Land Use and Land cover

 This week students were tasked with digitizing an arial image of Pascagoula Mississippi. The goal was to create a map that represented land use and land cover down to a level two classification. After classifying the different areas in the map such as residential areas, commercial and services, Transportation, ect, 30 survey points were placed randomly on the map to check for accuracy. Using google map street view these points were reviewed and then updated on the map. Only 5 of the 30 points were determined to be false, from my review it was hard to distinguish between an industrial area and a commercial area.

Lab 1: Visual Interpretation

Map 1.

Map 1 was created to highlight the different tones and textures that can be found in historical arial imagery. The goal of this lab was to get student familiar with different terms and ideas that will be used throughout the course. A polygon feature class was created to capture the 10 different sections which include Tone: Very light, Light, Medium, Dark and Very dark.

Texture: Very fine, Fine, Mottled, Coarse, Very Coarse. 

Map 2.

Map 2 was created to highlight the different features that can be found in historical arial imagery. The lab challenged us to think of new ways to interpret data, for example, trees may not be visible upon first glance, but shadows can help us identify these types of features. Additionally we learned to view things by association, for example, a large building with a large parking lot may represent a grocery store or shopping center. A point shapefile was created to document 4 different criteria which include: Association, Pattern, Shadow, and Shape size. 

 

Georeferencing UWF Campus

 This week one of my favorite tools in ArcGIS was covered, which is georeferencing and 3D models. The goal of this lab was to georefrence arial imagery of the UWF campus that was taken back in 2012 to arial imagery from 2024. By overlaying these maps we can see how the campus has changed and expanded over the past 12 years. During this lab we learned how to edit existing shapefile layers, create polygon features and how to create a 3D scene. I believe the most challenging part of this lab was georefrencing the Heritage Hall parcel map, which required us to take blue prints and place them on historical maps.