Monday, November 21, 2011

Assignment 8


ArcGis makes it easier to make maps and customize them. Here there are three maps made using ArcGis that show percentage of different poplulation in differnet parts of United States of America.

The above map shows the percentage population of African-Americans in different parts of United States of America. AS we can see from the map the Black population is densely concentrated in the south-east region of the country where the color is very dark. On the other hand, the population of Blacks is almost nil in the mid-west part of the country. Also we see that on the west coast there is thin population of African-American which almost dies down as we go north.







The above map describes the percentage of Asian Population in different parts of the country. As the legend describes, the dark color represents a strong population while lighter colour represents weaker population. The map clearly represents the south west region of America with a dense Asian population while the rest of the country has only a small percentage of the population.


This map describes the population of races other than White, Black or Asian. It could be Hispanice, Native American or other minorities. Blue color denotes a strong population of other races while green denotes weak population. As we can see from the map in parts of south-west America and south America the there is a dense population of other races while in the rest of the country they are scattered


Monday, November 14, 2011

Lab 6 Assignment

The region I chose is from east California. As we can see from the map posted the elevation of the region varies significantly with distance. There are four maps posted. The first map that is posted is the 'Hillshade' map that tells us about the terrain of the area we have chosen. The second map is the 'Aspect' map that gives us information about the direction at which the specific area of the DEM face. The third map is the 'Slope' map that describes the slope at different map part of the region and finally the last map gives us 3D illusion of the entire region.

Here are the maps






Monday, November 7, 2011

Map Projections

The distance between Kabul and Washington DC in this map is 13158 km.




The distance between Kabul and Washington DC in this map is 24129 km.



The distance between Kabul and Washington DC in this map is 13336 km.

The distance between Kabul and Washington DC in this map is 12725 km.








The distance between Kabul and Washington DC in this map is 11121 km.




The distance between Kabul and Washington DC in this map is 16252 km.



Significance of Map Projections



There are different map projections to represent the Earth. Earth is a three dimensional object that needs to be represented on a two dimensional surface. Therefore we have different map projections that stress on different characteristics of the Earth.

The conformal map projection preserves angles locally. The Mercator and World Stereographic are the two conformal map projection posted. In both the maps the angles have been preserved that is the angles projected on the sphere are the same as on the map. However the conformal maps distort the area and that is the reason the poles appear larger than the area near the equator. We can see in both the maps that Canada is almost the same size as Africa which is not true. These maps are helpful to represent small areas. And we can see from the measurements of distances from Kabul and Washington DC that the distances are more than the actual distances.

The next map projection is the equidistant map projection. As the name suggests, equidistant map projections preserve distance from standard point or line. In the project submitted, Azimuthal Equidistant and Two Point Equidistant are two types of equidistant map projections. These map projections. This map will show the correct distance from the standard point to any point in the world. Like in Azimuthal Equidistant one particular city is chosen as the standard city all the distances measured from that city are preserved.

The last map projection is the equal area map projection. Again as the name suggests this map preserves equal area. In the maps submitted, the Mollweide and sinusoidal are the two equal map projections. We can see from the distances measured from Kabul and Washington DC that the distances are close to the actual values. This type of representation is usually used to male world maps since they preserve the area of all the countries.