GEOG585: Internet Mapping: Home Work 3

Question 1

1. Before beginning to work on any mapping problem (online or otherwise), some basic
questions need to asked and answered. Please consider and answer (in 2-4 sentences as
appropriate for the question) the following questions relating to the problem that you will be
working on for the next three assignments:

1. What is the high-level description of the problem/question you want to help answer
   through the presentation of a collection of geographic data over the internet? Please
   answer in a short paragraph.
   The USGS Water Science Center is currently delineating hundreds of basins for the state of New Mexico. Each basin is delineated in ArcGIS with all the supporting layers saved in a folder on a workstation. As the basin shapefiles go through the review process, different people open the MXD from a variety of computers. Layers are constantly unliked causing a huge waste of time. Having the basins served from a WMS will streamline the review process by allowing easy integration of Google Earth. Layers delineated using different methods can also be shown.
   
2. Who is the target audience for the information you want to provide?
   USGS Hydrologists.
3. What geographic region does your problem area represent? Please describe it in
   words (e.g. New Mexico, Alberta Canada, etc.) and define it in terms of a geographic
   (WGS84) (latitude and longitude) bounding box.
   New Mexcio,
4. What types of data do you want to include in your project? Include a description and
   types (i.e. raster, vector).
   Vector: manualy delineated basins
   Vector: auto delineations from Arcmap, EPA, and NWS
   Raster: Seemless topographic maps, maybe
5. What projection will you use for the presentation of your project data? Again, describe
   it, provide your reasoning for selection, and provide the corresponding EPSG code.
   UTM Zone 13, decided upon by USGS Data Chief, EPSG:26913
6. Where do you anticipate acquiring data for the project from?
   Creating in ArcMap 10
7. What barriers to acquiring and processing the needed data do you anticipate?
   Lots of time to delineate the basins. Unknown availability of topography.

Question 2

2. While you are going to continue to acquire additional data for the project over the next
couple of assignments, begin acquiring data for your selected project now. Specifically, find
5 datasets that are consistent with your description of the problem you are going to work on,
and use ogrinfo or gdalinfo and any associated metadata to describe them in brief by
answering the following questions:
2.1. What is the name of the dataset?
2.2. What type of data (raster/vector) are in the dataset?
2.3. What is its format?
2.4. What is its coordinate reference system?
2.5. What are the spatial extents of the dataset?


New Mexico Crest State Gage Basins
Vector
SHP
UTM Zone13N
-109.250000, 37.125000, -102.875000, 37.125000

National Weather Service Basins
Vector
SHP and KML
NAD83
-109.250000, 37.125000, -102.875000, 37.125000

New Mexico Crest Stage Gage Basins Auto-delineated
Vector
SHP
UTM Zone 13N
-109.250000, 37.125000, -102.875000, 37.125000

Topographic map index of New Mexico
Vector
SHP
NAD83
-109.250000, 37.125000, -102.875000, 37.125000