Chris Stephenson UWF GIS Blog

 This week's lesson was a history lesson in cartography and understanding basic mapmaking. The assignment was to identify a well designed map and a poorly designed map.  For my well designed map, I chose a national park map of Capulin Volcano National Monument in NW New Mexico. It is a park my family and I visited when we took a road trip shortly after returning from Germany.  https://www.nps.gov/media/photo/collection-item.htm?pg=7347320&cid=305fb7af-a71b-469b-941e-a98b439c882f&id=2d23d9a1-1dc8-423e-b058-1b67cc15b8ae&sid=ddf76276-66ad-45ec-a06d-d4f7651713bc&p=1&sort=relevance     I chose this map as a well designed map for its simplicity and getting straight to the point. The map is well labeled and identifies the most important features in the park for visitors. It identifies the different trails, their distances, as well as the road and other important facilities. The map is neat and all the essential map elements are easily identifiable a...

 Hi! I'm Chris. Please see my story map here ! I am a USAF veteran utilizing the VA VR&E program. I am a graduate student looking to expand on my GIS knowledge. I served as a Geospatial Analyst for 12.5 years and currently hold a B.S. in Geography and B.S. in GIS. This seemed the next logical step to utilize my education benefits.  Upon completion, I hope to utilize my skills to improve my current companies GIS practices.

  This week's lab was about utilizing different spectral combinations to identify features. Different combinations can be utilized to help identify very specific features or phenomena. Analysts in the wild use these different combos to help solve problems such as deforestation, flooding, or change detection. My personal experience is in the military intelligence world, where we utilized these different bands to help us identify or expose dangerous operations. We could use these different combinations to identify changes in equipment location, homemade explosives/IED identification, as well as verifying if a site is operational or not. One example, closely related to this assignment, would be to verify if powerplants were operating. The easiest and quickest way to determine if they were operational would be to look at the stacks/flumes to identify smoke or vapor, or to identify changes in water temperature in the cooling ponds.

      This week's lab was mostly enjoyable for me. It was my first interaction with ERDAS. It is a tool I have heard about extensively, however, I have never had the opportunity to work with it. We utilized it to look at the differences between raster and thematic images. The easiest difference to identify between the two is the pixelization between the two. The raster feels like a bare bones, "This is what is here" type of image. The thematic/multispectral is more defined and you can identify areas more distinctly.     My struggles this week came from determining the wavelengths, frequencies, energies. I have always struggled with math formulas. You put words and numbers together and it's like I have never read before! All in all, I did enjoy this week's lab.

 This week's lab was about identifying different types of land use. Identifying features in different areas allows you to determine what the land is used for. We utilized a small section of Pascagoula, Mississippi to start identifying the different land use codes. This area was mostly residential, but there were pockets of business, services, industry, as well as transportation. I have vast experience in identifying these features from my prior experiences as a GEOINT analyst in the Air Force. I was a Collateral Damage Estimation Subject Matter Expert. In the CDE process, our main goal was to identify all structures around a target location to minimize risk to the civilian population. I became pretty good at identifying locations based on shape, size, and attributes on and around the structures.

      Module one was a simple introduction to GIS tradecraft, identifying features, as well as annotating features. I thought this was a simple and well developed introduction. I have a lot of experience when it comes to imagery analysis. I have 12 years of experience as a Geospatial Intelligence Analysis in the Air Force, so this was pretty simple. However, it was a flashback on some of my favorite things to do while I was serving. I especially liked learning how to do this in ArcGIS Pro for the first time.     The image above annotates Pensacola Beach in 1970. I identified the hotel and the beach recreation and park area. The hotel can be identified with the pool in between the symmetrical buildings with parking areas just outside the those buildings. There is also an admin building in the drive. The beach recreation area, most likely filled with a couple restaurants, possible go-cart track (covered in sand) as well as a mini golf course(also covered in sand)....

 Link to StoryMap: https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/8b0a9515344d47a1a4433178988ca529  This week was the final project for GIS5050. To be honest, I flopped with this project. I waited until the last minute and provided a sloppy product. If I could redo the project, I would not create map layouts within ArcGIS Pro, but I would have created a web map to flow with the storyboard. As for the class, I believe the class is well-organized and has a great balance. The skills we derived in each module were directly applicable to the final project and will help us retain those skills for further coursework. I have had the opportunity to practice this tradecraft for almost 13 years now, and this is the best intro course I have taken. Like I said before, I managed my time poorly and could have improved upon my skills, which doesn't give credit to this course.