By the end of this lesson you will be able to: Define precision farming Describe basic agronomic factors used to optimize yield Identify the tools and technologies used in precision farming Explain how agronomic factors and tools are used to collect, analyze, and generate data By the end of this lesson you will be able to: A farmer must make yearly decisions on crop inputs using information that he/she has on many different agronomic factors in order to optimize yield. To make these decisions a farmer is required to have a strong background in agronomic factors and must have this data available to him. The farmer has always wanted complete information about an agricultural field but it wasn’t until the availability of GPS and GIS that a field could be divided into sub-units and massive amounts of data could be recorded and analyzed for relationships between agronomic factors and crop yields. This topic is not meant to be a substitute for an agronomy course. It is intended as a quick overview of basic agronomic factors that will be discussed throughout this course. How plants grow and develop Two basic structures of a plant are the stem and leaves (above ground) and the roots (below ground). Both develop from the seed that is planted in the ground by the grower. As the roots develop, they create a stable base for the stem and leaves and absorb water and nutrients such as nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium (among others) from the soil. These nutrients are transported up through the stem to the leaves, which use the nutrients for growth, development and seed production. Chlorophyll utilizes the nutrients, water, sunlight and carbon dioxide from the air to produce carbohydrates, which in turn are used by the plant for growth. As the plant grows, it goes through various stages of development, though not all plants follow the same stages of development. For most plants, the stages include leaf emergence and growth, stem elongation, flowering, pollination, and seed development. The amount of nutrients available to the plant determines the level of growth and amount of seed production. The level of nutrients in the plant leaves or seeds and the amount of seed yield determine its value as a food or fiber crop. Factors affecting crop production There are many factors that influence how well plants grow and develop. These factors are used by the farmer to make decisions. It is beyond the scope of this concept to list every factor that affects a crop’s production, but a basic list of types of factors is attempted. Soil factors include level of nutrients (known as soil fertility), availability of nutrients, moisture level of soil, and soil compaction. Pest factors include historical or current infestations of soil fungus, bacterial diseases, insects or weeds. Management factors include crop history, past fertilizer applications, pesticide applications, and tillage practices. Weather factors include rainfall, temperature and humidity. Climatic factors include long range weather patterns such as 1st frost, length of growing season, degree days, and ground thaw. As this partial list shows, there are many types of factors that affect crop development and yield. Farmers attempt to influence or control as many of these as possible in order to get the highest yield that is economically possible. Some factors, such as soil or pests can be somewhat controlled, while others such as climatic factors can not (though current weather conditions can be compensated for through irrigation or tiling). compaction Normal soil has particles of sand, silt and clay, water and air pores. The weight of heavy equipment compresses the soil reducing the amount of air pores. The lack of air pores reduces the water and is restrictive to plant roots, which in turn can restrict plant growth. tillage A management factor that affects compaction, soil aggregation (tilth) and erosion. Farmers may use a moldboard plow to completely turn over the soil (minimum cultivation or till) in which the topsoil is slightly disturbed and broken up. degree days The growth of a plant is dependent on the amount of heat it receives during its lifecycle. Degree days is a measure used to quantify the amount of heat available to a crop throughout a season. One degree day is accumulated for each degree (Fahrenheit or Celsius) above or below a predefined base temperature. For example, if 60° F is used as the base temperature and the mean temperature for a given day is 70° degrees F, then 10 degree days are accumulated for that day. Soil factors affecting crop production Soil factors are considered to be the most important factors in crop production, not only because of the affect they have on a crop, but also because they can be partially controlled by farmers. The first type of soil factor is soil nutrients, (such as nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium which are major nutrients; sulfur, boron, and calcium are micronutrients). Soil fertility refers to the amount and availability of these nutrients. The second type of soil factor is soil type, considered by some agronomists to be the major factor in crop management. It is actually a group of characteristics used to categorize a soil. Soils of a specific type have the same characteristics, such as slope, sand/clay/silt content, permeability, drainage and approximately 40 other characteristics. The soil type itself is not important, it is these characteristics that, if they are highly correlated with yield, are important. A third type of soil factor is those characteristics that affect the uptake and availability of nutrients. They include pH (soil acidity or alkalinity), Cation Exchange Capacity (CEC is the level of free ions that allow transfer of nutrients), organic matter (level of carbon based material in the soil) and soil conductivity. A fourth soil factor is the current field conditions. These are cumulative effects of climate, recent weather patterns and the farmer’s management practices. They include current moisture levels, soil residue, and soil compaction. These factors are important in determining yield by themselves, but there are also interrelationships between nutrients and pH or nutrients and moisture that make a true understanding of a soil’s effect on production very complex. For years, farmers and researchers have tried to quantify these relationships. Now, with the use of GIS, farmers have the analytical tools to do this. How farmers use factors to make decisions Previous concepts have reviewed how various soil and other factors affect crop production. The farmer must use his knowledge of these factors to make decisions about next year’s crop. First, farmers must gather information about a crop and conditions to predict what the crop will need. On a modern farm, there is a lot of information available. Soil types and conditions, nutrient levels, moisture patterns, and weedy areas can now be measured. Many factors are interrelated and decisions about one factor will affect others. For example, the yield of a crop is found to be low due to a lack of potassium, but the underlying cause could be a CEC preventing the uptake of potassium, or a lack of potassium in the root zone possibly due to a minimum tillage system. With a large number of acres, it is harder for the farmer to keep track of all the information that is available. A strong background in record keeping is needed to effectively store, retrieve and manipulate this information. Second, farmers must analyze the information. Usually this is done on a field by field basis. Often information is gathered from test plots on the operator’s own farm or from commercial plots. After the information has been evaluated, a decision on types and amounts of inputs (seed, fertilizer, lime, or chemical) can be made. Third, farmers must make decisions and determine the actual application of the inputs. Farmers get assistance from consultants and cooperatives on the use of crop protection chemicals, seed varieties and fertilizers. Historically, the chemical, seed variety or fertilizer was applied at the same rate across a field, based on an "average" condition of the field. Factors that drive precision farming Major factors that affect decision-making and drive the need for precision farming are field variability, the precision with which a decision is made, use as an on-farm research tool, and its environmental benefits. When a decision is made on a field basis it is being made on the assumption that there is no field variability--that the yield, nutrient or moisture levels are averages that represent the entire field. This is a false assumption since it is widely recognized that nutrients and other factors discussed here vary throughout the field. Precision farming allows us to measure this variability. The precision with which a decision is made is based on the size of equipment, the resolution that is possible with precision farming tools (GPS and GIS), and the type of decision the farmer needs to make. California vegetable growers have 40-acre plots for which they make detailed decisions compared to the 1000-acre fields of the Midwestern wheat grower. With precision farming, farmers can divide their fields into sub-units (grid cells) that are anywhere from 16.5 feet by 16.5 feet (5 x 5 meters) to 10 acres (4 hectares) in size. To decide on the size of the grid cell, the farmer considers the amount of data that will be collected, the degree of precision needed for decision making, and the variability of the field. When decisions are based on "average" field conditions, they are often made without regard to controls or equal comparisons. A side by side variety plot compares varieties, but differences in yields may actually be due to soil type. Precision farming tools have allowed a farmer to do on-farm research. What makes precision farming so important is that it allows the farmer to control different factors and to evenly compare corn yield in one year to soybean yield in the following year. An intrinsic value of precision farming is that it addresses the impact on the environment. Specific and precise placement of chemical and fertilizers and the application of decision-making to environmental concerns are important aspects of precision farming. Many farmers are very conscious of groundwater and soil loss and recognize that their practices have an impact on more than just their own land and water. Tools of precision farming: GPS, GIS and VRT For years farmers have used tillage tools, record books and even paper maps as tools. Now, the technology is here to allow them to use computers, Global Positioning Systems (GPS) and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) as tools. This topic establishes a base of knowledge about the technology as tools for collecting and analyzing data and assisting in the decision-making process. It is important to recognize that GPS and GIS are not the end result, but part of the larger process of precision farming. The tools used in precision farming include GPS, GIS, and Intelligent Devices and Implements (IDI), such as Variable Rate Technology, (VRT) as well as machinery, record-keeping and decision-making tools--the "normal" tools of farming. These tools are used in several processes, including data collection, data analysis and data modeling. Though there is not a specific "recipe" for precision farming, and not all farms are going to use the exact same tools, the concepts of their use are common to most precision farming systems. variable rate technology Variable Rate Technology is the technology that allows the rate of an input, such as fertilizer, to be changed as the application equipment is moving across a field. intelligent devices and implements (IDI) A variety of monitors, equipment and other devices that can be controlled for different levels of application or that can record information about the application. What is GPS? The Global Positioning System (GPS) is a satellite navigational system designed for use by the U.S. Department of Defense, but available to civilians around the world. The system is composed of a series of space-based satellites sending out a time-coded signal. An earth-based GPS receiver, picking up the signal from at least four of the satellites calculates the latitude (lat), longitude (long) and altitude (alt) anywhere on earth. When GPS was originally released for civilian use it was accurate to 100-to-330 feet (30-to-100 meters) 95% of the time. This large range of error was intentionally placed in the signal as a defense strategy and was called Selective Availability. Selective Availability was recently removed bringing the accuracy of a GPS fix to a range within 30 meters. Even with the increased accuracy of GPS for civilian use, a 100 foot (30 meter) range of error is not acceptable for agricultural applications. Differential Correction is an error correction method that uses a base GPS station at a known point to calculate the amount of error being transmitted by the satellites. The base station calculates an error differential, (i.e., the difference between the known position and the position calculated by the GPS) and transmits an error correction signal to other roving GPS receivers to correct the accuracy to 3.3-to-6.5 feet (1-to-2 meters) or less (in some cases less than a foot). A GPS that integrates this differential correction is known as DGPS (Differential Global Positioning System). The main parts of an agriculture GPS system are the antenna which collects the GPS signal, the receiver which calculates the Lat/Long/Alt position, the display which shows the position or spatial information, and software which controls the setup and use of the other GPS components. Another part of most agricultural GPS systems, but not actually a part of the GPS, is a datalogger that stores the location and other information about the location.

