GIS I Lab 1: Base Data

February 18th, 2014

Background: The main focus of this lab was to develop a basic report containing pertinent information regarding the Confluence Project, which is a project integrating the University of Wisconsin Eau Claire and the Eau Claire region. This would allow for a new community arts center/ student housing and commercial retail to be located in downtown Eau Claire.

Goal: For this lab, the focus was to integrate the Confluence Project into understanding the spatial data sets.  

Methods: First I began the lab by taking note of the project and its goals before beginning the project in order to fully understand the purpose of my project (Impressions, 2014).

Objective One- Explore various data sets for the City and County of Eau Claire.

This included becoming familiar with parcels and their purpose within a city. To complete this I added the baselayer and then the ‘parcel_area’ feature class from the City of Eau Claire Database. I then applied past knowledge to locate where the parcels were by using the ‘identify’ tool. Next was the process of determining the zoning classes of Water Street. I located the street by adding ‘PRIVATE_STREET’, then using the ‘identify’ tool to determine the variety of zones used. Additionally, I added centerlines and edges were added to the map from the catalog to determine their position on the map.

Objective Two- Digitize the site for the proposed Confluence Project.

The next step was to digitize the site for the proposed Confluence Project. I did this by creating a new geodatabase, which I titled ‘EC_Confluence’. I then proceeded to add the ‘BlockGroups’ from the 2009-07-13_EauClaire geodatabase into the ‘EC_Confluence’ database. I then located the pro_site feature class and added it to the map. To begin digitizing I opened the ‘editor toolbar’, enabled the proposed site and then the Polygon too and began digitizing the area. This allowed me to highlight the parcels that UWEC has purchased for their project.

Objective Three- Learn about the Public Land Survey System

I first added a new data frame, created a basemap, and added the PLSS_Township feature dataset from both of the Eau Claire geodatabases. I then added the numbers of the various sections to the map by going under ‘properties’, then ‘labels’ and enabled the section number label. Additionally I colored the sections using a stretched color scheme to see the variations among the sections better. In order to identify the specific PLSS section that the Confluence Project was in I added the ‘PLSS Quarter_Quarter_sections’ datasets. Fro, there I was able to define the section using the legal terminology by using the legal descriptions website (Hemstead, 2014).

Objective Four: Create a brief legal description of the proposed site.

To find the legal description of the parcels of the proposed site I used the ‘identify’ tool to find the Parcel ID. I then looked up the specific information regarding each parcel using the City of Eau Claire’s Property and Assessment Search Website (Bis-net.net, 2014). This allowed me to write a full legal report on the parcels.

Objective Five: Build a map of all relevant base data for the Confluence Project.

For this portion of the assignment, I created six different maps displaying various relevant data in relation to the Confluence Project, the first being the Civil Divisions map. This was created by adding the civil divisions project data. In this one, as well as all of the other maps under Objective Five, I added a legend, title, scale bar, and highlighted the location of the Confluence Project on the map. Because of the small scale of the map, I labeled the ‘Confluence Project’ using a callout text via the drawing toolbar.

The next map was the Census Boundaries where I added the BlockGroups and TractsGroup data. To signify the boundaries’ size, I added the ‘Population per Sq. Mi’ as ‘unique values’ under the ‘Symbology’ tab so that the viewer could see how the population varied from one area to the next. I indicted that there should be two significant digits on the legend regarding the population, which cleaned up the look on the scale.

 The PLSS Features map was quite simplistic. The PLSS_qq data was added to define the Quarter-Quarter sections. This gives a better idea of the size of the parcels, because one can determine the dimensions of the Quarter Quarter Sections from the legal description of Wisconsin online (Lippelt, 2002).

The EC City Parcel Data was basically the PLSS map from above. However, I added the parcel_area, Centerlines, and Water feature classes.

The map for Zoning was next. I added the zoning_cla and centerlines data and created a unique values color scheme in order to differentiate the various zone types. In addition, I simplified the label categories so the reader could understand them.

 I also created a Voting Districts map where the data from the voting districts class was added. In addition, I labeled the districts with their associated voting number. To view the voting district numbers more clearly I added a while halo, which was found under the properties, then symbology tab.

Results: I found making these maps very helpful in determining the basic information regarding the Confluence Project. If I was not familiar with Eau Claire, these maps would give a great picture of the location of the Confluence Project as well as the rough size of the population, density of people near the project and throughout town, layout of the city, zoning, and the variety of parcel sizes within Eau Claire.

Sources

Bis-net.net. (2014). Eau claire, wi - online property assessment database - search. [online] Retrieved from: http://www.bis-net.net/cityofeauclaire/search.cfm [Accessed: 18 Feb 2014].

Hemstead, B. (2014). Plss - legal descriptions | plss. [online] Retrieved from: http://www.sco.wisc.edu/plss/legal-descriptions.html [Accessed: 18 Feb 2014].

Impressions, F. (2014). Eau claire confluence project | community involvment collaboration. [online] Retrieved from: http://www.eauclairearts.com/confluence/ [Accessed: 18 Feb 2014].

Legal Description and Permitted Encumbrances. (2014). [e-book] pp. B-1, B-2. Available through: Christina Hupy, Geog 335, UWEC [Accessed: 18 Feb 2014].

Lippelt, I. (2002). Understanding wisconsin township, range, and section land descriptions. [e-book] Madison, WI: pp. 1-4. Available through: Wisconsin Geological and Natural History Survey [Accessed: 18 Feb 2014].

ZONING DISTRICTS AND MAPS. (2011). [e-book] Eau Claire: p. 510. Available through: Christina Hupy, Geog 335, UWEC [Accessed: 18 Feb 2014].