Marshall Kirchner's UWF GIS Blog

The final assignment of this course covered a multitude of important topics, mostly involving spatial data, its integrity, and how it may be manipulated to cater to differing narratives. Working through the assignment showed me how big of an impact scale can have on vector data. As seen in the images below, scale is directly related to resolution in that smaller scales have much higher resolutions. In other terms, the more one zooms out, the more generalized features will become. Thus, it is important to use the smaller scales when possible to show features accurately.  Comparing Flowlines at Varying Resolutions Comparing Waterbodies at Varying Resolutions Another important topic covered in this lab was gerrymandering. This is a term that is unfortunately very problematic for the United States, in that it often affects election results and so on. It essentially consists of lawmakers redrawing districts to tailor to their desires. The way in which one draws a district will inevitable im

In this week's laboratory module, I utilized a multitude of interpolation techniques to display water quality metrics within the Tampa Bay. Interpolation is used to connect known data points and fill in gaps that would otherwise contain no specific data. Whilst it is a useful method in creating meaningful maps, it is a technique that comes with its own challenges. I found that each interpolation method was substantially different from the next, with each having their own unique set of pros and cons. Interpolating data can be tricky, as it often generalizes areas in incorrect ways, and this is important to account for when using certain data and techniques.  The results were very surprising, especially seeing how differently the output would appear between different methods. In order to go about deciding which interpolation technique I would use in future projects, I would run a similar setup to this lab. I believe that assessing the statistics each method provides and analyzing th