Activity 3: Development of a Field Navigation Map

Introduction

The purpose of this lab was to become familiar with being able to produce an aesthetically pleasing and practical map which will later be used to navigate a course set up in the end of April. The course is going to be located at the Priory which is a parcel of land owned by the University of Wisconsin - Eau Claire at the outskirts of the city. The map needed enough information for navigation purposes and at the same time it could not be too cluttered or contain too much information to make navigating difficult or cumbersome. One of the objectives of this lab was to create two different navigation maps to learn first hand which type of map is easier to use. The first map is based on the Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM) Zone 15 North (figure 2), and the second is based on the Geographic Coordinate System (GCS) (figure 3).

Methods

There were two activities for this week's lab assignment. The first was to determine our personal pace counts. To do this, we counted the number of steps we took with our right foot across a distance of 100 meters. My pace count was 59 and this information will be used in the actual activity of navigating through the study area.

The second activity was to design two navigation maps; one with a 50 meter UTM grid and the other with geographic coordinates in decimal degrees. These were the only requirements given, so the map design was entirely up to our own discretion.

I began to create the UTM map. In order to design the map, I imported a basemap that contained background aerial imagery given by Dr. Hupy. I then pinpointed the location of the Priory and fit it to the data frame. Next, I changed the coordinate system to NAD_1983_UTM_Zone_15N and added a UTM grid set at 50 meters. After the grid was set, I looked at some data that was provided by our professor. There was a 2 foot contour interval and a 5 meter contour interval so I initially tested out the 2ft interval and noticed that there was too much clutter to be able to successfully use the map so I decided on the 5m interval. I played around with colors, grid number sizes, etc. in order to minimize the clutter but at the same time to display the map properly. A DEM was also provided by the professor, however I felt more comfortable with using an aerial image for proper navigation over the use of a DEM. The aerial image seemed to bold so I messed around with the transparency, contrast, and brightness and found a happy medium by only using a 40% transparency. I also played around with how much area I wanted to show outside of the Priory and how to position my legend and decided on leaving little to no extra space around the priory and to put the legend on the outside of the map instead of overlapping the map itself. After this I noticed I had no clue of the elevation of the contour lines so I decided to add labels based on the contour intervals to hopefully make for easier interpretation of the map.

I followed this same process to create a Geographic Coordinate System map, with a few slight adjustments to account for differences between GCS and UTM coordinates.

Figure 2: The Priory with a UTM 50 meter grid

Figure 3: The Priory with a geographic coordinate system measured in decimal degrees

Discussion

I was surprised at how much difference there was in the map's shape based on the coordinate system used. The UTM map has more of square shape to it but also appears to be more 'skewed' or tilted in the data frame whereas the GCS map is more of a rectangle. But at the same time, the GCS map appears to be more distorted than the UTM. So based on that observation, as well as the fact that UTM maps provide measurements in meters rather than degrees (which allows for easier ground distance calculations), the UTM map will most likely be easier to use and more reliable in the navigation exercise. At the same time, however, Eau Claire seems to be right near the edge of UTM zone 15 and 16 which means there will be more distortion since Eau Claire is located at the edge of a zone rather than near the middle. Even with this problem, I do still feel that the UTM map will be more reliable than the GCS map.

Conclusion

Both maps have their pros and cons, so it is important to weight out those positives and negatives and make an educated decision on which map to use for a given activity. It is also important to always keep in mind that more is not better when it comes to map. Often times simpler maps are the better choice. This activity was really helpful and I did learn quite a bit from it. I did not know how many considerations there are in creating a map that will be used in the field, as compared to a map that is merely a visualization tool with no real field use. It was interesting to learn how to create a grid system for a map. I feel that will be very useful in the future. And one aspect I feel will be interesting to try and figure out is to interpret our pace count with elevation changes and to also translate that pace count that has both vertical and horizontal information behind it into a map that merely shows horizontal information with contour lines.