Lab 7 (Week 8)

The black or African-American population totaled 38.9 million and represented 13 percent of the total population. The distribution of the black is more equal in the western part, where mostly contain about 12% of the Africa- American people. On the other hand, the distribution in the eastern part is more disparate. The majority of black people live in the southeastern part, which is around 87% of them. To know the attribution of the black distribution, we need to look back to the American history. In the very beginning of the U.S. history, our ancestors first settled in the eastern area. At that time, black people were brought to America as slaves. When time past on, they have been trying to move to the other regions, but the discrimination to the black people in other places is strong; therefore, black people are forced to stay and live in the southeastern part of America. Another reason is that small companies in this region needed cheap labor to work for them in the past. For example, people were needed to collect cotton. Since black people may wish to work as workers rather than slaves, they stayed in the southeastern to continue their lives.

As this map suggests, the distribution of Asians in the United States is not so even; in other words, Asians are grouped in certain regions. The most western and the most eastern part are the areas which Asians concentrate in. According to statistics, close to 66% of Asian-Americans live in five states: California, New York, Hawaii, Texas, and Illinois. These five states are mainly located in the western and the eastern part of America. The most concentrated part that Asians live in is in California – about 46% of Asians are living in California. The second most concentrated part is New York – about 18% of Asians are staying in that area. One of the reasons why they like to group together is that they love living near Chinatowns in major cities, such as San Francisco and Los Angles, since they do not familiar with places beside Chinese people area. However, this tendency has recently changed. Asians have started to move to some suburban area for their living.

Some other race alone means those people who do not belong to white, black or African American, American Indian and Alaska Native, Asian, or Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander. Mainly, Hispanic and Latino belong to this group. We can see people that consider as some other race congregate in California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. It is because there is the United States-Mexico border in those states; Hispanic and Latino are likely to settle down there when they migrate to the US. Moreover, those four states were used to be a part of Mexico in the past, thus, many Hispanic chose to stay in there even those places became America. The other reason that they live in the southwestern is working opportunity. Since Hispanic is more willing to do labor work such as agriculture, and the conditions are very good for planting in southwestern region, they would like to work in there. As a result, there are high percentages of Hispanic and Latino in the southwestern US.

Concluding Discussion about Census Map Series

          In my map series, they show different races concentrate in different regions in the United States. Large percentage of African American is in the southeastern; Asian is in the most western and in the most eastern, and some other race is in the southwestern region of America. There are many reasons leading uneven population of all the races, such as their origins, discrimination, and working opportunity. I believe the pattern of population will not have dramatic changes as many of the people prefer to live in the neighborhoods where contains other people who have same races as them. It is because those people who are in the same races have same culture backgrounds and first languages, it is much easier for them to communicate and new immigrates can adapt to the new living environment easier.

Overall Impressions of GIS

          I think GIS is a very important system to everyone because it can provide organized information for all aspects that is about places. Using GIS to present information is especially common in education. When we read the knowledge that is about origins, distributions, locations, routes, and other that need using maps to explain, we are taking the advantages of GIS. Besides, GIS can help people very much on travelling. People who go travelling places that have never been to, we have to rely on maps for guiding us to reach destinations. However, GIS can show useful and detailed information because of its complicated system. After experienced several times of making maps with GIS program, sometimes, I felt it was quite hard to figure out how to do the steps. Therefore, I am looking forward the development of GIS program, so that users can create maps easier.

Lab 6 (Week 7)

For this assignment, I chose King County as the location. King County is located in the state of Washington. Seattle, the nation’s largest city is also in this county. Seattle is a major seaport that is surrounded by Puget Sound and Lake Washington, so its elevation is low in the west of the county. Low elevation occurs in the west of King County, but higher elevation occurs in the east. Puget Sound, Lake Washington, and Lake Sammamish are large water bodies in the west of the county. Lake Washington is the biggest lake in this county connects with several creeks and rivers. On the other hand, Mount Daniel, Cascade Range, Mount Si, and Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest are in the eastern region which leads to the existence of high elevation. Mount Daniel is the highest point in King County with almost 8,000 feet above sea level. In addition, Cascade Range is a huge range which extends from British Columbia, Canada to California, including Washington and Oregon. A very important thing is that King County is in the Pacific Ring of Fire; in other words, it is in the major earthquake zone.

