Earth 176 Geological Applications of GIS Syllabus

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EARTH 176 – Geological Application of GIS - Spring 2015

SYLLABUS

Class Schedule:

Lectures&Labs: SSMS 1304 T,R 3:30-6:00 PM

Office Hours: SSMS 1303 W 3:30-5:30 PM

Instructor: Aaron Bufe bufe@umail.ucsb.edu Webb 1032

TA: Eric Shoettle eric_schoettle@umail.ucsb.edu Webb 1032

Website: Gauchospace

Class Email: earth176gis@gmail.com (use for turning in your lab assignments)

Learning Outcomes:

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are a very important tool for handling spatial data and

have various applications ranging from city planning to crime mapping, hydrology and geology,

disaster recovery, traffic management and logistics. Proficiency in GIS will open a door to a

wide field of careers. This course will introduce you to Geographic Information Systems (GIS)

and their application to the Earth Sciences and give you a hands-on experience on using the

software package ArcGIS to solve geologic problems. At the end of this course you will:

be comfortable working with ArcGIS and Google Earth software

understand how locations and attributes of features on Earth can be represented digitally

know how and where to find/obtain GIS data relevant to the Earth Sciences.

be able to query spatial data to find information and perform a range of spatial analyses

be able to construct a geologic map.

be able to produce effective, aesthetically pleasing maps and present your work on a

poster to a broader audience.

Course Materials

There is no required textbook for this course. However, you MUST bring a ≥ 8 GB, windows

friendly hard drive to every class period. If you forget your drive, you won’t be able to save your

work!

Course Guidelines

Attendance – You are expected to attend class on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Wednesday office

hours are optional.

Punctuality – Assignments must be turned in before the start of class on the day that they are

due. Scores will be reduced by 10% for every 24-hr period that they are late.

Respect – Please turn off cell phones during class time. Also, please refrain from surfing the net,

watching videos, etc. during lectures. Even if you’re bored, it may be distracting for those behind

you. And let’s be real, you spend enough time on the internet already.

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Course Structure

Class time - The scheduled class time will include short lectures to introduce important concepts

and demonstrate techniques, but will mainly be spent working on exercises & assignments either

as a class or individually. Although the Wednesday sessions are optional, attendance is strongly

encouraged, as these sessions provide additional time for you to work on assignments in a

computer lab with either the instructor or TA present to help with problems you encounter.

Assignments - The best way to learn GIS is by doing GIS. With that in mind, there will be a total

of seven weekly lab exercises that you will work on and turn in for a grade. These assignments

are designed to introduce you to the software step by step but expect you to be drawing on

knowledge gained from prior labs.

Final Project - As is tradition in an intro GIS course, each of you will devise and carry out a

GIS-based project throughout the quarter. I encourage you to start thinking about project ideas

early on. You will present the results of your project in a poster session in the Earth Science

building at the end of the quarter.

Quizzes – Short quizzes about conceptual questions of the course will be given to assess your

comprehension and motivate you to keep up with the material. Quizzes will be announced.

Grading Scheme

70% from Lab Assignments (7 x 10 pts/ea) including the Lab Midterm (Lab 4)

10% for Quizzes

20% for Final Project

Note that this grade scheme will be modified with +s and –s when appropriate

Where can you work outside of class?

Your own Machine:

All UCSB students are eligible for a free 1 year trial Version of ArcGIS. If you have

windows PC with at least 4 GB RAM, this will be a good option for you.

Check out http://www.library.ucsb.edu/mil/esri for instructions on how to download and

install the software (scroll down to the paragraph “For your own machine”).

For system requirements check out http://resources.arcgis.com/en/help/system-

requirements/10.2/index.html#//015100000002000000

Labs on campus with ArcGIS:

Select UCSB Collaborate labs (http://labschedule.collaborate.ucsb.edu/)

The Mac Lab (Webb 1015) has now two Windows Computers with ArcGIS installed.

Because many of these labs close early, take advantage of the scheduled class time and office

hours to get your projects done while the room is reserved for you. “I couldn’t find a lab that was

open” is NOT a valid excuse for late work.

Obligatories

Disable Students Program (DSP) – The DSP provides academic support services to eligible

students with temporary and permanent disabilities. It is the responsibility of the student to

contact the DSP office (2120 Student Resource Building, 805-893-2668, http://dsp.sa.ucsb.edu/)

to request assistance and arrange accommodations.

