Project Description - You have been hired by the Strafford County Planning Commission (SCPC) to provide GIS data analysis pertaining to various issues associated with Strafford County, New Hampshire. This project assignment will provide you with an opportunity to use ArcMap software to analyze a "hypothetical" situation using GIS data that is available from the internet.
Project Objective - The SCPC has the following GIS data available for your use: land use cover (for 1962, 1974, and 1998); conservation focus areas; and high quality stream watersheds for Strafford County, NH. Strafford County is the fastest growing county in NH and, over the past 40 years has had the highest number of newly constructed residential dwellings. As such, the SCPC would like you to analyze land use, conservation focus area, and high quality stream watershed data so that they can then compare Strafford County's statistics to other counties in NH and determine whether revised land planning and/or zoning regulations may be warranted. As part of your analysis, the SCPC requests responses to the following items:
1. What is the projection of the data? (Hint: Research the metadata file for the applicable data.)
2. What are the names of the towns located in Strafford County (provide in alphabetical order)?
3. What is the total acreage for Strafford County?
4. Where did you find the key for the Land Use categories and what are the various categories?
5. For the 1974 LU data, how many records correspond with "forested" land use category and what is the total acreage of "forested" LU (for Strafford County)?
6. For the 1998 LU data, how many records correspond with "forested" land use and what is the total acreage of "forested" LU 1998 (for Strafford County)?
7. What is the change of "forested" acreage from 1962 to 1998 in Strafford County?
8. What is the total acreage for the "conservation focus areas" in Strafford County? Only include tracts that are wholly within the Strafford county boundary.
9. What is the relationship of the "high quality stream watersheds" to the "conservation focus areas"?
10. From a trend analysis viewpoint, i.e., from visual analysis, what is the dominant type of land use found in the "conservation focus areas"?
Steps to Accomplish Project Objective -
Utilize the five steps of The Geographic Approach as you work through this project assignment, you will be following the five steps cited.
You should start the project assignment by listing these five steps on a sheet of paper. At the conclusion of the project assignment, you will hand-in the following:
- Brief synopsis for each of the 5 steps
- ArcMap project file and data
- Jpg file(s) of your final layout(s) view
The following listing will provide you with some of the various components under each step that you should consider and document to reach the project objective.
1. Step 1: Frame the question - Ask
2. Step 2: Select your data - Acquire
A. GIS data for NH is available at the "NH GRANIT Web Site".
i. Refer to the pdf attachment for detailed instructions on downloading the data.
ii. Download the following data files (select format as shp):
- New Hampshire Political Boundaries
- Strafford County Land Use - 1962
- Strafford County Land Use - 1974
- Strafford County Land Use - 1998
- Conservation Focus Areas
- High-quality Stream Watersheds
iii. View/print applicable metadata files (select "Full Record")
3. Step 3: Choose an analysis method - Examine
4. Step 4: Process the data - Analyze
5. Step 5: Review the results - Act
A. Label map(s) and data frames
B. Prepare a composite "layout view" of the various data frames. Prepare a jpg file of your final composite "layout view".