Reference Map of Owatonna, Minnesota

The purpose of this map was to serve as reference map for my hometown Owatonna, Minnesota. I chose the locations on the map because they are features of my hometown that I visited most often. Owatonna is a city of about 25,000 people, so it is pretty clear that I did not include all of the roads in the map. Instead, I generalized and highlighted the main roads. The colors depicted in legend were chosen based on conceptual color associations with types of city and natural structures; I picture commercial land as being harsh, ergo red, and schools being yellow because of the color of school buses. The map was modeled directly from a screenshot of Google Earth. I then brought the image into Adobe Illustrator and proceeded to digitize all of it, thus making polygons and lines. I also added my own labels, which was likely the hardest part because of lack of space for labels. Because I have lived there all of my life is was easy to decide which roads to highlight. My knowledge of Owatonna’s layout and street names, etc were handy in categorizing and labeling the map if certain locations were not given labels by Google Earth. 

Map using ArcMap

The map was created as a part of my research conducted for the Geography Field Seminar course in Oregon. As was quickly understood, the vast majority of winegrapes are grown in the northwestern region of Oregon. One of the reasons for productive grapes is precipitation levels, so the map was created to see just how much rain is required to support an abundance of vineyards. This map displays the strong relationship with precipitation and vineyard location, which is especially evident in the Willamette Valley, which is in the northwestern portion of Oregon. The data obtained for the interpolation (precipitation) portion of the map were found within the National Climatic Data Center as an annual precipitation spreadsheet for each weather station in Oregon. The data were then run through a tool in ArcMap called IDW interpolation which creates the continuous precipitation pattern you see here. The number of vineyards per county data were obtained from the National Agricultural Statistics Service which has agricultural data for the number of vineyards in the US up to 2011. The data were added to ArcMap and were visually displayed using proportional symbols to create their respective size and location. The software used included: Microsoft Excel to procure the initial raw data into spreadsheet form; ESRI ArcMap to develop most of the visual presentation for the map including the interpolation and proportional symbols; Adobe Illustrator was used to create a more cartographically pleasing presentation of the map.

Favorite Places Map

The class was assigned a project to take GPS points during a week's period during the course. The week in which our class was assigned the project was the week that I was to be in Oregon on a field seminar trip. A Trimble Juno was brought along to collect GPS points, but it was problematic when used that the satellites were unable to connect in Oregon and multiple students in the class attempted to aid in troubleshooting the device. Because of this shortcoming, I used my friend's geotagged camera to use her photos to pinpoint my favorite places from the trip.