Lab 5: Priory Land Nav

For the first part of our land navigation lab, our task was to create a map to plot the coordinates of the waypoints we would later have to find at the Priory. The Priory is a plot of land owned by the University, and sits on 112 acres of mixed hardwood forest, pine plantation, and natural grass prairies. Before we set out to find our waypoints, we first needed to build a reference map that contained the necessary information such as topography and land cover, but was also not too cluttered with unnecessary cartographically pleasing features that would inhibit us from plotting our points with a high level of accuracy.

The data provided to us by Dr. Hupy showing the Priory was as follows:

• Aerial photos
• Two foot contour lines
• Five foot contour lines
• A DEM

To save on time, all of the data was provide to us in the form of a geodatabase, but it was up to us to find the metadata. The two foot contour lines were obtained from a University funded survey of the property when it was purchased. The five foot contour lines were derived from the 1/3 arc second DEM downloaded from the USGS. The remotely sensed seamless aerial photos were also downloaded from the USGS server.

After importing all of the data into ArcMap, we next had to re-project each layer into the UTM Zone 15 North projection. We decided to use UTM as the projection because it allowed for us to show our large scale AOI with a relatively low level of distortion. Aside from the two foot contour layer, all other layers were easily re-projected from their original geographic coordinate systems. The problem we ran into with the two foot contour layer was that it did not have a native coordinate system and was undefined. To solve this issue, I imported the coordinate system of the Point boundary created by Dr. Hupy and applied it to the two foot contour layer.

Once all layers were projected correctly, our next step in creating the reference map was to decide which data layers to include in the final map. Our group chose to have a slightly transparent aerial image with the five foot contour overlaid on top to be printed on one side, with the two foot and five foot contour line layers to be printed with a white background on the other side. Both maps will be printed in color on an 11 X 17 inch piece of paper.

We chose those specific layers because we thought it would be helpful to have an aerial to depict land cover, but then to also have an unobstructed topographic map to aid in navigation. On both sides of the map we used a grid with 50 X 50 meter pixel dimensions derived from the UTM Zone 15 North coordinate system to allow us to plot our waypoint coordinates accurately.


As seen in this map, which was printed on the opposite side, land cover to be used as a navigational aid can be interpolated and compared to the 5ft contour interval which is has been projected on top.

Shown above is the 5ft contour intervals projected on a white background. As you can see, the topography is very easily depicted due to the intentional design of an unobstructed reference map. 

 

            ***Contour interval units as shown in both maps and in text are incorrect for the 5ft contour layer. Units previously labeled as feet are actually in meters.