1. What basic distinction between data and information is made in the GIS planning methodology? Data is used to produce information, and information is used to make decisions. is correct! Refer to Data and information 14. During what phase of GIS planning do you review the organization’s mission and responsibilities? Strategic business plan foundation is correct! Refer to Strategic business plan foundation 2. Using GIS to assess the amount of rooftop space, open land, and specific soil types in order to measure the potential bio-productivity of an urban ecosystem is best described as what? Performing analysis is correct! Refer to Functions and analysis 3. If you are planning for an individual GIS project, the methodology of this course is not for you. False is correct! Refer to Welcome to GIS Planning Basics 19. Determining what information you want from the GIS is done early in the planning process. Why? Because most of the planning process hinges upon what information you want to get out of the GIS is correct! Refer to What to plan? 6. Senior-level management should be involved during which portion of the GIS planning process? Throughout the entire planning process is correct! Refer to Who should plan? 7. Specifically, what term does the planning process use to describe the tangible output from GIS, for example, maps, reports, tables, and charts? Information Products is correct! Refer to Information products and applications 10. When creating a detailed information product description, what must be included, among other things? The data and functions required to create the information product is correct! Refer to GIS and crime analysis 11. What are the two broad categories addressed during the conceptual design phase of GIS planning? Data and technology is correct! Refer to Conceptual design 12. Benefit-cost analysis is performed during which GIS planning phase? Implementation planning is correct! Refer to Implementation planning 13. Late in the second phase of GIS planning you will determine the system scope. What does this involve? Conducting a needs assessment, assessing the functional and data requirements of the system, and creating detailed information product descriptions is incorrect. Refer to System requirements 15. The best way to keep senior-level management involved in the GIS planning process is by: Providing them weekly status reports about the planning process is incorrect. Refer to Who should plan? 17. Why is the following definition of an application inaccurate? An application is two or more information products produced from the same software. Because the information products must also be linked by a business workflow model is correct! Refer to Information products and applications 18. If successfully implemented, your GIS should produce new data. False, it should produce new and useful information is correct! Refer to Data and information 20. Describing the information products the GIS will create is crucial to the planning process. True, because without describing the information products you cannot determine what applications the GIS will run is incorrect. Refer to Information products and applications 4. What is the generic term for operations that a GIS performs? Applications is incorrect. Refer to Functions and analysis 5. GIS planning ends with system implementation. True is incorrect. Refer to When to plan? 8. Deciding on the types of analysis required from the GIS allows you to determine what? The types of applications the GIS will be used for is incorrect. Refer to Functions and analysis 9. Senior-level management is sometimes hesitant to implement new technology. What technique will you learn in this course to relax their hesitancy and show the usefulness of GIS to your organization? How to create Information product descriptions is incorrect. Refer to Why plan? 16. With the click of a button your GIS will print a map of your current display and automatically add a scale bar, north arrow, legend, and title to the layout page. Is this an application? Yes, because the software is automating a common task is incorrect. Refer to Information products and applications 1. Using GIS to assess the amount of rooftop space, open land, and specific soil types in order to measure the potential bio-productivity of an urban ecosystem is best described as what? Performing analysis is correct! Refer to Functions and analysis 18. Describing the information products the GIS will create is crucial to the planning process. True, because much of the planning process centers around the requirements associated with the desired information products is correct! Refer to Information products and applications 19. If successfully implemented, your GIS should produce new data. False, it should produce new and useful information is correct! Refer to Data and information 20. Why is the following definition of an application inaccurate? An application is two or more information products produced from the same software. Because the information products must also be linked by a business workflow model is correct! Refer to Information products and applications 2. If you are planning for an individual GIS project, the methodology of this course is not for you. False is correct! Refer to Welcome to GIS Planning Basics 3. Senior-level management should be involved during which portion of the GIS planning process? Throughout the entire planning process is correct! Refer to Who should plan? 4. What basic distinction between data and information is made in the GIS planning methodology? Data is used to produce information, and information is used to make decisions. is correct! Refer to Data and information 5. GIS planning ends with system implementation. False is correct! Refer to When to plan? 6. Specifically, what term does the planning process use to describe the tangible output from GIS, for example, maps, reports, tables, and charts? Information Products is correct! Refer to Information products and applications 7. Deciding on the types of analysis required from the GIS allows you to determine what? The functions the GIS software must be able to perform is correct! Refer to Functions and analysis 8. What is the generic term for operations that a GIS performs? Functions is correct! Refer to Functions and analysis 9. Benefit-cost analysis is performed during which GIS planning phase? Implementation planning is correct! Refer to Implementation planning 10. When creating a detailed information product description, what must be included, among other things? The data and functions required to create the information product is correct! Refer to GIS and crime analysis 11. Late in the second phase of GIS planning you will determine the system scope. What does this involve? Performing a needs assessment for your organization, creating detailed information product descriptions, and assessing the total amount of data the system will use is incorrect. Refer to System requirements 12. Senior-level management is sometimes hesitant to implement new technology. What technique will you learn in this course to relax their hesitancy and show the usefulness of GIS to your organization? How to create a needs assessment is incorrect. Refer to Why plan? 13. What are the two broad categories addressed during the conceptual design phase of GIS planning? Data and technology is correct! Refer to Conceptual design 14. During what phase of GIS planning do you review the organization’s mission and responsibilities? Strategic business plan foundation is correct! Refer to Strategic business plan foundation 15. Describing the information products the GIS will create is crucial to the planning process. True, because much of the planning process centers around the requirements associated with the desired information products is correct! Refer to Information products and applications 16. The best way to keep senior-level management involved in the GIS planning process is by: Educating them about and keeping them informed during the GIS planning process is correct! Refer to Who should plan? 17. Determining what information you want from the GIS is done early in the planning process. Why? Because most of the planning process hinges upon what information you want to get out of the GIS is correct! Refer to What to plan? 18. Why is the following definition of an application inaccurate? An application is two or more information products produced from the same software. Because the information products must also be linked by a business workflow model is correct! Refer to Information products and applications 3. What basic distinction between data and information is made in the GIS planning methodology? Data is used to produce information, and information is used to make decisions. is correct! Refer to Data and information 4. Deciding on the types of analysis required from the GIS allows you to determine what? The functions the GIS software must be able to perform is correct! Refer to Functions and analysis 5. Senior-level management should be involved during which portion of the GIS planning process? Throughout the entire planning process is correct! Refer to Who should plan? 6. If you are planning for an individual GIS project, the methodology of this course is not for you. False is correct! Refer to Welcome to GIS Planning Basics 7. Using GIS to assess the amount of rooftop space, open land, and specific soil types in order to measure the potential bio-productivity of an urban ecosystem is best described as what? Performing analysis is correct! Refer to Functions and analysis 10. What are the two broad categories addressed during the conceptual design phase of GIS planning? Data and technology is correct! Refer to Conceptual design 11. When creating a detailed information product description, what must be included, among other things? The data and functions required to create the information product is correct! Refer to GIS and crime analysis 8. GIS planning ends with system implementation. False is correct! Refer to When to plan? 13. During what phase of GIS planning do you review the organization’s mission and responsibilities? Strategic business plan foundation is correct! Refer to Strategic business plan foundation 16. Determining what information you want from the GIS is done early in the planning process. Why? Because most of the planning process hinges upon what information you want to get out of the GIS is correct! Refer to What to plan? 14. Benefit-cost analysis is performed during which GIS planning phase? Implementation planning is correct! Refer to Implementation planning 9. Senior-level management is sometimes hesitant to implement new technology. What technique will you learn in this course to relax their hesitancy and show the usefulness of GIS to your organization? How to write an RFP is incorrect. Refer to Why plan? 12. Late in the second phase of GIS planning you will determine the system scope. What does this involve? Creating a conceptual design for technology, and performing a needs assessment is incorrect. Refer to System requirements 15. With the click of a button your GIS will print a map of your current display and automatically add a scale bar, north arrow, legend, and title to the layout page. Is this an application? Yes, because it combines several functions to perform the task is incorrect. Refer to Information products and applications 17. The best way to keep senior-level management involved in the GIS planning process is by: Making sure they have time to participate by working the planning process around their schedule is incorrect. Refer to Who should plan? 1. What is the generic term for operations that a GIS performs? Tasks is incorrect. Refer to Functions and analysis 19. With the click of a button your GIS will print a map of your current display and automatically add a scale bar, north arrow, legend, and title to the layout page. Is this an application? No, because only one software program is used is incorrect. Refer to Information products and applications 20. If successfully implemented, your GIS should produce new data. False, it should produce new and useful information is correct! Refer to Data and information 2. Specifically, what term does the planning process use to describe the tangible output from GIS, for example, maps, reports, tables, and charts? Information Output is incorrect. Refer to Information products and applications

