GIS I Lab 1: Base Data

Goal:
The goal of this lab was to familiarize ourselves with various data sets used in public land management and to prepare base maps for the proposed Confluence Project in Downtown Eau Claire, WI.

Background:
The driving force behind this project was a hypothetical internship. As an intern at Clear Vision Eau Claire, you are tasked with constructing a basic report communicating any relevant information as well as base maps to describe the Confluence Project. This project will add a general housing building for future art students at UW-Eau Claire as well as a new Theatre/Arts building to host future University performances and other important venues in the city.

Methods:
The process was relatively straight forward. First up was to digitize the parcels bought by the Haymarket Concepts LLC. These buildings are located at 128 Graham Ave & 202 Eau Claire St. After a feature class was created in ArcCatalog containing the newly digitized shapefile, the projection needed to be set. Using the projection from an existing feature class, the projection was added to the recently created feature class. As I was not confident in my knowledge of the Public Land Survey System (PLSS) I had to read a basic introduction to PLSS from the Wisconsin Geological Survey website. This relatively short article went a long way to help further my understanding of parcels and land organization. With this knowledge I was able to fashion a short report giving the addresses of the two buildings, parcel numbers, PINs, owner, the owner's address, and legal description; and for clarification, a small .jpeg to clarify the respective addresses. Once all this was out of the way I was able to start the actual map making.

The freedom of design was a little restricted with the parameters of having six maps (civil divisions, census boundaries, PLSS, parcel data, zoning, and voter districts) and various features such as center lines of roads, labels on counties, the confluence project identified for all maps, and various other features. The skills I fortified most revolved around the formatting and manipulation of the legend, scale bar, and symbology. Since there were many elements to catch the eye, I found it difficult at times to portray information accurately and legibly without detracting from other features.

Noteworthy obstacles:

• normalizing the data for the census boundaries (pop/sqmi)
• getting the labels on the voter districts in the correct locations
• grouping similar categories for the zoning map. 

The first problem simply evaded me because I wasn't trying to answer the parameters of the map right away. The second came when I was completely finished and I realized the district labels weren't accurate. At first I thought maybe the projection was off, then I realized the text box for the 'confluence project' was pushing the labels out of the way. From there it was a simple fix of moving the label. Lastly, the zoning map. Since the labels were each category were coded, I had to look up the labels for each zoning category. Once I realized many of them were similar yet different, I had to differentiate between what data was similar enough to put in the same group (i.e. high rise apartments and two bedroom houses, both housing, are they different?) and what needed to be in two separate classes. Getting them into the same class was also a chore, but after playing are with highlighting the data and right clicking in a few different places I was able to group them together properly.

Results:
Civil Divisions Map: This map shows the county boundary of Eau Claire, as well as the city of Eau Claire and the townships dividing it.

Census Map: This map shows the confluence project as well as the tract and block groups. The block groups are normalized by population per square mile.

PLSS Map: This shows the location of Eau Claire with the dividing lines of the public land surveying system.

Parcel Map: This shows the parcels in close proximity to the proposed Confluence Site as well as the roads and water bodies. The water is important because this is the location where the Eau Claire and Chippewa rivers meet and thus gave birth to the name of the "confluence" project.

Zoning Map: This showed the various zones of Eau Claire, specifically of those close to the confluence site. This digitized view shoes the location of shopping, business, industrial, public, residential, and transportation zones. As well as the proposed location of the confluence site and the center lines of roads.

Voter Districts Map: This shows the boundaries and district number for most the city of Eau Claire.