Author: Nicolas R. Malloy
Table of Contents
- Mapping Earthquakes in Northern California
- Setting Up Your Workspace
- Downloading Data from Natural Earth
- Download Data from the Northern California Earthquake Data Center (NCEDC)
- Skill Drill: Download Data from the United States Census Bureau
- Adding California as a Basemap Layer
- Skill Drill: Adding the Humboldt County Boundary as a Basemap Layer
- Adding XY Data
- Changing the Map Projection of the Data Frame
- Representing Earthquake Magnitude Using Graduated Symbols
- Changing the Map Size and Position
- Creating an Inset Map
- Inserting A Map Title
- Inserting a Map Legend
- Inserting a North Arrow, Scale Bar, and Acknowledgments
- Exporting your map as a PDF file
The goal of this activity is for students to learn how to create a basic map layout. In this activity, you will create and organize a project folder using a standardized folder structure. You will then download and decompress the data from public sources. Using the data, you will create a map of earthquake magnitude in the State of California, with an emphasis on Northern California.
Estimated time to complete this tutorial: 5 hours
Learning Outcomes
Students who complete this tutorial should be able to:
- Summarize the steps for creating and organizing a project workspace folder structure
- Illustrate the ability to download data from a public source
- Demonstrate decompressing zipped files into a specific folder
- Perform data preparation in Microsoft Excel
- Convert tabular XY Data to GIS data using ArcGIS software
- Practice changing map output size in ArcMap
- Apply symbology and color choices to map features
- Insert essential map elements using ArcMap
- Create an inset map
- Export a map as a PDF file