1. Expressions can be entered into the Map Calculator in the following format: Avenue request format is correct! Refer to Introduction to map algebra 19. Which of the following represents a traditional type of spatial analysis? All of the above is correct! Refer to Spatial analysis 9. Which of the following is a false statement regarding a cost surface? Cell values can be positive or negative. is correct! Refer to Contours and surfaces 20. Use ArcView Spatial Analyst and the L2_ex03.apr project file to answer this question. Which land use type has the greatest area in the flood zone? Agriculture is correct! Refer to Introduction to raster overlay, Step 4 13. In grid themes, cells are assigned a solid fill color based on their value or zone. True is correct! Refer to Displaying grids 2. What are isolines? Lines on a map connecting points of equal value is correct! Refer to Contours and surfaces 7. Which of the following is an example of a continuous surface? All of the above is correct! Refer to What is a surface? 8. The basic spatial unit of a grid theme is: Cell is correct! 5. The main component of the ArcView Spatial Analyst is the: Grid theme is correct! Refer to ArcView Spatial Analyst basics 3. What is a breakline? A sharp and sudden change in the value of surface data is correct! Refer to What is a surface? 1. What is a breakline? A sharp and sudden change in the value of surface data is correct! Refer to What is a surface? 2. Two geographic features that share a boundary are called: Adjacent is correct! Refer to Vector data model 3. Points, polygons, lines, and surfaces are all represented in a grid in the same format. True is correct! Refer to What is a grid theme? 4. A series of symbols that begins with one color, ends with another, and distributes intervening colors of the spectrum proportionately among the symbols in between is known as a: Color spectrum is incorrect. Refer to Visualization 6. Floating point grids have a value attribute table (VAT). False is correct! Refer to What is a grid theme? 7. Surface grids can be created only from Digital Elevation models (DEMs). True is incorrect. Refer to Contours and surfaces 8. The basic spatial unit of a grid theme is: Cell is correct! Refer to What is a grid theme? 9. Which of the following is a false statement regarding a cost surface? Cell values can be positive or negative. is correct! Refer to Contours and surfaces 10. A cell's color brightness can be varied with values from another grid theme. True is correct! Refer to Visualization 11. In grid themes, cells are assigned a solid fill color based on their value or zone. True is correct! Refer to Displaying grids 12. Which of the following is an example of discrete data? Land use type is correct! Refer to What is a surface? 13. All cells in a grid have eight neighbors. False is correct! Refer to Raster data model 14. You can change the colors used to symbolize a grid theme in the Project Properties dialog. True is incorrect. Refer to Displaying grids 15. Use ArcView Spatial Analyst and the L2_ex03.apr project file to answer this question. Which land use type has the greatest area in the flood zone? Agriculture is correct! Refer to Introduction to raster overlay, Step 4 16. Surfaces can only be represented by models built from regularly spaced sample points. False is correct! Refer to What is a surface? 17. Grid themes represent points, lines, polygons, and surfaces uniformly. True is correct! Refer to Introduction to grid themes 18. Proximity analysis sets the value of each cell to either 1 or 0. False is correct! Refer to Proximity analysis 20. Map Query creates a new grid theme containing values of 1 and 2. False is correct! Refer to Querying grids 19. Which of the following represents a traditional type of spatial analysis? Linear analysis is incorrect. Refer to Spatial analysis 5. You cannot edit a shapefile theme. True is incorrect. Refer to Vector data model 4. Floating point grids have a value attribute table (VAT). True is incorrect. Refer to What is a grid theme? 6. Only two grid themes can be compared in the Query Builder at any given time. True is incorrect. Refer to Querying grids Refer to What is a grid theme? 10. Which of the following classification methods can be used on floating point grid themes? All of the above is incorrect. Refer to Classification 11. A visualization tool used to calculate the effects of illumination on a surface is known as: Surfaceshading is incorrect. Refer to Visualization 12. All cells in a grid have eight neighbors. True is incorrect. Refer to Raster data model 14. Which of the following is an example of discrete data? All of the above is incorrect. Refer to What is a surface? 15. Grid themes represent points, lines, polygons, and surfaces uniformly. False is incorrect. Refer to Introduction to grid themes 16. Proximity analysis sets the value of each cell to either 1 or 0. True is incorrect. Refer to Proximity analysis 17. Map Query creates a new grid theme containing values of 1 and 2. True is incorrect. Refer to Querying grids 18. Surfaces can only be represented by models built from regularly spaced sample points. True is incorrect. Refer to What is a surface?

1. Which of the below would you use to rename a theme? Theme Properties dialog is correct! Refer to Exercise 1, Step 5 5. The working directory changes each time you browse your file system. False is correct! Refer to Exercise 1, Step 3 1. One valuable use of GIS as it applies to wildlife management is analyzing distribution patterns. True is correct! Refer to Module introduction 7. You can add points, lines, and polygons to a theme using the Draw tool. True is correct! Refer to Exercise 4, Step 10 8. Before you can calculate a field's values, what must you do? Place the table in edit mode is correct! Refer to Exercise 2, Step 2 9. A view's distance units setting depends on its map units setting. False is correct! Refer to Exercise 4, Step 2 10. The working directory is where ArcView writes files generated by operations you perform. True is correct! Refer to Exercise 1, Step 3 11. When you create a dot density map, each time the theme redraws the dots may change position. True is correct! Refer to Exercise 2, Step 9 13. What is theme-on-theme selection used for? To select the features of one theme using the features of another theme is correct! Refer to Exercise 3, Step 6 14. Any field from a theme's attribute table can be used to label features in the view. True is correct! Refer to Exercise 2, Step 9 15. Using the data from Exercise 4, when was the most recent sighting of bear number 128? 06/08/1990 is correct! Hint: Use the Query Builder to select [Bearnum] = 128 from the Grizzly Sightings 1985-1993 theme. Examine the Date field for the selected records. 16. Using the data from Exercise 2, what is the total acreage of the Custer Forest in Montana? 1,205,887 is correct! Hint: Use the Query Builder to select [Forest] = "CUSTER" from the National Forests - MT theme. Open the theme table and perform Statistics on the Acres field. 17. You can use Auto-label to label two themes at once as long as both themes are active in the view. False is correct! Refer to Exercise 2, Step 9 18. When creating a dot density map, if you calculate a theme's optimized dot density at one scale, then resize your view to be much smaller, how will the dot pattern appear? Denser is correct! Refer to Exercise 2, Step 9 19. Using the data from Exercise 2, which grizzly recovery zone has the densest population of bears? Northern Continental Divide is correct! Refer to Exercise 2, Step 8 6. Before you can calculate a field's values, what must you do? Place the table in edit mode is correct! Refer to Exercise 2, Step 2 7. By default, when a theme is added to a view, its name is the same as the data source it is based on. True is correct! Refer to Exercise 1, Step 5 12. Joining tables allows you to symbolize, label, query, and analyze the features in a theme using the data from your source table. True is correct! Refer to Exercise 2, Step 7 14. When you create a dot density map, each time the theme redraws the dots may change position. True is correct! Refer to Exercise 2, Step 9 15. Using the data from Exercise 4, when was the most recent sighting of bear number 128? 06/08/1990 is correct! Hint: Use the Query Builder to select [Bearnum] = 128 from the Grizzly Sightings 1985-1993 theme. Examine the Date field for the selected records. 17. Using the data from Exercise 2, which grizzly recovery zone has the densest population of bears? Northern Continental Divide is correct! Refer to Exercise 2, Step 8 18. Using the data from Exercise 2, what is the mean (average) number of acres in the recovery zones? 3,412,404.05 is incorrect. Refer to Exercise 2, Step 5 16. You can use Auto-label to label two themes at once as long as both themes are active in the view. True is incorrect. Refer to Exercise 2, Step 9 2. When you start editing a table, what happens to indicate that the table is in edit mode? Records in the table become selected. is incorrect. Refer to Exercise 2, Step 2 3. A good analysis is not necessarily compromised by inconsistencies in the data. True is incorrect. Refer to Lesson summary 4. The working directory changes each time you browse your file system. True is incorrect. Refer to Exercise 1, Step 3 5. Which of the below would you use to change the pattern of a symbol? Color Palette is incorrect. Refer to Exercise 1, Step 6 9. A view's distance units setting depends on its map units setting. True is incorrect. Refer to Exercise 4, Step 2 10. How do you change the text, alignment, and spacing of a label in the view? Select the label and drag it with the mouse. is incorrect. Refer to Exercise 1, Step 8 20. Using the data from Exercise 2, what is the mean (average) number of acres per bear? 2,912,225.80 is incorrect. Refer to Exercise 2, Step 8 2. Which of the below would you use to change the pattern of a symbol? Foreground colors is incorrect. Refer to Exercise 1, Step 6 6. A shapefile cannot be renamed once it is added to a view as a theme. True is incorrect. Refer to Exercise 1, Step 5 12. When you create a new theme in a view, it displays with a dashed line around its check box. What does this indicate? The theme is active. is incorrect. Refer to Exercise 4, Step 10 20. Using the data from Exercise 2, what is the mean (average) number of acres in the recovery zones? 5,937,000.04 is incorrect. Refer to Exercise 2, Step 5

Summary Geographic data link place, time, and attributes and geographic representation in digital form is becoming increasingly important in our society. Digital representations have enormous advantages over paper maps, written reports, or spoken accounts, but there are problems that must be resolved when representing geographic data digitally. Special attention must be given to the questions of what to represent and how to represent that which is being represented. How to represent geographic data There are two fundamental ways of conceptualizing geographic data: discrete objects and fields. Discrete objects represent the world as objects with well defined boundaries in empty space. Fields represent the world as a continuous surface, in which a variable is defined at every possible position. There are also two fundamental ways of digitally representing geographic data: raster and vector. In principle, both can be used for fields and discrete objects, but in practice there is a strong association between raster and fields and between vector and discrete objects. In a raster representation, geographic space is divided into cells that have properties associated with them. In a vector representation, features are captured as points, which are connected to form lines or boundaries around areas. What geographic data to represent The world is infinitely complex, but based on Tobler's Law, you can use representational assumptions (such as inverse distance weighting) to infer information about the gaps between sample observations. Tobler's Law states that everything is related to everything else, but near things are more related than distant things. Spatial autocorrelation is the formal property that measures the degree to which near and distant things are related. Spatial autocorrelation can be positive (features similar in location are also similar in attributes), negative (features that are similar in location are dissimilar in attributes), or neutral (attributes are independent of location). When selecting sample points, it is important to select representative samples. Classical statistics emphasizes the importance of random samples, but random samples don't always work well with geographic data. Many times you may need to use a systematic or application-specific sampling scheme. Spatial interpolation is the process of filling in the gaps between sample points. By a strict interpretation of Tobler's Law, distance has a smooth and continuous effect on the values of attributes between sample observations. Although this is appropriate for many applications, there are circumstances in which variation is not smooth and continuous. In these circumstances, other interpolation methods may be necessary.

