Week 3 GIS Cartography

This week we were  instructed to make 3 maps showing different elements of the same geographic area in Mexico. We worked with ArcCatalog, raster pyramids and  created dynamic text to mention a few of the required tasks. Here are the 3 reprentations of vector and raster data maps for Central Mexico.

This week also provided a better opportunity for understanding the use of color in a professional manner for best possible visual results. Chapter Ten in our text was very helpful in deciding effective and appropriate color schemes. This was probably my most favorite part of the lesson as it directly relates to my need to create visual data in my work environment. Knowing how to best represent data is essential for getting your point across to a particular audience.

I did have some difficulty with saving the various .mxd files each time when creating the next map. I had to recreate Map 2 at one point and can now see I missed an element in the Legend as I post it. I simply ran out of time to correct this but will learn from this mistake for future lessons. Although this was fairly intense because of the amount of work required, I thought the written instructions were pretty straight forward for the most part and the exercise was fun.