California State University, Fresno PLANT 170T
Department of Plant Science Name:__________________________________

Geographic Coordinate Systems

A common problem in GIS and Precision Ag is acquiring data that has been saved in an unknown coordinate system or projection.  This exercise uses coordinate systems in common use in California:

Objectives:

Data: Unknown_data.ZIP and ca_projections.zip

Exercise:

Part I -- Name that coordinate system is this data?

  1. Open the ArcView project CA_Projections in the Projected_CA folder.
  2. Turn on the JPEG extension.
  3. Open View 1.
  4. Add all unknown  feature and image themes from the __________ floder.
  5. Identify the projection by making the one of the new themes the active theme, then zoom to the active theme.  
  6. Which CA is the theme on top of?  
  7. Complete the table below for all of the  themes.
  8. Print a nice map showing and labeling all of the California Themes except DD.  No scale!  Use the label tool (a text tool option) not a legend.  Add a clean title and your name and date, and a neatline to the layout.  Print the map.
Theme Name Theme Type
(Vector/Raster)
Sample coordinates Projection
       
       
       
       
       
       
       

Part II -- Projection Wizard

  1. Use the projection utility wizard (File|ArcView Projection Utility ) to re-project the Farm_Map theme to UTM zone 11. 
  2. Place the farm_map theme on top of the Soil_Map theme.  Turn off all other themes.  The Soil_map theme is soil view data (based on IR images).  
  3. Classify the Soil_map Gridcode field.  Label the farm_map theme with Field Number.
  4. Create a clean layout showing this data.  Include a scale, north arrow, legend, etc.
  5. Print the map.

Part III -- Map Practice

  1. Create professional precipitation map of California by classifying the CV_Rainfall theme (use the Precip field).  
  2. Lay the California County theme over the rainfall map.  
  3. Print the map.

Staple this sheet to the three maps and turn in.