By the end of this lesson you will be able to: explain the importance of GIS planning answer the who, what, where, when, and why of planning describe the terminology central to the planning methodology list and describe the GIS planning phases Why plan? Good planning is the key to GIS success. Good planning leads to success, and poor planning leads to failure—it doesn’t take a genius to realize this. But time after time, projects fail due to poor planning. Whether you are working with an existing system or creating a GIS from scratch, you must integrate sufficient planning into the development of your GIS; if you don’t, chances are you’ll end up with a system that doesn’t meet your expectations. Good planning will make your GIS cost-effective. GIS implementation and maintenance is expensive. It quickly becomes a money pit if it’s not creating useful products for the organization. On the flip side, a GIS can promptly show its worth if it streamlines existing workflow and creates useful information products. You will learn how to evaluate the benefits of the system in relation to its cost—that way you can easily justify the price of GIS planning and implementation to senior-level management. Knowing what you want to get out of GIS is fundamental to the planning process. Too often, organizations decide they want a GIS, then go out and put a lot of money into technology, data, and personnel without knowing exactly what they need from the system. That’s like packing for a vacation without knowing where you’re going. You pack everything from your closet, just in case, but as it turns out those sweaters aren’t very useful in Fiji, and you didn’t bring any sunscreen. You’ve wasted time and energy and now you’re ill-prepared because you didn’t pack appropriately. When you try to develop a GIS without knowing your needs first, you not only waste time and energy, but a good deal of money as well. You’re left with the wrong technology and unmet needs. You must determine your organization’s GIS needs from the outset of the planning process. GIS has many potential applications, so it’s important to establish your specific requirements and objectives from the beginning. That way, you will avoid the chaos that results from trying to create a system with no priorities or ends in mind. The methodology of this course shows you how to describe and prioritize the GIS needs of your organization and plan a system that meets these requirements. Concept Who should plan? GIS planning is guided by a lead planner and also involves senior-level management and the users. The GIS manager takes the lead role in the planning process, but this person should never go it alone. The GIS manager must keep the senior-level decision makers advised and informed throughout the process. Failure to let them know what is going on can lead to insufficient funding or a complete lack of support. Lose support from management and you can expect failure. The best way to keep the decision makers on board is to keep them educated about and involved in the planning process. The people who will use the system must also be directly involved in the planning process. If they aren't, you’ll end up with a system that doesn’t meet the needs of its users What to plan? All components of a GIS must be planned for, including information products, software, hardware, procedures, data, and people. The major components you must plan for include: Information products – What output is desired from the GIS? Will this take the form of maps, reports, graphs, or some combination of these? What data are needed to create this information? Early in the planning process, you will determine and clearly describe the information products your organization wants from the GIS. Once the information products are defined, you can start answering the planning questions related to the other GIS components. Software – What software functionality is required to create the desired information products? What does it need to do? On what type of operating system will the software run? Is customized software necessary? How often are software upgrades usually required? Hardware – What is the current hardware situation of your organization and will it support the computational demands of a GIS? What type of network infrastructure is required by your organization? How do you ensure your hardware stays cost-effective in the constantly evolving world of technology? Procedures – How will the GIS merge with and/or replace the existing organizational procedures used to create information products? How do you handle legacy systems or models? Data – What data must go into the GIS to create the desired information products? Where will you get it, or how will you create it? What data format will your organization use? What level of accuracy and map scales are required? People – What are the staffing requirements? Will you need to hire new people to fulfill these requirements? What type of training is required to keep the GIS users and staff in pace with the technology? How will you maintain cost-effectiveness in relation to personnel? Most of what to plan for hinges on what information you want to get out of the GIS. The questions related to software, hardware, procedures, data, and people can only be answered after you establish your information product requirements When to plan? GIS planning is a continual process. The planning process continues even after the GIS is fully installed. GIS can quickly become visible within an organization. Soon after implementation, people will see how useful the system is and identify other things they want out of it. When this happens, you must revisit portions of the planning process to take care of these needs. There is a specific order to GIS planning. There is an order as to how things get done during GIS planning. For example, you cannot determine what data you need until you know what information you want to get out of the system. Moving to step two before completing step one simply won’t work. This course will teach you the order in which to plan, and, just as important, how to keep track of and manage the timing of your work. Where to plan? GIS planning is not done from the confines of your office. GIS planning is an opportunity to leave your office and meet other people in your organization. During this time, you will meet the people who need information from the system and learn how they will use this information to assist them in their duties. It is also a chance for you to learn more about the fundamental business operations that occur within your organization every day. By the time you get done with the planning process, you will have significant insight into the daily business of your organization. For example, suppose you are planning a municipal GIS. When the initial planning process is over, you will have traveled throughout the city offices and met with a range of people from sewer maintenance crews to city managers. During this time you will have learned how the city operates at many levels. With this understanding of the daily business workflow, you will be a valuable asset to your organization along with the new GIS. But for this to happen, you must get out of your chair to meet with and listen to the folks in your organization www.nationalgeographic.com/education/index.html What is the first step of the GIS planning process? Develop a proposal for the planning project Review the organization’s strategic business plan Correct. Hire a consultant Conduct a needs assessment Solution: To begin the planning process, you will review the strategic business plan of your organization. This involves answering the following questions about your organization: What does your organization do? What are its mandates? What information does it use in order to carry out its responsibilities? What better information is needed? www.lagea.lsu.edu/lessons.shtml#A TRIP AROUND THE VIRTUAL www.nationalgeographic.com/education/teacher_community/alliances_static.html www.webmapping.org/onlinedemos.htmlwww.nationalgeographic.com/resources/ngo/education/alliancelinks.htmlwww.x-word.com/screens.html Hiring a consultant to do the planning for you is highly recommended in order to make the planning process more efficient. True False Correct. Solution: Although a GIS consultant can certainly be hired to assist and advise in the planning process, it is not necessary, and the consultant should never do the actual planning for you. Consultants are paid to help for a period of time and then they leave. They can walk away from the system-you can't. If you let them do the planning for you, chances are greater that you will have an insufficient understanding of the GIS you are left to manage. Question You should create a project proposal for the GIS planning process. True Correct. False Solution: Because a GIS project is not usually a short-term effort, the planning alone can be an important undertaking, requiring a significant amount of time and money. You should prepare for this task by creating a formal proposal for the planning itself that is presented to senior-level management in order to secure their support for the process and the resources that are required to plan effectively. At what point during the planning process do you involve senior-level management? At the beginning of the process At the middle of the process Throughout the entire process Correct. At the end of the process Solution: From the beginning to the end of the process, involving senior-level management is crucial to successful GIS planning. To secure and keep planning resources throughout the process you must keep senior-level management advised and informed during each phase. What is the final step of the GIS planning process? Present a final planning report to senior management Correct. Conduct a pilot project Benchmark testing Perform benefit-cost analysis Solution: The final step is to give a final report to senior management that sums up the results of the planning process. Once this is done, and they approve, implementation can occur with their support. The planning procedure you should follow depends on the type of GIS you are implementing. True False Correct. Solution: The fundamentals of the planning methodology that you will learn in this course are the same regardless of the make, type, or size of your GIS. The conceptual design phase of GIS planning consists of what two components? Data and technology Correct. Hardware and software Technology and personnel Software and technology Solution: The conceptual system design phase of GIS planning is broken into two parts: the design for data, and the design for technology. The former deals with the specific issues related to the GIS database; the latter deals with the GIS hardware, software, and communication infrastructure. System implementation begins with a pilot project. True False Correct. Solution: For many systems, starting implementation with a pilot project is not necessary. A pilot project may be useful, but it is not always an effective tool, and in certain cases can become a hindrance to full system implementation. When you initially identify the name of a potential information product that the GIS will create, what other key detail needs to be recorded? The number of times a month the information is created. A description of the workflow used to create the information. Which department(s) make use of this information. The name of the user requesting the information. Correct. Solution: When initially identified, you must record the name of the person who requested the GIS information product. If you have their name you can go back to the person and help them