Extent information:

Top: 47.7713888889

Left: -122.444444444

Right: -121.529166667

Bottom: 47.2811111111

Geographic coordinate system:

North American Datum of 1983 with UTM zone 10N

Lab 5

Map Projection
          Map projection is the method of transforming the three-dimensional sphere onto plane maps. There are many different types of map projection. Among these types, there are three kinds of projections are being used commonly – equal-area projection, equidistant projection, and conformal projection. In fact, none of the projections can transform a map perfectly; they can only preserve certain properties, such a distance, proportion, and area, accurately.
          Equal-area projection is a projection that keeps the size of areas equally with correct proportion. Albers conic, Mollweide, Lambert amimuthal equal-area, Hammer-Aitoff, Bonne, and sinusoidal are examples of equal-area projections. In this exercise, I have choosen Hammer-Aitoff and Bonne. Hammer-Aitoff projection to shows the Earth as an ellipse; Bonne projection is a pseudo-conic projection.
          Equidistant projection is a projection that maintains same distances at some reference points. An equidistant projection map is distances from the center of the projection to any other place on the map are uniformin all direction. Azimuthal equidistant, plate carree, two-point equidistant, and soldner are some examples of equidistant projections. I chose Azimuthal equidistant and plate carree projection in this assignment. Azimuthal equidistant projection uses center point of the map as a reference point; therefore, its information is accurate. The other one I chose, the plate carree projection, also called the equirectangular projection, preserves distances on all longitudes.
          Conformal projection is a projection that preserves the correct angle and shapes. In a conformal projection, parallels and meridians intersect at right angle. A conformal projection maintains equal angles at each point, including those between the intersections of arcs; therefore, the size of areas enclosed by many arcs may be greatly distorted. Conformal projections include Roussilhe, Mercator, stereographic, and Lambert conformal conic. I chose Mercator and stereographic to project my maps. Mercator projection projects the world using cylindrical map projection which means the portion that near the equator is more accurate; while stereographic projection preserves angles.
          In this assignment, we need to create six different projections in order to see the differences of distances between Washington, D.C. and Kabul, Afghanistan among different projections. After comparing all six maps, I realized that projections that are belong to same types of maps, the distances between Washington, D.C. and Kabul, Afghanistan varies. Hence, it is very important to choose the appropriate maps to present information as different kinds of map projections provide different accuracy of measurements because of distortion. The actual straight line distance between Washington, D.C. and Kabul, Afghanistan is 6923.39 miles, so the most accurate projection for measuring distance is Boone projection, which display 6730.70 miles. On the other hand, the other maps have about 3000 miles of differences to the actual distance. 

Lab 4

Experience of Using ArcMap; Potential and Pitfalls of GIS

          By finishing the assignment of lab 4, I have an opportunity to devote my first time on using ArcMap. After having an experience to use ArcMap, I realize that this program is very useful as we can put different data together for creating informative maps. Although it may take time for me to get used to this software, using computer to making maps is much more efficient than drawing maps by hands. When we use computer to create maps, it draws everything and calculates data accurately within a very short period of time. Moreover, it is easier to draw tidily and to express organized data on computer than by hands.

          However, this software is not perfect and sometimes creates error. Despite that ArcGIS 10.1 is the most recent version, I can suspect the bug in it. After I finished my mapping assignment, all the graphs and maps are in color, but in exported map, the histogram is in black and white. I had already followed all of the steps in the tutorial, but the output is different.  Another difficulty that I encountered is the differences between the tutorial version and the actual version of ArcMap that I used. I spent much time to figure out the location of some of the functions, such as the location of the tool bars.

          GIS stands for geographic information science, geographic information system, or geographic information studies; either one of these refer to a system designed to gather, manipulate, analyze, and present a large amount of geographically referenced data cohesively. In 1854, a British man, the founder of GIS, drew points on a map to show individual case; possibly, this was the earliest use of GIS. When time goes on, people have come up with many innovative ideas to improve this system in terms of graphic and features. The latest GIS system does not only let us map places; it can also map out useful information of objects. Natural resources, infrastructures, fire hydrants, water line, streams, and houses are examples of data that can be displayed in GIS. Although some paper maps can also include the above information, GIS can provide more information and show these in a three dimension which makes the readers easier to visualize the real environment. The other good thing about GIS is that it can help us to connect things that we think they have not relationship at all and make some kind of conclusion. For example, linking the population of different parties’ voters in different states can interpret the result of the election.  

          On the other hand, there are disadvantages of operating and using GIS to present a map to people. Adding vast of information in a single map is time concerning; we need to spent time to organize data before putting them into the ArcMap. Beside, GIS map is sometimes difficult for ordinary people to read. The geographically and statistically data on the map, such as elevation and precipitation, are some professional information may make the majority of people confused. That is the reason why people may choose to use some user friendly map, such as Google Map, which provide some ordinary and particle information.