By Nicolas Malloy October 28, 2025

Introduction

Imagine being able to choose the perfect piece of land for your own homestead in Humboldt County. A good site would have open sunlight for gardens, land that drains well after rain, and a view that captures the natural beauty of the region. In this activity, you will take on the role of a planner searching for such a location using Geographic Information Science (GIS). Using digital elevation data, you will explore how the shape of the land affects where it makes sense to build. Steep hillsides may be unstable or hard to access, while flat areas could have poor drainage. South-facing slopes often receive the most sunlight, which can make them more suitable for growing plants and maintaining a comfortable living environment. Through terrain analysis methods, you will learn how GIS can reveal these subtle patterns in the landscape and help identify areas that are both practical and appealing for a potential homestead.

This activity introduces you to a foundational application of GIS: using elevation data to understand the physical landscape. By the end, you will see how spatial analysis can guide thoughtful land-use decisions, connecting geographic information to real-world planning questions.

Learning Outcomes

By the end of this activity, you will be able to:

• Generate and prepare elevation surfaces from digital terrain data.
• Derive slope and aspect information to characterize landform steepness and direction.
• Apply logical expressions to identify areas that meet multiple terrain-based suitability criteria.
• Convert raster outputs into vector polygons and use definition queries to isolate suitable locations.
• Compare candidate areas by sorting and interpreting attribute data to select the most suitable homestead site.
• Create visualizations such as hillshades and geodesic viewsheds to interpret and communicate terrain characteristics.
• Design a cartographically balanced map layout that clearly presents analysis results and supports visual storytelling.

Setting Up Your Workspace

Before you begin the analysis, create a dedicated workspace for this project. A clear folder structure will help you stay organized as you move through each stage of the homestead planning process.

Start by creating a new folder on your desktop and name it Homestead. Inside this main folder, make three subfolders:

• original – for storing the unaltered copies of your downloaded data.
• working – for saving datasets that you create, edit, or process during the activity.
• final – for your completed products such as tables, reports, and final map layouts.

Figure 1: Create a project folder named Homestead with subfolders original, working, and final.