Goal and Background: The goal of this lab was to learn how to download GIS data files and use those files to create our own maps in ArcMap 10.2. The lab consists of downloading data for Wisconsin counties, and joining that data with Wisconsin county shapefiles.
Methods: The first step for this lab is to download census data from online. I went to American Fact Finder and sorted the topics field to population total of people. I then needed to establish my geography for where the population counts would be included. This lab we are concerned with all the counties in Wisconsin, so I set the geography to all counties in Wisconsin. I then checked the Population Total 2010 SF1 100% dataset and downloaded it. The download is a zip file so we must extract that to our lab 2 folder. I then examined the excel files contained in that folder. One file contains metadata and the other file contains actual tabular data. I saved the one with the tabular data as an excel workbook. I then went back to American Fact Finder and downloaded the shapefile for Wisconsin counties and saved that to my lab 2 folder as well. In order to map the data I downloaded onto the shapefile of Wisconsin counties the data must be joined together. I dragged the Wisconsin county shapefile from the Catalog to the Table of Contents and did the same with the excel workbook I previously saved. I right clicked the shapefile and when to Joins and Relates and then Join. I selected GEO_ID for the field in the layer that the join will be based on and selected the excel workbook I saved containing the tabular data under the choose table option. I then clicked OK and the tables are now joined. After that, I mapped the data on the shapefile using graduated colors. I adjusted the classes to an appropriate number for the data being presented, choose a cartiographically pleasing color scheme, and added the world imagery basemap behind the counties. I then switched to layout mode and added a scale, a legend, a north arrow, and a title. The next step was to do the exact same workflow presented above except with a different variable for the data set and place that next to the first map on the layout.
Results: Figure 1 shows two maps of data within all Wisconsin counties. The map on the left shows the total population of each county. The map on the right shows the vacancy status of each county. Total population shows a pattern of being higher in the major cities of Madison, Milwaukee, and some of the surrounding counties. Vacancy status seems to be higher in the major cities as well, and many counties in northern Wisconsin too.
Figure 1
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