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Academic Dishonesty - Although you are permitted to work with others, you must turn in YOUR

WORK. Academic dishonesty (e.g. plagiarism) will be dealt with swiftly and brutally. More

information here: http://judicialaffairs.sa.ucsb.edu/CMSMedia/Documents/academicintegflyer.pdf

Helpful Tips

In-built and online help: ESRI has done a good job of incorporating help into ArcGIS. You can

access it from the menu bar on top, or by clicking ‘tool help’ when any of the Arc toolboxes are

open. If you can’t find the answer you need, try a simple google search. There is an amazing

amount of user-generated help docs out there in the internet, and you will be able to solve many

of your problems by using these resources.

ArcGIS Online Help and Tutorials: http://resources.arcgis.com/en/help/main/10.2/

http://resources.arcgis.com/en/help/main/10.1/

http://help.arcgis.com/en/arcgisdesktop/10.0/

Map Projections: http://kartoweb.itc.nl/geometrics/index.html

http://wiki.gis.com/wiki/index.php/Map_projection

General Tips: https://wikis.uit.tufts.edu/confluence/display/GISatTufts/Tufts+GIS+Tip+Sheets+ArcGIS10

ArcGIS orientation and logistics - Boring, but very important!

ArcGIS includes several applications. The three that we will use in this course are:

ArcMap: mapping software, we will spend most of our time with this.

ArcCatalog: file management program; can open within ArcMap or as a standalone.

ArcScene: allows viewing of 3-dimensional data and creation of fly-through movies.

ArcMap

This is the software we will use to view data, perform spatial analyses, and create map

documents. A map document is stored as a .mxd file. This file only contains the information

where spatial data is stored, how it is arranged and how it is symbolized. All the actual spatial

data is stored as a series of files with various extensions. I like to keep all of the .mxd files in one

folder, and all of the spatial data in other folders. Save early and often!

ArcCatalog

This software is essential for organizing your spatial data. If you were to open a folder

containing your GIS data, you would notice that a single raster or vector file actually comprises

several individual files, each of which is necessary for ArcMap to be able to open it. So, do not

try to manage your files with Windows Explorer! Rather, you should use ArcCatalog, which

shows each file as a single icon, which can be moved, renamed, etc. without having to move or

rename each file individually. ArcCatalog can be opened within ArcMap (by clicking on the file

cabinet icon), where it will show up as a pane on the right side of the window. You’ll see a series

of folders that show up automatically, however, you usually have to do some navigation to get to

your personal thumb drive. To avoid that hassle, you can make a folder connection by clicking

the folder with a plus sign near the top of the ArcCatalog pane. Navigate to your thumb drive,

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select your root GIS data folder, and hit ‘OK’. Now that folder will appear under ‘Folder

Connections’, and can be rapidly accessed.

Stay Organized: GIS analyses generate a LOT of files, and you MUST keep them organized.

You will draw on the same datasets throughout this course (and your career), so it’s worth

making it easy to find the data you need. For this course, you can keep the data files in their

respective lab folders, but for future GIS work, I recommend organizing by data type (e.g.

shapefiles, rasters, etc.) or by project/region (e.g. World, California, Asia, etc.). Filenames: never

use spaces, and always keep them short yet descriptive (for some stupid reason, raster files must

be < 13 characters).

ArcScene

This software is pretty cool. It allows you to view data in three dimensions (as long as those data

have some z-value associated with them; usually elevation). Moreover, you can use it to create

fly-through movies and perspective images of landscapes that can be really valuable for figure

making. Warning: this program sucks up a lot of Memory, and can get really clunky when trying

to view large datasets. So be careful and try to minimize the size of the datasets you want to

visualize before opening them in ArcScene!

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TENTATIVE SCHEDULE

Week Day Date Lectures Work due

1 T Mar-31

Introduction to GIS systems and

ArcGIS; Basics in cartography.

Introduction to data types and data

organization;

1 Th Apr-02 Work on Lab 1

2 T Apr-07

Map esthetics; Importing,

displaying, manipulating and

querying data. Lab 1 due

2 Th Apr-09 Work on Lab 2

3 T Apr-14

Digital Elevation models and

Spatial Analysis of topographic

data Lab 2 due

3 Th Apr-16 Work on Lab 3

4 T Apr-21

Finding and georeferencing data;

viewing data in 3D and integration

with Google Earth; Lab 3 due

4 Th Apr-24 Lab 4: Midterm

5 T Apr-28

Building a Geologic map

5 Th Apr-30 Work on Lab 5

6 T May-05

Spatial Statistics Lab 5 due; Proposal

for Final Projects due

6 Th May-07 Work on Lab 6

7 T May-12

Advanced Analyses

Lab 6 due

7 Th May-14 Work on Lab 7

8 T May-19

Other GIS Systems; work on Final

Project Lab 7 due

8 Th May-21 Work on Final Project

9 T May-26 Work on Final Project

9 Th May-28 Work on Final Project

10 T Jun-02 Work on Final Project

10 Th Jun-04 Final Project Poster Presentation Final Project due