Arcgis for Geoscientists

Spring 2013GEOL 596

GEOL 596

ArcGIS for geoscientists

Course description: In this course, we will learn the skills and tools of ArcGIS that are most relevant for geoscientists who are concerned primarily with making geologic maps and figures for manuscripts. Each week we will learn a new technique that will be utilized in each student’s field area. By the end of the course, students will have a geodatabase containing at least a mosaicked, projected DEM and hillshade, a layer of point data imported from an Excel spreadsheet, 1-2 line layers created in ArcMap, and additional layers as needed; students will be able to export maps and cross-sections in a variety of formats.

Meeting time: Tuesdays 1:00 – 3:00 pm*

Location: Dean 206, the GIS lab

* We have the lab scheduled from 12:00 – 3:00 pm, so there may be some weeks we meet earlier, or you may want to go into lab earlier if you’d like.

Logistics: You need to have your ID approved for key card access to this lab. You do this by getting a key card from Marilyn in the geography office (Dean 301) and taking it over to the lock shop at Jongeward, just like you obtain other keys. She has all of your names.

Course website: I will be archiving all of the materials we use in class on a course website, not in Blackboard, so that others can use the materials as well. This will be accessible from my webpage (http://www.geology.cwu.edu/facstaff/egger/).

Tentative schedule

• Working in Dean 206, resources available to you
• Basic vocabulary – getting everyone on the same page
• What you need to bring and be prepared to do for the rest of the quarter

• Building a geodatabase and adding feature datasets and feature classes
• Choosing a projection
• Anticipating your needs

• Downloading from the National Map Viewer
• Mosaicking and projecting
• Making a hillshade
• Making contours
• Pulling topographic profiles from DEMs
• Working with those files in Excel and Illustrator

• Other places to find data
• Raster datasets: DRGs and DOQQs
• Vector datasets: State boundaries, hydrology, roads
• Combination: Geologic maps

• Collecting GPS data in a way to facilitate importing
• Formatting CSV files correctly
• Symbols and labels

• Snapping
• Building polygons from lines
• Topologies
• Defining attributes by points

• Index map
• Grids and graticules
• Scale and north arrow
• Legend

• As KML files for sharing through Google Earth
• As PDFs or Illustrator files for printing
• As shapefiles, layer files, or geodatabases for sharing

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