If you’re on the bleeding edge and have upgraded to ArcGIS 10.1, ESRI has added functionality to the Image Analysis tool to measure lengths / heights, areas, and volumes from imagery. Use of the new tool is outlined in this blog post.
Category Archives: Publications
Manual for working with ArcGIS 10
A manual for learning to use ArcGIS 10, produced by Amy Hillier at the University of Pennsylvania, is available here. This 80+-page document covers many of the options new users should be familiar with, and includes tips on making maps, georeferencing, spatial joins, creating spatial data, and troubleshooting.
ArcGIS tips document
ESRI has created a nine page ArcGIS Desktop Tips and Shortcuts document. It lists keyboard and mouse shortcuts for many common operations, and identifies which work for versions 9 and 10 of ArcGIS (ArcMap and ArcCatalog). A shorter list is available in the ArcGIS 10 application help files. Tap F1 when ArcMap is running and search for keyboard shortcuts.
You can also use the Help files for ArcGIS 10 in the ArcGIS Resource Center. Search for keyboard shortcuts. Help for other versions of ArcMap (or other ESRI applications) can be found by going to the ArcGIS Resource Center and clicking Help. Expand the list for the application you are interested in (click the +) for help files from the older versions.
Tip: the help files from the Resource Center are the most up-to-date for all ESRI software. Sometimes updated documentation is not included with service packs and patches, but these files are kept current.
Borders and changes in technology
A history of the US-Canada border (which brings to light some realities of surveying in the 1800s) was recently posted on the NYT blog, found here. For more historical border issues (errors later pointed out using newer technology – GPS), see the Deseret news and the NOAA response.
The NOAA rebuttal is an interesting argument: even though a specific monument (the Four Corners marker that sits between Utah, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico) is at a location other than its intended coordinates, it doesn’t invalidate the boundaries between these states, nor does the meandering of the US-Canada border along the 49th parallel call into question the location of the border with our northern neighbors. The (connected) monuments, placed between 1872 and 1874, define the boundary, even if they do ‘wander’ across the parallel.
Given the tools surveyors had to work with in the 19th century, and the terrain they were crossing, the border between Minnesota and Washington is amazingly straight. It’s the development of newer tools (GPS and Google Earth, among others) that lets us discover such errors with relative ease.
On a final note, the Four Corners is a unique place in the U.S. It was even parodied in an episode of The Simpsons.
U.S. road accident casualties mapped
see http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/interactive/2011/nov/22/us-road-accident-casualties? for a map of eight years of traffic deaths, broken out by class, age, and year of fatality.
GIS – a revolution by stealth
7 billion people
The Earth’s population reached seven billion this week. Nearly 1/3 of the total live in China and India.
How do different nations compare in terms of population, life expectancy, and growth? See http://mapstories.esri.com/7billion/ for some interactive maps showing these metrics.
ESRI releases 2010 U.S. Census data
Today, ESRI released additional 2010 Census data to the public. Downloading and formatting Census data can be very time-consuming, so this resource is a real boon to users of Census data.
Additional resources and articles from ESRI can be found on their news page.
Remote sensing and GIS climate modeling to estimate forest evapotranspiration
A new post on the blog GIS and Science summarizes a paper from Hydrology and Earth Systems Science entitled “Combining Remote Sensing and GIS Climate Modelling to Estimate Daily Forest Evapotranspiration in a Mediterranean Mountain Area”. A direct link to the paper is here.
Making a meaningful map
There’s a guide from Aileen Buckley and Kenneth Field of ESRI that can be found in the latest edition of ArcUser Magazine. It’s essentially a 10-point checklist for making a better map.
View the guide as a web page here or as a PDF
More great tips are available at ESRI’s Mapping Center.