create an information product description. It also prevents you from trying to imagine by yourself what information products data is what goes into the GIS; information is what comes out. To demonstrate the relationship between data and information, suppose you own a flower store that uses GIS to route the stops of your delivery vehicle. Each day you receive anywhere from 20 to 30 delivery orders. Three times a day your driver goes out to make a set of deliveries. Before leaving, all of the delivery addresses for that run are entered into the GIS and geocoded onto a street database. Based on the street network and the address locations, the GIS creates a map showing the most efficient route the driver should take, along with driving directions from stop to stop. In this case, the data are the streets and addresses and the information is the route map and the driving directions. While mulling over the distinction between data and information, keep this point in mind—data is used to produce information, and information is used to make decisions. In the flower shop example, the street and address data were used to create the route information. Using the route information, the delivery person can make better decisions related to the sequence of stops along the delivery run. It’s the one-two punch of GIS: data to information, information to decision. This course uses this distinction between data and information because the information you want out of your system establishes your data requirements. Functions and analysis Functions are the operations that a GIS can perform. For example, most systems contain functions for digitizing, querying, and overlaying spatial data. During this course we are going to talk about many GIS functions. If you are not familiar with them, you can look them up in the Lexicon of GIS Functions. What is the Lexicon of GIS Functions? Analysis is the process used to explore the details of some phenomenon using the system's functions. For example, using GIS, you could analyze the best location for a new clothing store by looking at competitor locations, demographics, access to arterial streets, and tax rates. Areas that meet the set criteria for clothing store locations would be selected as possible sites. The types of functions your GIS system can perform determine the possibilities for analysis. Before you can consider which functions your system requires, you must know what types of analysis your organization will use GIS for (likewise, before you can consider analysis capabilities, you have to know what information the system will produce.) Digitize Digitizing is the process of converting point and line data from source documents into a machine-readable format. Manual methods employing a digitizing table or tablet are widely used but, increasingly, these methods are being replaced by scanning, automatic line following methods, and transferring data files already in digital format. Many users, however, still use a manual digitizing technique for small amounts of data or when other methods are too expensive. Digitized data often needs editing or reformatting. Geographic data link place, time, and attributes. Place Place, or location, is essential in a geographic information system. Locations are the basis for many of the benefits of geographic information systems: the ability to map, to link different kinds of information because they refer to the same place, and to measure distances and areas. Without locations, data are said to be "aspatial" and have no value at all within a geographic information system. Time Time is an optional element. Many aspects of the earth's surface are slow to change and can be thought of as unchanging. Height above sea level changes slowly because of erosion and movements of the earth's crust, but these processes operate on scales of hundreds or thousands of years, and for most applications (except geophysics) we can safely omit time from the representation of elevation. On the other hand, atmospheric temperature changes daily, and dramatic changes sometimes occur in minutes with the passage of a cold front or thunderstorm, so time is distinctly important. Attributes Attributes refer to descriptive information. The range of attributes in geographic information is vast. Some attributes are physical or environmental in nature (e.g., atmospheric temperature or elevation), while others are social or economic (e.g., population or income). There are five main types of attributes: nominal, ordinal, interval, ratio, and cyclic. Types of attributes The simplest type of attribute, termed nominal, is one that identifies or distinguishes one entity from another. Place names are a good example, as are names of houses and the numbers on a driver's license—each serves only to distinguish the incidence of one particular class of entities from all other classes. Nominal attributes include numbers, letters, and even colors. Even though a nominal attribute can be numeric, it makes no sense to apply arithmetic operations to it: adding two nominal attributes, such as two driver license numbers, is meaningless. Attributes are ordinal if their values have a logical order. For example, Canada rates its agricultural land by classes of soil quality, with Class 1 being the best, Class 2 not so good, etc. Adding such numbers makes little sense, because 2 is not twice as much of anything as 1. Ordinal attributes follow a clearly defined sequence, even if the spacing between successive attributes is unknown or unknowable. Averaging makes no sense either, but the median (the value such that half of the attributes are higher-ranked and half are lower-ranked) is an effective substitute for the average for ordinal data as it gives a useful central value. Attributes are interval if they measure the magnitude of difference between one value and another, but not between a value and a true zero point. The scale of Celsius temperature is interval, because 30 and 20 have the same magnitude of difference as 20 and 10. Addition and subtraction are valid between interval values, but multiplication and division are not. Attributes are ratio if they measure the magnitude of difference between a value and a true zero point. Weight is ratio, because 100kg is a measure of difference from 0kg. Addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division are all valid between ratio values. For example, it makes sense to say that a person of 100kg is twice as heavy as a person of 50kg. Celsius temperature is only interval, because 20 is not twice as hot as 10 (and this argument applies to all scales that are based on similarly arbitrary zero points, including longitude). In GIS it is sometimes necessary to deal with data that fall into categories beyond these four, and Chrisman (1997) has written about the special problems of classifying GIS data. For example, data can be directional or cyclic, including flow direction on a map, compass direction, and longitude. The special problem here is that the number following 359 is 0. Averaging two directions such as 359 and 1 yields 180, so the average of two directions close to north can appear to be south. Because they occur sometimes in GIS, and few designers of GIS software have made special arrangements for them, it is important to be alert to the possibility. This course and the companion book focus on one particular form of representation that is becoming increasingly important in our society—representation in digital form. Digital representations of geography hold enormous advantages over previous types, such as paper maps, written reports from explorers, and spoken accounts. We can use the same digital devices—PCs, the Internet, or mass storage devices—to handle every type of information, independent of its meaning. Digital data are easy to copy, they can be transmitted at very high speeds, they can be stored at high density in very small spaces, and they are less subject to the physical deterioration that affects paper and other physical media. Perhaps more importantly, data in digital form are easy to transform, process, and analyze. Geographic information systems allow us to do things with digital representations that we were never able to do with paper maps: to measure accurately and quickly, to overlay and combine, and to change scale, zoom, and pan without respect to map sheet boundaries. Digital representations open up a vast array of processing possibilities that will be explored in more depth later in the course. Any application of GIS requires clear attention to questions of what should be represented and how it should be represented. There are many possible ways of representing the geographic world in digital form, none of which is perfect and none of which is ideal for all applications. One of the most important criteria for the usefulness of a representation is its accuracy. Because the geographic world is almost infinitely complex, there are always choices to be made in building any representation. You must decide what to include and what to leave out. In principle, if we collected enough atoms of geographic information, we would be able to build a complete representation of the world. The idea of integrating all available geographic information into a single digital representation underlies the idea of "Digital Earth," a concept that originated with former U.S. Vice President Al Gore in his book Earth in the Balance (Gore 1992), and which was explored further in one of his speeches. Al Gore was vice president of the United States from 1993 through January, 2001. In a speech written for presentation at the January 1998 opening of the California Science Museum in Los Angeles, Vice President Gore discussed his vision for a "Digital Earth": Imagine, for example, a young child going to a Digital Earth exhibit at a local museum. After donning a head-mounted display, she sees Earth as it appears from space. Using a data glove, she zooms in, using higher and higher levels of resolution, to see continents, then regions, countries, cities, and finally individual houses, trees, and other natural and man-made objects. Having found an area of the planet she is interested in exploring, she takes the equivalent of a magic carpet ride through a 3-D visualization of the terrain. Of course, terrain is only one of the numerous kinds of data with which she can interact. Using the system's voice recognition capabilities, she is able to request information on land cover, distribution of plant and animal species, real-time weather, roads, political boundaries, and population. She can also visualize the environmental information that she and other students all over the world have collected as part of the GLOBE project. This information can be seamlessly fused with the digital map or terrain data. She can get more information on many of the objects she sees by using her data glove to click on a hyperlink. To prepare for her family's vacation to Yellowstone National Park, for example, she plans the perfect hike to the geysers, bison, and bighorn sheep that she has just read about. In fact, she can follow the trail visually from start to finish before she ever leaves the museum in her hometown. She is not limited to moving through space, but can also travel through time. After taking a virtual field trip to Paris to visit the Louvre, she moves backward in time to learn about French history, perusing digitized maps overlaid on the surface of the Digital Earth, newsreel footage, oral history, newspapers, and other primary sources. She sends some of this information to her personal e-mail address to study later. The time-line, which stretches off in the distance, can be