Lab 3: My map & Neogragrap

View Interesting Places I Visited in 2012 in a larger map

2012, the last year, was quite unique to me. First I finally had a lot of time to travel to different places that I had been dreaming about for a long time like Taiwan and Thailand. Also, in the autumn I came to LA alone to attend my university.  I used Google map to record some impressive places I visited last year. I put some pictures I took in the map to show these places better. I also found some interesting videos on Youtube and inserted them in the map. Don't forget to click the URL in Taipei 101 mall, this website will bring you a lot of fun. What's more, I used polygons to mark my neighborhood and my high school - both mean a lot to me. I used the lines to tell the sequence of my travel as well.

About Neogeography:

Unlike traditional GIS, neogeography enables amateur computer users to take part in the map making. It lets professional software go into every one's computer, and lets people who were previously blocked by technical barriers better understand what GIS is. Take Google maps as an example, even an amateur like I who knows only a little about GIS can still create my own map without difficulty. However, there are also problems of neogeography. The biggest issue is the reliability of the maps. Sometimes people may hold different opinions about one place and provide different information about the same place which can lead to confusion. What's more, as unprofessional map makers, ordinary computer users may make some mistakes in map making, and then cause additional problems to those use these maps. When maps made through neogeography cause problems, who should take the responsibilities can also be a big trouble.

Although neogeography is not as accurate as traditional GIS, we should admit that it is quite useful in the contemporary society. Making maps are like writing blogs which can show our experience and personality, which is really cool and attractive to many people. Neogeography makes it mach easier for ordinary people to get, to share and to process geography information, enabling more and more people to learn how to use geographic and spacial thinking to help them live better. It also makes GIS more popular among the people, encouraging people to discover ways of using geography information, and create more opportunities for the development of GIS. However, the wide spread of the concept "neogeography" may cause the misreading of GIS, because the highly visible content of neogeography may make people ignore some essential features of GIS like geographic modeling and spacial analysis.

Lab 2: Map Exercise

1. What is the name of the quadrangle?
Beverly Hills Quadrangle

2. What are the names of the adjacent quadrangles?
Canoga Park, Van Nuys, Burbank, Topanga, Hollywood, Venice, Inglewood

3. When was the quadrangle first created?
1966

4. What datum was used to create your map?
North American Datum of 1927 (NAD 27)
North American Datum of 1983 (NAD 83)

5. What is the scale of the map?
1:24,000

6. At the above scale, answer the following:
a) 5 centimeters on the map is equivalent to how many meters on the ground?
(5 cm*24000)/(100 cm/1 m)=1200 meters


b) 5 inches on the map is equivalent to how many miles on the ground?
(5 inch*24000)/(63360 inch/1 mile)=1.89 miles


c) one mile on the ground is equivalent to how many inches on the map?
1 mile*(63360 inch/1 mile)/24000=2.64 inches


d) three kilometers on the ground is equivalent to how many centimeters on the map?
3km*(1000000 cm/1 km)/24000=12.5 cm

7. What is the contour interval on your map?
20 feet

8. What are the approximate geographic coordinates in both degrees/minutes/seconds and decimal degrees of:
a) the Public Affairs Building;
34° 04' 30" N, 118° 26' 30" W
34.0750° N, 118.4417° W

b) the tip of Santa Monica pier;
34°00' 30" N, 118° 30' 00" W
34.0083° N, 118.5000° W

c) the Upper Franklin Canyon Reservoir;
34° 07' 00" N, 118° 24' 30" W
34.1167° N, 118.4083° W

9. What is the approximate elevation in both feet and meters of:
a) Greystone Mansion (in Greystone Park);
560 feet 170.7 m


b) Woodlawn Cemetery;
140 feet 42.7 m


c) Crestwood Hills Park;
680 feet 207.3 m

10. What is the UTM zone of the map?
UTM zone 11

11. What are the UTM coordinates for the lower left corner of your map?
3763000 N, 361500 E

12. How many square meters are contained within each cell (square) of the UTM gridlines?
1,000,000 m^2

13. Obtain elevation measurements, from west to east along the UTM northing 3771000, where the eastings of the UTM grid intersect the northing. Create an elevation profile using these measurements in Excel (hint: create a line chart). Figure out how to label the elevation values to the two measurements on campus. Insert your elevation profile as a graphic in your blog.


UCLA is between UTM easting 366000 - 367000

14. What is the magnetic declination of the map?
14°  East

15. In which direction does water flow in the intermittent stream between the 405 freeway and Stone Canyon Reservoir?
From North to South

16. Crop out (i.e., cut and paste) UCLA from the map and include it as a graphic on your blog.

Lab 1: Maps are beautiful!!!

Map 1(http://www.chinahighlights.com/ningbo/map.htm)

I got this map from Chinahighlights.com which is a very famous website providing China travel guides to foreigners. This map shows clusters of famous sightseeing spots in my hometown, in Xikou area. Xikou has very beautiful natural views as well as elegant southern-China style architectures. One thing really good about this map is that it portrays the outlooks of every spot in a succinct way. It simply but precisely draws the main characters of the attractions, including the outlook of the architectures and the main shape of the pool, the waterfall and the cliff. So you can easily recognize where you are when you get to every attraction.I think this map was quite useful for foreigners because they can just recognize the tourist spots by their outlook instead of the confusing Chinese names.





Map 2 (http://www.denverpost.com/food/ci_10096804)

This map is from an article introducing Chinese cuisines on Denverpost.com. China, as we know, has a wide area and different kinds of cultures. For example, cuisines in China vary from geographic positions. From the map, we can see that the dishes in the north, south, west and eastern China are quite different. Take the east part where I come from as an example. Dishes with bamboo shoots are quite common in east China. However, you will not see them in the restaurants in north or west China because these areas are not even suitable for bamboos to grow. When we cook, we use soy sauce a lot, which is also a special tradition. This map is actually quite brief, the real diversity of Chinese cuisines is much more complex. However, we can still learn something from the map and the drawing style of this map is quite cute and interesting.





Map 3 (http://www.waterencyclopedia.com/Mi-Oc/Mid-Ocean-Ridges.html#b)

I got this map of ocean floor topography from waterencyclopedia.com. As we can see, ocean ridges are in dark blue and deep trenches are in the lightest blue. From the perspective of earth science, the map shows that lithospheric plates move apart and form oceanic ridges. At the same time, upwelling of asthenosphere injects magma forming oceanic ridges and new oceanic crust. This ocean floor topography map clearly exhibits that mid ocean ridges are parallel to coastlines, which serves as a major convincing evidence to plate tectonic theory. This map attracts me so much because of its beautiful outlook as well as its significant scientific meanings. I actually used this picture as my lock screen wallpaper for a long time.