Week 7 Lab

This is San Bernardino County, overlooking Big Bear Lake. It is a popular place especially during the winter for camping and snowboarding. However, it is not only restricted to winter activities as there are many resorts that cater to all seasons including golf, hiking, and mountain biking during the summer. The extent information is 34.3749999991 degrees north, -117.532777777 degrees west, -117.104722222 degrees east, and 34.1244444435 degrees south. This is based on the spatial reference for North America in 1983. The cell size is 0.00027777778, 0.00027777778 or 1 arc second.

Lab 4: Proposed Airport Expansion

I was surprised by the ease of use of GIS and how easy it was to follow the tutorials to get the desired layouts. I felt that it would be simple for anyone to use GIS to show simple information about a certain area. The maps were easy to create and was just as easy to view because of the legends, different colors, and various icons that were available. In this sense GIS makes it very simple to display and read data.

Not only is GIS useful in displaying map data but it is also able to display data in the form of a table. The table is also just easily able to display data for one to see. In this case it shows the different uses of land within the contour of noise. The different colors make the graph look visually appealing and the bar graph itself makes the data easy to read.

As easy and visually pleasing as GIS was there were some complexities to it as well. Often times I found myself confused by the steps involved by the tutorial and could not find the direct component or file which was necessary for a certain map or table. This was partially because the files were not located in the folder that was mentioned in the tutorial but in a temporary folder for lab and this ended up being only a minor setback.

Another pitfall I thought was relevant was that even though GIS is very accurate in being able to show the real world as data, it is still very complex. This comes as no surprise as our world itself is highly complex. But when I was working on this tutorial and creating these maps, I did not know what it was I was looking at until I finished the entire product and looked at it as a whole. I think often times it is difficult to know what one is working on and likewise if it he or she is doing it correctly until the product is finished and looked at as a whole. This calls for a lot of backtracking and unnecessary work.