set for days, years, centuries, or even geological epochs, for those occasions when she wants to learn more about dinosaurs. Fascinating though this scenario is, it glosses over the fundamental problem, which is that the world is in effect infinitely complex. The closer we look at the world, the more detail it reveals. The shoreline of Maine in the United States appears complex on a map, but even more complex when examined in greater detail. To characterize the world completely, we would have to specify the location of every person, every blade of grass, every grain of sand—in fact, every subatomic particle, clearly an impossible task. So, in practice, any representation must be partial—that is, it must limit the level of detail provided, ignore change through time, ignore certain attributes, or simplify in some other way. One very common way of limiting detail is by throwing away or ignoring information that applies only to small areas; in other words, not looking too closely. The image you see on a computer screen is composed of a million or so basic elements or pixels and, if the whole earth were displayed at once, each pixel would cover an area roughly 10km on a side, or about 100 sq km. At this level of detail, the island of Manhattan occupies roughly 10 pixels and virtually everything on it except Central Park is a blur. We would say that such an image has a spatial resolution of about 10km and know that anything much less than 10km across is virtually invisible. Another strategy for limiting detail is to observe that many properties remain constant over large areas. For example, in describing the elevation of the earth's surface, we could take advantage of the fact that roughly two-thirds of the surface is covered by water, with its surface at sea level. Of the 5 million pieces of information needed to describe elevation at 10km resolution, approximately 3.4 million will be recorded as zero, a colossal waste. If we could find an efficient way of identifying the area covered by water, we would need only 1.6 million real pieces of information. Humans have found many ingenious ways of describing the earth's surface. This ingenuity is itself the source of a substantial problem for GIS: there are many ways of representing the earth's surface and users of GIS thus face difficult and at times confusing choices. The two fundamental ways of representing geography are discrete objects and fields. Discrete objects The discrete object view represents the world as objects with well defined boundaries in empty space. Just as the desktop may be littered with books, pencils, or computers, the geographic world is littered with cars, houses, forest stands, and other discrete objects. One characteristic of the discrete object view is that objects can be counted. For example, there may be 49 houses in a particular subdivision. Geographic objects are identified by their dimensionality. Objects that occupy area, including lakes, parcels, and forest stands, are termed two-dimensional and generally referred to as areas or polygons. Other objects that are linear, including roads, railways, and rivers, are termed one-dimensional and generally referred to as lines. Objects that are single locations, including individual animals and buildings, are termed zero-dimensional and generally referred to as points. The discrete object view leads to a powerful way of representing geographic information about objects. Consider a class of objects of the same dimensionality—for example, all the grizzly bears in the Kenai Peninsula of Alaska. We would naturally think of these objects as points. We might want to know the sex of each bear and its date of birth if our interests were in monitoring the bear population. We might also have a collar on each bear that transmitted the bear's location at regular intervals. All of this information could be expressed in a table, like the one shown below, with each row corresponding to a different discrete object and each column to an attribute of the object. To reinforce a point made earlier, this is a very efficient way of capturing raw geographic information on grizzly bears. Fields While we might think of terrain as composed of discrete mountain peaks, valleys, ridges, slopes, etc., and think of listing them in tables and counting them, in practice there are unresolvable problems of definition for all of these objects. Instead, it is much more useful to think of terrain as a continuous surface in which elevation can be defined rigorously at every point. Such continuous surfaces form the basis of the other common view of geographic phenomena, known as the field view. The field view represents the real world as a finite number of variables, each one defined at every possible position. Discrete objects are distinguished by their dimensions and naturally fall into categories of points, lines, and areas. Fields, on the other hand, can be distinguished by what varies and how smoothly. A field of elevation, for example, varies much more smoothly in a landscape that has been worn down by glaciation or flattened by blowing sand than one recently created by cooling lava. Cliffs are places in fields where elevation changes suddenly rather than smoothly. Fields can also be created from classifications of land, into categories of land use or soil type. Such fields change suddenly at the boundaries between different classes. Other types of fields can be defined by continuous variation along lines rather than across space. Traffic density, for example, can be defined everywhere on a road network and flow volume can be defined everywhere on a river. Below is an example of field-like phenomena. Concept Rasters and vectors Fields and discrete objects define two different conceptual views of geographic phenomena, but neither solves every problem of digital representation. A field view potentially contains an infinite amount of information if it defines the value of the variable at every point, since there is an infinite number of points in any defined geographic area. Discrete objects can also require an infinite amount of information for full description—for example, a coastline contains an infinite amount of information if it is mapped in infinite detail. Thus fields and objects are no more than conceptualizations, or ways in which we think about geographic phenomena. They are not designed to deal with the limitations of computers. Two methods of representing geographic data in digital form are raster and vector. In principle, both can be used to code fields and discrete objects, but in practice there is a strong association between raster and fields and between vector and discrete objects. Raster data In a raster representation, geographic space is divided into a rectangular array of cells, each of which is usually square. All geographic variation is expressed by assigning properties or attributes to these cells. The cells are sometimes called pixels (short for picture elements). One common form of raster data comes from remote sensing satellites. Data from the Landsat satellite, for example, which is commonly used in GIS applications, come in cells that are 30 meters on a side on the ground, or approximately one-tenth of a hectare in area. Remote sensing is a complex topic and further reading is available in Chapter 9 of the companion book, texts such as Ryerson's (1998), and at Web sites such as NASA's (www.nasa.gov). When information is represented in raster form, all detail about variation within cells is lost and instead the cell is given a single value. Suppose we wanted to represent the map of the counties of Texas as a raster. Each cell would be given a single value to identify a county, and we would have to decide on a rule to apply when a cell falls in more than one county. Often, the rule is a simple plurality: the county with the largest share of the cell's area gets the cell. Sometimes the rule is based on the central point of the cell, and the county at that point is assigned to the whole cell. The graphic below shows these two rules in operation. The largest share rule is almost always preferred, but the central point rule is sometimes used in the interests of faster computing. Refer to Chapter 3 in the companion book for common examples of raster data. Vector data In a vector representation, all lines are captured as points connected by straight lines (some GIS software allows points to be connected by curves rather than straight lines, but in most cases curves have to be approximated by straight lines). An area is captured as a series of points or vertices connected by straight lines as shown below. The straight edges between vertices explain why areas in vector representation are often called polygons, and the terms polygon and area are often used interchangeably. Lines are captured in the same way, and the term "polyline" has been coined to describe a curved line represented by a series of straight segments connecting vertices. To capture an area object in vector form, only the locations of the points that form the vertices of a polygon must be captured. This seems simple and also much more efficient than a raster representation, which would require us to list all the cells that form the area. To create a precise approximation to an area in raster, it would be necessary to resort to using very small cells and the number of cells would rise proportionately. But things are not quite as simple as they seem. The apparent precision of vector is often unreasonable, because many geographic phenomena simply cannot be located with high accuracy. So, although raster data may look less attractive, they may be more honest to the inherent quality of the data. Also, various methods exist for compressing raster data that can greatly reduce the capacity needed to store a given data set. The choice between raster and vector is often complex, as shown in the table below. Concept Rasters and vectors Fields and discrete objects define two different conceptual views of geographic phenomena, but neither solves every problem of digital representation. A field view potentially contains an infinite amount of information if it defines the value of the variable at every point, since there is an infinite number of points in any defined geographic area. Discrete objects can also require an infinite amount of information for full description—for example, a coastline contains an infinite amount of information if it is mapped in infinite detail. Thus fields and objects are no more than conceptualizations, or ways in which we think about geographic phenomena. They are not designed to deal with the limitations of computers. Two methods of representing geographic data in digital form are raster and vector. In principle, both can be used to code fields and discrete objects, but in practice there is a strong association between raster and fields and between vector and discrete objects. Raster data In a raster representation, geographic space is divided into a rectangular array of cells, each of which is usually square. All geographic variation is expressed by assigning properties or attributes to these cells. The cells are sometimes called pixels (short for picture elements). One common form of raster data comes from remote sensing satellites. Data from the Landsat satellite, for example, which is commonly used in GIS applications, come in cells that are 30 meters on a side on the ground, or approximately one-tenth of a hectare in area. Remote sensing is a complex topic and further reading is available in Chapter 9 of the companion book, texts such as Ryerson's (1998), and at Web sites such as NASA's (www.nasa.gov). When information is