trouble with this. I am so tired and frustrated from working on AI. The VM or Adobe kept freezing up and it takes so long to reboot and get back on the system.

This map is a Robinson Projection rotated so the central meridian is -100 to put USA in the middle of the map. I could not get the text labels on the continents. It kept highlighting the wrong countries. I never tried to split the continents. I had so much trouble with the select, line, pencil tools. I could not get the text to line up in the legend. I did finally get some arrows but even following the directions, the video and instructions from 2 books, I could not get them to work like I know they can. I never was able to get the size into the legend. I used 50 pt for the largest and used the formula in the lab and got .25 for the smallest width line. I used an exel spreadsheet to do the calculations.

Width of line= (max line width) x (value/Max value)

I had a horrible tiime getting the countinents to change color. Some had open white polygons so I used the blob brush to fill in. I used the lasso but still had adjacenet countries select. I could not get the background to change consistently. I learned to save colors to the color swatch and leared to use shift key to help me highlight (aka select) the bulk of the countries.

I figure I spent 16 hours on this map and still not the way it should be.

Module 8 Non-contiguous with overlap

How do you clean up all the congestion in Europe? I finally experimented and got circles hollow.

Module 8 Contiguous cartogram

Not sure of what to include in the legend. Since you must assume the audience is familiar with general world geography, do you really need north orientation and scale? I used 10 iterations. I am not sure how to "balance error and distortion". Is there some standard to go by? I was trying to make it look like your example.

How do you include a square with the gdp value as in figure 19.2 on page 357 of text?

Module 4 Map Design Hispanic Population

This is the second map made in Adobe Illustrator. I could change the colors of the symbols, but never got the direct select tool to work witht the counties. I got the state of Florida to change to red but could not get just the south part of the state to change away from gray to red. Plan to change the colors to more of a gradient and move the symbol rectangles together to show the gradual change in the groups. Spaces typically indicate more distinct breaks. The was not a year for the census data so not sure if it was 1990 or 2000.

Marathon Map in Adobe Illustrator

This was a very frustating activity. I never did get the artboard neatline to work. Maybe next time. I did get to play with transparency, blob, pencil, symbol library, line draw, rotate text.

My valentine to Ray

Mental Mapping- Where Eleanor Prefers to Work

I am a Florida native. I have only experienced snow about 3 times. Nice to visit, but I would not want to live there. I do not do cold well.

Note that all the red states have coastal areas that would be warmer during the winter. I love fishing, hiking, camping and nature watching as awell as outdoor recreation so these states could allow me to enjoy canoe, kayak, beach, snorkel, boating, camping and fishing opportunities if I was not so busy working!

The green states would be just too cold in the winter months, even though they would be nice in the summer.

The orange states are ones I think I could tolerate during the winter with a little training, the internet, discovery channel and a wood stove. The summer outdoor recreation in the mountains would be awesome.

Lab 1 Part 2: bad maps, good maps

Bad Map:

This map from the OrlandoSentinel.com weblink depicts the jet stream. There are a few things that are not clear.


1. No title displays with the map.


2. the date and time stamp are in poor contrast and difficult to read.


3. The colors indicate the wind speed and the arrows clearly depict the direction of the wind, but there is nothing to indicate the elevation. Is the wind speed at the surface or at ? altitude.


4. The legend could be spelled out; mph (miles per hour) and m/s (miles per second).


http://weather.orlandosentinel.com/US/Region/Southeast/2xJetStream.html

Good Map:

This is image 25 of 25 in an animated series. Go to the link (below) to see the animation as I have not discovered how to make the animated map visible on this blog.

1. The title is clear and readable and displays on the web page as U. S. Obesity Trends, 1985-2007.

2. The use of color and animation illustrate the change in percentage of the population that are defined as obese and the definition is on the map. (>30% BMI) however BMI could be spelled out as Body Mass Index.

3. The legend is clearly labeled and the contrasting color palate make it easy to see the changes. The colors represent typical data as a percentage of the population.

http://www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/dnpa/obesity/trend/maps/

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