Week 3 - GIS Cartography

This week we covered the history of mapping generally, various mapping techniques, and discussed who has the right to create and analyze maps. The lab for this week covered three different mapping layouts, each using slightly more advanced display and layout techniques. These maps are discussed below.

Map 1 - View of Mexican States by Population

For our first map we were tasked with symbolizing the states of Mexico with an appropriate color scheme and using figure-ground design principles to make the country stand out. I did so with a range of brownish colors – the colors increase in darkness along with the increase in the population of each county. The background of the map was set to a light blue, and the surrounding countries were symbolized in yellow to help further distinguish Mexico. I decided to put a light mask around the state names to help them stand out a bit better (without the mask they seemed to blend in with the background).

Map 2 - View of Major Cities within Central Mexico

The second map shows principal cities within central Mexico. The cities were labelled based on their overall population (greater than 1 million) – this was defined by creating a special label class using an SQL definition under layer properties. The labels were then converted to annotation for greater ease of placement. When making this map I realized that my original color scheme for the Mexican states wasn’t going to quite work, so I changed the entire country to a light tan color. An inset map was placed to show where exactly the detailed view of Mexico is; to further clarify the location I matched the country color for Mexico to that used on my main map view.

Map 3 - DEM View of Mexico

The third and final map is a digital elevation model (DEM) map of Mexico. I went with traditional colors within a stretched color scheme to represent the DEM. I realize that there are some interpretation problems with this type of representation – it seems to suggest that the greener areas are lusher than they actually might be. But since this type of elevation representation has been around so long I think an argument can be made that it also represents low elevation (for certain generations anyway). For the inset map I decided to show all of North America and South America –I think one can get the sense of where Mexico is in the world without having to show the entire globe.

*Originally posted on 1/30/2015 @ 8:50 p.m. CST. Edited on 2/2/2015 at 2:15 p.m. to show the correct label tag (should be GIS4043, was initially mislabeled for GIS3015).