represented in raster form, all detail about variation within cells is lost and instead the cell is given a single value. Suppose we wanted to represent the map of the counties of Texas as a raster. Each cell would be given a single value to identify a county, and we would have to decide on a rule to apply when a cell falls in more than one county. Often, the rule is a simple plurality: the county with the largest share of the cell's area gets the cell. Sometimes the rule is based on the central point of the cell, and the county at that point is assigned to the whole cell. The graphic below shows these two rules in operation. The largest share rule is almost always preferred, but the central point rule is sometimes used in the interests of faster computing. Refer to Chapter 3 in the companion book for common examples of raster data. Vector data In a vector representation, all lines are captured as points connected by straight lines (some GIS software allows points to be connected by curves rather than straight lines, but in most cases curves have to be approximated by straight lines). An area is captured as a series of points or vertices connected by straight lines as shown below. The straight edges between vertices explain why areas in vector representation are often called polygons, and the terms polygon and area are often used interchangeably. Lines are captured in the same way, and the term "polyline" has been coined to describe a curved line represented by a series of straight segments connecting vertices. To capture an area object in vector form, only the locations of the points that form the vertices of a polygon must be captured. This seems simple and also much more efficient than a raster representation, which would require us to list all the cells that form the area. To create a precise approximation to an area in raster, it would be necessary to resort to using very small cells and the number of cells would rise proportionately. But things are not quite as simple as they seem. The apparent precision of vector is often unreasonable, because many geographic phenomena simply cannot be located with high accuracy. So, although raster data may look less attractive, they may be more honest to the inherent quality of the data. Also, various methods exist for compressing raster data that can greatly reduce the capacity needed to store a given data set. The choice between raster and vector is often complex, as shown in the table below. Which attribute is nominal? Name Correct. Time of day Finish order Elapsed time Which attribute is ordinal? Name Time of day Finish order Correct. Elapsed time Which attribute is interval? Name Time of day Correct. Finish order Elapsed time Which attribute is ratio? Name Time of day Finish order Elapsed time Correct. The First Law of Geography, formulated by Waldo Tobler, states that everything is related to everything else, but near things are more related than distant things. Spatial autocorrelation is the formal property that measures the degree to which near and distant things are related. Positive spatial autocorrelation occurs when features that are similar in location are also similar in attributes. Negative spatial autocorrelation occurs when features that are close together in space are dissimilar in attributes. Zero autocorrelation occurs when attributes are independent of location. The quest to represent the complex real world requires us to abstract, or sample, events and occurrences. For many purposes, geographic data are only as good as the sampling scheme used to create them. You can think of sampling as the process of selecting points from a continuous field or, if the field has been digitized as a mosaic of objects, of selecting some of these objects while discarding others. Classical statistics often emphasizes the importance of randomness in sound sample design. The purest form, simple random sampling, is well known: each element is assigned a unique number, and a specified number of elements are selected using a random number generator. In the case of a spatial sample from continuous space, x,y coordinates might be randomly sampled within the range of x and y values. Because each randomly selected element has a known probability of selection, it is possible to make robust and defensible generalizations to the population from which the sample was drawn. Randomly drawn elements, however, can be disproportionately concentrated among some parts of the population at the expense of others, particularly when the sample size is small relative to the population from which it was drawn. For example, a survey of household incomes might happen to select households with unusually low incomes. Spatially systematic (or stratified) sampling attempts to deal with this problem and ensure greater evenness of coverage across the sample area by identifying a regular sampling interval, which results in a regularly spaced grid. Spatially systematic sampling also has weaknesses. Imagine that the grid pattern above were to coincide with the grid plan of a city. In a survey of urban land use, it is extremely unlikely that the attributes of street intersections would be representative of land uses elsewhere in the block structure. A number of hybrid sample designs have been devised to get around the vulnerability of spatially systematic and random sampling. These include stratified random sampling to ensure evenness of coverage and periodic random changes in the grid width of a spatially systematic sample, perhaps subject to minimum spacing intervals. Simple random or spatially systematic sampling presumes that each observation is of equal importance in building a representation. Many times this is not the case, and it may be more efficient and necessary to devise application-specific sample designs to improve quality of representation, while minimizing resource costs of collecting data. Spatial interpolation is the process of filling in the gaps between sample observations. It requires an understanding of the attenuating effect of distance between sample observations and selection of an appropriate interpolation function. This concept focuses on principles that are used to describe effects over distance. For an introduction to some of the mathematical functions used to describe these effects, refer to Section 5.5 in the companion book. A later module in the course will discuss the process of interpolation from a technical perspective. A literal interpretation of Tobler's Law implies a continuous, smooth, attenuating effect of distance upon the attribute values of adjacent or contiguous spatial objects, or incremental variation in attribute values as we traverse a field. For example, the polluting effect of a chemical or oil spill decreases in a predictable (and in still waters, uniform) fashion with distance from the source of the spill, aircraft noise pollution decreases with distance from the flight path, and the number of visits to a national park might decrease at a regular rate with distance from the park. The literal interpretation of Tobler's Law may be appropriate for many applications. The notion of smooth and continuous variation underpins many of the representational traditions in cartography, such as the creation of maps showing contour lines. Contour lines connect points with equal elevation above sea level. Our understanding of spatial structure, however, often tells us that variation is not smooth and continuous. In such circumstances, the true nature of geographic data might be better represented using other interpolation methods and functions. Thus, we need to adapt our thinking to accommodate discontinuities in physical (e.g., fault lines or cliffs) and socioeconomic distributions (e.g., shifts in household income distributions on crossing the U.S. - Mexico border).

1. Senior-level management should be involved during which portion of the GIS planning process? Throughout the entire planning process is correct! Refer to Who should plan? 2. Using GIS to assess the amount of rooftop space, open land, and specific soil types in order to measure the potential bio-productivity of an urban ecosystem is best described as what? Performing analysis is correct! Refer to Functions and analysis 3. What is the generic term for operations that a GIS performs? Analysis is incorrect. Refer to Functions and analysis 4. What basic distinction between data and information is made in the GIS planning methodology? Data is used to produce information, and information is used to make decisions. is correct! Refer to Data and information 5. GIS planning ends with system implementation. False is correct! Refer to When to plan? 6. Deciding on the types of analysis required from the GIS allows you to determine what? What information products the system will create is incorrect. Refer to Functions and analysis 7. Specifically, what term does the planning process use to describe the tangible output from GIS, for example, maps, reports, tables, and charts? Information Products is correct! Refer to Information products and applications 8. If you are planning for an individual GIS project, the methodology of this course is not for you. False is correct! Refer to Welcome to GIS Planning Basics 9. Senior-level management is sometimes hesitant to implement new technology. What technique will you learn in this course to relax their hesitancy and show the usefulness of GIS to your organization? How to create Information product descriptions is incorrect. Refer to Why plan? 10. Benefit-cost analysis is performed during which GIS planning phase? Strategic business Plan foundation is incorrect. Refer to Implementation planning 11. When creating a detailed information product description, what must be included, among other things? The data and functions required to create the information product is correct! Refer to GIS and crime analysis 12. What are the two broad categories addressed during the conceptual design phase of GIS planning? Data and technology is correct! Refer to Conceptual design 13. Late in the second phase of GIS planning you will determine the system scope. What does this involve? Performing a needs assessment for your organization, creating detailed information product descriptions, and assessing the total amount of data the system will use is incorrect. Refer to System requirements 14. During what phase of GIS planning do you review the organization’s mission and responsibilities? Strategic business plan foundation is correct! Refer to Strategic business plan foundation 15. Why is the following definition of an application inaccurate? An application is two or more information products produced from the same software. Because the information products must also be linked by a business workflow model is correct! Refer to Information products and applications 16. Determining what information you want from the GIS is done early in the planning process. Why? Because most of the planning process hinges upon what information you want to get out of the GIS is correct! Refer to What to plan? 17. The best way to keep senior-level management involved in the GIS planning process is by: Providing them weekly status reports about the planning process is incorrect. Refer to Who should plan? 18. With the click of a button your GIS will print a map of your current display and automatically add a scale bar, north arrow, legend, and title to the layout page. Is this an application? Yes, because it combines several functions to perform the task is incorrect. Refer to Information products and applications 19. Describing the information products the GIS will create is crucial to the planning process. True, because much of the planning process centers around the requirements associated with the desired information products is correct! Refer to Information products and applications 20. If successfully implemented, your GIS should produce new data. False, it should produce new and useful information is correct! Refer to Data and information

