Lab #7 Census

In this map shows the population of Asians in the United States, sorted out by each county that they live in. Looking at the Asian Population Percentage Map you notice that most of the Asian populations in the United States are located in California, Washington and New York areas.  Everywhere else the Asian population is scattered around many with less than 4 percent in the county area. The reason why the Asian population is very high in California is because of one of the Gold Rush era. 1848-1855 was the time of the California Gold Rush. Many people from China moved to California to find work to work in mines or hopefully to strike it rich. Also many people from China worked on the new railway system that was being built during this time. This resulted in an about 40 to 48 percent Asian population in the Northern California area. For Southern California the Asian is also dense because of Japanese population that was migrating during the late 1800s and early 1900s to run away from war. Even though these population percentages are high in these areas it is 

still nothing to the population percentage of Blacks in the US.

The just below the Asian population map is the Black population map in the United States also being separated by counties. As you can see most of the Black population is located in the Southern parts of the United States with the densest population of blacks in Alabama and South Carolina areas, which reach as high as 86 percent. Probably the biggest reason for so dense populations is because these sights are the original sites of where slavery was the biggest during the late 1800s. After slavery had ended most of Black people stayed in these areas because they had nowhere else to go. There are still small amounts of population of blacks all around the United States stretching from 1 percent to about 12 percent. This map shows that the population of blacks as a whole is much greater than Asian.

In the last map shows the population percentage of other pure races in the United States. It shows that the highest density of population is located in the south west parts of the United States. These high density populations maybe because of high population of Mexican people. Southern California and south Texas are popular areas for Mexican immigrants to go when they move from Mexico. There is also a high population of other race in Washington but I am not sure what that race can be. There also a reasonable amount of other locations where there is high population of other races in areas such as New York and Florida. For Florida it could be high population of Cuban immigrants and New York it could be European immigrants.

All these maps tougher show how diverse the united States are. Different areas in the USA may have high density of certain races but they do not 100 percent dominate the areas. The information that was given from these maps is from the United States Census, which can be found at www.census.gov. The maps are a version of the 2000 census and a new census is taken every 10 years, so the new census is currently being calculated. The census allows us to see how many people are residents of the United States, which places are populated areas and what races they are. GIS allows us to visually see this and helps us to sort out all the information.

Lab #6 DEM

3-D Image

Shown above are a 3-D image, Aspect map, Shaded Relief Model Map and a Slope Map of a Southern California area (Los Angeles area). This map was chosen by my TA due to the slow speeds of the USGS sever. By the looks of the maps it shows that it contains several valleys. Also shows how steep many of the surrounding hills given by the slope map.

Extent:

Top  34.3397222213

Bottom  34.2741666658

Left  -119.233888889

Right -119.171388889

Spatial Reference: GCS_North_American_1983

Datum: D_North_American_1983  

Lab #5

Map Projections

Map projection is one of the key components in representing the Earth, (that and coordinate systems). Map projections; project a 3-D image to a 2-D image. This means that if you have a globe it becomes projected and the entire surface area of the globe becomes placed onto a flat surface (map). The one way of doing this is getting the globe project a light on to it, doing this would put an image on to that flat surface. No map projections can be perfect. That is why there are 3 different types of map projections.  The three different map projections are conformal, equidistant and equal area. Each one of these have specific characteristics that makes them special which gives advantages and disadvantages over the other projections. The real definition of map projection is “a process of mathematical conversion”.  There are only 3 known ways to get map projections from a plane, cone and cylinder.

Conformal map projection has the parallels and meridians intersecting perfectly at the right angles. The greatest strength to this map projection is that it basically preserves the shapes of the continents on the map. Meaning that continents like North America or Asia will be stretched making one look abnormally long or short. Shown above shows a Gull Stereographic and a WGS 1984 PDC Mercator map projection each showing that most of the continents shapes are preserved. The part of the map that is not preserved is Antarctica which is stretched.  Conformal maps are bested used for navigation or meteorological charts.

Another category of map projection is equal area map projection. Equal area map projection has the area of the map are the same in relationship to the areas on earth. Basically what this means is that the area’s on this map is preserved. Shown above are Bonne and Molloweide equal area map projections. Even though the shapes of the map may not be on the perfect right angles like the conformal map projection, it maintains the area meaning that Antarctica is no longer stretched or the largest shape one the map.

Finally is the equidistant map projection. An equidistant map projection is when the distance from the center of projection to any other point is equal in all distances. This means that the distends from one standard point is preserved. Equidistant map projections are used for radio, seismic mapping and navigational purposes. In the maps shown above the equidistant cylindrical and equidistant conic maps display that the distance between two different points are preserved in an x axis area. 

Lab #4

 What is GIS? Originally the first GIS software that was used was by developers in Ottawa Canada by the federal Department of Forestry and Rural Development. Throughout the years GIS has advanced now there are several software companies that have different versions of GIS software. GIS is a system that captures, stores, analyzes, manages and presents data with reference to geographic location data. Also known as Geographical Information Systems, GIS creates a digital map or spatial map by imputing data into the system. GIS can be used for many of today’s jobs, for example, military planning, criminology, marketing, urban planning and environmental impact-assessment.

GIS has much more potential than it has now. GIS is becoming very important to today’s jobs. It makes it easier for jobs to get their jobs done faster. Since environmental issues are becoming big in today’s society we use this GIS system to help plan and make our decision environmental friendly. As our technology increases GIS can expand from where it is at now and can be even more helpful towards governments and companies in the near future. With so much construction being built with the human population increasing at an exponential rate GIS use will only rise. At this point GIS usage is endless.

Even though GIS has so much positive influences it does still have some downfalls like any other electronically controlled software. There are two reasons why GIS can have its downfalls. One is because of Human error. Much of GIS relies on data that is put in by information that is recorded by humans. Because of this there is a possibility that information that is put into the system or software maybe mistakenly typed wrong. Also there is a possibility that information that is put in is just wrong information. A person may have mistakenly taken bad measurements or may have miscalculated his numbers.

Another problem about GIS is of course it is software that is run by a computer. Not that we shouldn’t trust computers but, computers are created by humans so mistakes are still possible. One possible mistake that GIS can encounter is that since GIS is run on a computer the computer can fail. Meaning that a power shortage will interrupt the GIS software. Another problem of GIS is that data can be corrupted if it is not taken care of properly. A days’ worth of work can be lost if the information is not saved properly. Finally GIS if not done carefully information may be not put into the right storage area. Even though GIS may have these problems it still very important in today’s society of urban planning and many other jobs.