By Nicolas R. Malloy August 15, 2025

Introduction

Every map begins with data. One of the most fundamental skills in Geographic Information Science (GIS) is digitizing: the process of creating digital vector data (points, lines, and polygons) from a source like an aerial photograph or a scanned map. It's how we translate the real world into a format a computer can understand, analyze, and display. In this activity, you will tell the geographic story of your own neighborhood, transforming a satellite image into a structured GIS dataset.

This process is more than just tracing; it's about making decisions, paying attention to detail, and carefully documenting your work so that it is valuable for future use. By the end of this lab, you will have a set of professional-quality geospatial data representing the features in your local area, created entirely by you.

Estimated time to complete this tutorial: 3 hours

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Learning Outcomes

Create and manage a project in ArcGIS Pro.
Create point, line, and polygon shapefiles.
Digitize geographic features from an aerial image.
Create and edit standards-compliant metadata for geospatial datasets.

Getting Started: Setting Up Your Workspace

By now, you should have a solid grasp of managing files in Geographic Information Systems (GIS). Typically, geospatial data is handled using a local hard drive. Once data processing is complete, a duplicate copy is often securely stored elsewhere, such as in cloud storage. For the purpose of this lab, we will use the computer desktop as the designated location for your local hard drive.

We will begin by establishing a clear folder structure to keep your data organized. On your computer desktop, create a main project folder and name it Digitizing_Neighborhood. It is important that you do not use spaces in the folder name, as this can cause problems later; you can use an underscore instead. Inside this folder, create three subfolders: original, working, and final. The original folder is for your unaltered source data, working is for data you create during the project, and final is for your outputs like maps and reports. This standard structure is designed to keep your projects organized.

A project folder named Digitizing_Neighborhood contains three subfolders: final, original, and working.

Figure 1: Establishing an organized workspace is the first step in any GIS project.

Downloading the Project Data

For this activity, you’ll need to download NAIP (National Agriculture Imagery Program) image files using this link: https://bit.ly/Arcata_NAIP. This link takes you to a Google Drive download page. Download the file and copy it into your original folder.

Note: You may get a message saying Google can’t preview the file. That’s ok. Don’t try to open or preview the file. Just download it.

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Google Drive interface showing a download button for a file named Arcata NAIP dot 7z.

Figure 2: Use the 'Download' button to save the compressed NAIP imagery to your computer.