1. Senior-level management should be involved during which portion of the GIS planning process? Throughout the entire planning process is correct! Refer to Who should plan? 2. Using GIS to assess the amount of rooftop space, open land, and specific soil types in order to measure the potential bio-productivity of an urban ecosystem is best described as what? Performing analysis is correct! Refer to Functions and analysis 3. What is the generic term for operations that a GIS performs? Analysis is incorrect. Refer to Functions and analysis 4. What basic distinction between data and information is made in the GIS planning methodology? Data is used to produce information, and information is used to make decisions. is correct! Refer to Data and information 5. GIS planning ends with system implementation. False is correct! Refer to When to plan? 6. Deciding on the types of analysis required from the GIS allows you to determine what? What information products the system will create is incorrect. Refer to Functions and analysis 7. Specifically, what term does the planning process use to describe the tangible output from GIS, for example, maps, reports, tables, and charts? Information Products is correct! Refer to Information products and applications 8. If you are planning for an individual GIS project, the methodology of this course is not for you. False is correct! Refer to Welcome to GIS Planning Basics 9. Senior-level management is sometimes hesitant to implement new technology. What technique will you learn in this course to relax their hesitancy and show the usefulness of GIS to your organization? How to create Information product descriptions is incorrect. Refer to Why plan? 10. Benefit-cost analysis is performed during which GIS planning phase? Strategic business Plan foundation is incorrect. Refer to Implementation planning 11. When creating a detailed information product description, what must be included, among other things? The data and functions required to create the information product is correct! Refer to GIS and crime analysis 12. What are the two broad categories addressed during the conceptual design phase of GIS planning? Data and technology is correct! Refer to Conceptual design 13. Late in the second phase of GIS planning you will determine the system scope. What does this involve? Performing a needs assessment for your organization, creating detailed information product descriptions, and assessing the total amount of data the system will use is incorrect. Refer to System requirements 14. During what phase of GIS planning do you review the organization’s mission and responsibilities? Strategic business plan foundation is correct! Refer to Strategic business plan foundation 15. Why is the following definition of an application inaccurate? An application is two or more information products produced from the same software. Because the information products must also be linked by a business workflow model is correct! Refer to Information products and applications 16. Determining what information you want from the GIS is done early in the planning process. Why? Because most of the planning process hinges upon what information you want to get out of the GIS is correct! Refer to What to plan? 17. The best way to keep senior-level management involved in the GIS planning process is by: Providing them weekly status reports about the planning process is incorrect. Refer to Who should plan? 18. With the click of a button your GIS will print a map of your current display and automatically add a scale bar, north arrow, legend, and title to the layout page. Is this an application? Yes, because it combines several functions to perform the task is incorrect. Refer to Information products and applications 19. Describing the information products the GIS will create is crucial to the planning process. True, because much of the planning process centers around the requirements associated with the desired information products is correct! Refer to Information products and applications 20. If successfully implemented, your GIS should produce new data. False, it should produce new and useful information is correct! Refer to Data and information

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 6. In ArcMap, open Redlands.mxd in your PSEArcGIS\basicsgis\Lesson01 folder. Use the Select By Attributes dialog to select all streets whose CLASS = 3. How many records are selected? 203 is correct! Refer to Use ArcGIS to explore geographic data, Step 8 7. In ArcMap, open Redlands.mxd in your PSEArcGIS\basicsgis\Lesson01 folder. What is the map tip for the donut shop located furthest to the east on the map? Winchell's Donut House is incorrect. Refer to Use ArcGIS to explore geographic data, Step 6 9. In ArcMap, open Redlands.mxd in your PSEArcGIS\basicsgis\Lesson01 folder). What is the class description of New York Street? Major street is incorrect. Refer to Use ArcGIS to explore geographic data, Step 6 7. Your PSEArcGIS\basicsgis\Lesson02 folder contains a geodatabase named National. Using ArcCatalog, determine which of the following coordinates describes the western bounding coordinate for the Counties feature class. -180.000000 is incorrect. Refer to Explore ArcMap and ArcCatalog Hint: Use the Metadata tab. 10. Your PSEArcGIS\basicsgis\Lesson02 folder contains a table in the National geodatabase called state_names. Using ArcCatalog, explore state_names. What is the data type of the STATE_FIPS field? String is incorrect. Refer to Explore ArcMap and ArcCatalog Hint: Use the Metadata tab. 9. In ArcMap, open Redlands.mxd in your PSEArcGIS\basicsgis\Lesson01 folder. What is the land use abbreviation for the parcel on which ESRI is located? TNS is incorrect. Refer to Use ArcGIS to explore geographic data, Step 4 10. Your PSEArcGIS\basicsgis\Lesson02 folder contains a table in the National geodatabase called state_names. Using ArcCatalog, explore state_names. What is the data type of the STATE_FIPS field? Double is incorrect. Refer to Explore ArcMap and ArcCatalog Hint: Use the Metadata tab. 11. What kind of analysis is used to integrate soils data with slope, vegetation and tax assessment data? Overlay analysis is correct! Refer to Analyzing data 12. What kind of analysis is used to determine whether an apartment building is within 1 mile of an earthquake fault? Proximity analysis is correct! Refer to Analyzing data 13. In ArcMap, open Redlands.mxd in your PSEArcGIS\basicsgis\Lesson01 folder. What is the land use abbreviation for the parcel located furthest east on the map? VAC is correct! Refer to Use ArcGIS to explore geographic data, Step 4 14. Using ArcCatalog, navigate to your PSEArcGIS\basicsgis\Lesson02 folder. In the Rhode_Island workspace, there is a coverage named zip, with a point feature class. The table for the point feature class contains all the columns listed below, except one. Which one? CODE is correct! Refer to Explore ArcMap and ArcCatalog 15. Based on your work in the project exercise "Use ArcGIS to explore aquaculture in Zambia," how many road segments are in the new, clipped layer? 12 is incorrect. Refer to Use ArcGIS to explore aquaculture in Zambia, Step 12 16. Based on your work in the project exercise "Use ArcGIS to explore aquaculture in Zambia," how many populated place features have no name? 349 is incorrect. Refer to Use ArcGIS to explore aquaculture in Zambia, Step 6 17. Based on your work in the project exercise "Use ArcGIS to explore aquaculture in Zambia," which field name is set for the map tips in the soils layer? SOILS_ID is incorrect. Refer to Use ArcGIS to explore aquaculture in Zambia, Step 4 18. Based on your work in the project exercise "Use ArcGIS to explore aquaculture in Zambia," how many populated places are within areas that have the Alfisols soil type? 18 is incorrect. Refer to Use ArcGIS to explore aquaculture in Zambia, Step 7 20. Based on your work in the project exercise "Use ArcGIS to explore aquaculture in Zambia," how many countries had less than a 2000 (kcal/day) DES in the years 1996 to 1998? 8 is correct! Refer to Use ArcGIS to explore aquaculture in Zambia, Step 3 11. Which ArcMap tool would you use to click on a building and see its square footage? Select is incorrect. Refer to Querying data 6. When you want to show discrete boundaries of features, you should use the raster data model to store geographic data. True is incorrect. Refer to Storing data 13. In ArcMap, open Redlands.mxd in your PSEArcGIS\basicsgis\Lesson01 folder. What is the land use abbreviation for the parcel located furthest east on the map? RES is incorrect. Refer to Use ArcGIS to explore geographic data, Step 4 5. All of the following are options for customizing ArcMap and ArcCatalog, except one. Which one? Adding new macros and commands is incorrect. Refer to Customizing ArcCatalog and ArcMap 5. Under the Metadata tab in ArcCatalog there are three additional tabs. Which of the below is not one of them? Description is incorrect. Refer to ArcCatalog 19. Based on your work in the project exercise "Use ArcGIS to explore aquaculture in Zambia," how many road segments are in the new, clipped layer? 71 is incorrect. Refer to Use ArcGIS to explore aquaculture in Zambia, Step 12 8. Using ArcCatalog, navigate to your PSEArcGIS\basicsgis\Lesson02 folder. In the Rhode_Island workspace, there is a coverage named zip, with a point feature class. The table for the point feature class contains all the columns listed below, except one. Which one? STATE is incorrect. Refer to Explore ArcMap and ArcCatalog 10. Your PSEArcGIS\basicsgis\Lesson02 folder contains a geodatabase named National. Using ArcCatalog, determine which of the following coordinates describes the western bounding coordinate for the Counties feature class. -71.368211 is incorrect. Refer to Explore ArcMap and ArcCatalog Hint: Use the Metadata tab. 1. There are several ways to preview data in ArcCatalog. Which of the following is not an ArcCatalog preview method? Thumbnail is incorrect. Refer to ArcCatalog 3. With ArcView you can do all of the following tasks, except one. Which one? Create and manage annotation is incorrect. Refer to ArcView 9. Your PSEArcGIS\basicsgis\Lesson02 folder contains a geodatabase named National. Using ArcCatalog, determine which of the following coordinates describes the western bounding coordinate for the Counties feature class. -21.073394 is incorrect. Refer to Explore ArcMap and ArcCatalog Hint: Use the Metadata tab. 3. Under the Metadata tab in ArcCatalog there are three additional tabs. Which of the below is not one of them? Spatial is incorrect. Refer to ArcCatalog 10. Using ArcCatalog, navigate to your PSEArcGIS\basicsgis\Lesson02 folder. In the Rhode_Island workspace, there is a coverage named zip, with a point feature class. The table for the point feature class contains all the columns listed below, except one. Which one? PONAME is incorrect. Refer to Explore ArcMap and ArcCatalog 7. What is the most important component of a GIS? Data is incorrect. Refer to Components of a GIS 8. Which of the following best describes the types of functions for which you would use ArcMap? Data management, viewing and editing metadata is incorrect. Refer to ArcMap 2. Under the Metadata tab in ArcCatalog there are three additional tabs. Which of the below is not one of them? Attributes is incorrect. Refer to ArcCatalog