Blog 5- University of Belize GPS Collection

In this session of GIS our lecturer divided the class into groups of four to collect the GPS coordinates of three trees, a road and a building within the University of Belize, Belmopan Campus. The three trees are: Bamboo Palm, Neem Tree and Hug Plum. The road is the one at the southern entrance of the university and the building is the security booth located in that entrance. The GPS coordinates were saved and given to the lecturer, MR. Cano, for him to convert them to into a shape file for us to use in arc map. To begin this map shape files were needs to be created specifically for the trees, the road and building as point, polyline and polygon respectively. Additionally each shape file (Trees, Road, and Building) had additional data; the trees had height and species, road had condition and building had area. This was done by accessing the properties for each shape file. Thereafter an editing session was started to display the information; since each shape file had specific input information (Points, Polyline and Polygon) it can be easily done. The trees shape file was selected and points were then chosen from the editing tab to add three specific points for the trees. The same was done for the road but using polyline to connect the tree different GPS point to display the road with lines. Then the building was done with polygon by connecting the four GPS points of the building to form a polygon. The editing session was then ended. A topographic map was added with the “add data” option. To finalize the map a title, north arrow, scale, legend and an extent map was added.  

Activity 6: Data search and collection

In this exercise we created a map by applying all the knowledge gained from the previous maps that were created. All the basic but essential parts of a map were added such as: Title, North Arrow, Scale and Author. In addition a reference box was added to give credit to the organizations from where the datasets were obtained. An essential part of map cartography is acquiring GIS data; the theme and scale of a dataset has to be considered when locating GIS data. For this map the dataset was obtained from the Biodiversity and Environment Resource Data System of Belize. The datasets where Rivers, Roads, Settlements and protected Areas of Belize. Another important aspect of Arc map is that datasets available are often found in a larger spatial extent than desired. All the features obtained from BERDS are of the entire country of Belize; the clip function in arc map is a helpful tool that project specific features in polygons required (Cayo District). The clip tool creates a new shapefile file for the output, which needs to be saved. The inputs are Settlements, Roads, Rivers, Protected areas and the output is the Cayo District. After all the features are clipped individually to Cayo District Arc map will display only Cayo District with all the features that are found with in Cayo. To finalize the map a personal touch was added to the title, north arrow and color of the map. A color ramp for the different protected areas was also added so that the legend can clearly show the identity of each of the specific protected areas.