Project Completed for: GIS Explorations | Taught Fall 2016
As a GIS Instructor, I developed labs, midterms, and final exams. This particular map was the key for the final map practical I created for my students in the Fall 2016.
In this scenario I created, my students were GIS Analysts for Ann Arbor’s Natural Area Preservation department. The City of Ann Arbor was working to remove invasive tree species and needed their help identifying priority trees for removal. Priority trees have the following characteristics:
1. Are invasive species
2. Are in a park or within 30 feet of a park (to keep natural areas as natural as possible and to account for seed dispersal)
3. Are in “Good” condition (it is less of a priority to remove dead trees).
To create the map, I provided four shapefiles from the Ann Arbor Data Portal:
1. Parks in Ann Arbor (polygon layer)
2. Tree Locations in Ann Arbor (point layer)
3. Ann Arbor City Boundary (polygon layer)
4. Roads in Ann Arbor (line layer)
I also created a .csv file with the common and scientific names of four invasive tree species in Ann Arbor.
My steps for creating this exam key map image in ArcMap 10.4 were super fun and I think you'll enjoy the exercise!:
The Ann Arbor parks layer had some parks outside of the Ann Arbor boundary, so I first clipped the parks layer to the city boundary.
The parks layer was also a single part layer with multiple rows in the Attribute Table for the same park. So, I made the parks layer into a multipart layer byDissolving by the park name.
To determine which trees in Ann Arbor were invasive, I first Joined the .csv file I created with the Ann Arbor Trees layer. Then I Selected by Attributes the trees identified as invasive species andExported Data.
To identify invasive trees that are within 30 feet of a park, I created a Bufferaround the parks layer and Selected by Location trees in my newly created invasive species layer that intersected the buffer. I created a new layer of those selected trees.
To find priority trees, I Selected by Attribute trees in this newest layer where their Condition is described as "Good" in the Attribute Table.
I recorded the number of attributes in each layer at each step so I could calculate the percentages shown in the yellow circles.
