Week 11 - Proposed Wind Turbine Locations

Ohio currently has some wind power producing capabilities. We are to study one existing wind farm and then use established criteria to determine if the Great Lakes should be the site of the next wind farm for the Midwest.

It turns out there are many sources of legitimate information about shipping lanes, average annual wind speeds, bird migration, parks, and more. For me, the issue was sifting through the volumes of data to get what I needed for the lab.
Some of the sources I used are: http://www.greenenergyohio.org/ , http://www.odh.ohio.gov/, www.bgohio.org/utility-director/trubines.html, and http://www.berr.gov.uk/energy/sources/renewables/planning/onshore-wind/ornithology/page18703.html.


I found the reading rather interesting.  There was a considerable amount of literature the could be summed up as "not in my back yard".  However, if one read all the available literature one would find most of the complaints or issues could be easily remedied.  In some cases, technology and creative thinking fixed things.  An example was noise from the turbine blades was lowered by doing three things.  Turning the turbine 180 desgree, eliminated much of the wind noise, as did restyling the blades. Finally, insulating the inside further elminated the noise so that it was no longer an issue.

Bowling Green site
Using Google Earth one can view two wind machines located near a landfill 6 miles southwest of Bowling Green, OH. Bowling Green is home to Ohio’s first utility-sized wind farm. There are four turbines that are 257 feet tall. These turbines are as tall as a 30-story building and generate up to 7.2 megawatts of power — enough to supply electricity for some 3,000 residents. Located about six miles from the city, the turbines can be seen for miles and have become a local attraction.


Lake Erie
I selected two sites on Lake Erie just north of Cleveland OH. I based the selection on the site assessment index from the BERR planning criteria. http://www.berr.gov.uk/energy/sources/renewables/planning/

- Average annual wind speed of between 16.8 and 17.9 mph
- There are no residences near the sites
- There are shipping ports but not in close proximaty but there are shipping routes near the site
- Positioned approximately 15 miles  from shore the coastal horizon is not impacted
- Natural habitats will not be affected

- Installation and constructions costs were a major reason for this selection
Some turbines have been shipped via the from Pensacola to Cincinatti. The proposed sites are near a shipping channel for that reason.  Additionally, notice the proposed sites are not in the highest wind areas since there was no financial gain for the higher speeds but there are higher construction costs.  Finally, the closer selection also means there will less energy loss via normal power transmissions.

Isohyet Precipitation Lines

This was another fun map. 

So since I had the same printer output issues noted on our discussion page I took another tack.  I selected a range of colors for the different rain levels.  In this case the colors chosen red for 70+ inches, purple for 60 inches etc.  It was actually very useful because the zones practically jumped off the page. 

Then I used the pencil tool to draw the lines and used an iterative approach to define the line  locations.  The first pass was the rough draft. Then subsequent iterations, I studied the location of the rain volumes and worked to get the proportional distances closer.  This meant, adding and deleting points on the isohyet lines.

I can see where one could get confused with which side of the line represents the isohyet line.  Consistency is key here. You will see that the volumes are generally above or inside the isohyet line.

I look forward to seeing your comments.

Bonus Exercise - Before and After

      Before                    and              After




I chose Percentile map from week 3 because I wanted make a better map product. I also wanted to see how and if a different presentation would change the intended message. Remember that the data is exactly the same as before.

I had some friends over tonight and asked their impression of the two maps. half preferred the Proportional Dot map and half leaned toward the Equal Interval map. This was a fun exercise and sparked a lot of discussion about map content.

My very informal poll of my house guests tonight suggested that the primary improvement seemed to be map type followed my map design. And I agree. One person thought thought that the positioning of the graduated symbol in the center of the county districts could mislead someone to think that is the exact location of the black population.

The following was done to the map:
1: Switched from equal interval to Graduated Symbols
2: Switched from categories to dot symbols. Circles were chosen since literature indicated that people like that shape over all others
3: Changed the entire color scheme
4: Added Source
5: Added Map compiler information.
6: Expanded the neat line to create more useable area
7: Expanded a secondary title to better reflect the map message
8: Changed font schemes to better reflect the map message
9: Repositioned the Scale information and North Arrow
10: changed the title of in the table from "p_black" to "Percent Black Population"


This lab required us to do the following
1. Choose one of the laboratory maps that was created/altered this semester (or at least
was created using an Arc shapefile).
2. Visit the following website ESRI Mapping Center.
3. See the Map library that contains various cartographic effects that can be used in Arc.
4. Download and use as many effects necessary to help display the information effectively.
5. Post your final map to your personal blog.

Week 9 - Immigration Flow Map

This was an interesting lab.  I experimented with various color schemes and pallets. I compared the "monochrome looks" with multi-colored looks and as you see here settled on the multi-color look since the regions stood out better and helped me to convey the immigration message.

 

I wanted to see how much I could do in ArcGIS then compare the end result with AI.  The end product is definitely more polished after AI than directly from ArcGIS.  Yes, I rather knew that it would.  What I find interesting is that the same information is presented and for the quick solution ArcGIS is sufficient.  If a map quality presentation is needed then one needs to have a finishing product like AI. 

My trick to get my curves was a digital version of what I did years ago.  Cartographers used to use these gizmos called french curves.  They are a set of odd looking shapes because the are made of lots of complex curves.  So I drew my lines, created some complex curves then fitted the lines to the curves.. 

Lab 8 - Dot Map Density Lab

This lab was so time consuming making and placing all those dots but in the end it looks pretty cool.  Trisha said to use the minimum of features for this map.  I experimented with different layers (specifically the hydrographic layers, and county names).  In the end I opted to leave these off (even though I edited all the county names) because it distracted the eye from the primary purpose for the map.  That being the dot density.

I lifted the description about the lab from the Discussion Board

So why map density? It emphasizes patterns rather than individual locations.  When mapping areas of different sizes and when the location of each individual feature is mapped it may be difficult to distinguish how many are in a highly populated area.
There are two ways of mapping density:
1) map graphically with a dot map
2) map density value for each area


Things to remember about this map


1) dots are distributed randomly within defined area
2) do not represent actual locations of features
3) closer together dots mean higher density of features in an area
4)This method is good for showing clustered features.


The density value= total# or value of features/area of polygon


The downside to this type of calcuation/map is that you can see which areas have higher density but not specific distribution of density within area.

Tricks I Used
Created few sets of random Dot concentrations then used a unique copy paste function
use these steps
1) Select the features you want to copy (in this case a dot cluster)
2) Copy them with
3) Bring the copy to the front a frame appears around the cluster
4) Move the cluster to your desired site.
5) voila...it is now there.  Just and aside, these clusters can be rotated using the methods we learned in previous labs.

Week 7 - Proportional Symbols

In this lab, I created a proportional circle map. The idea was to create a map to show wine consumption in Europe for 2005.  The data used, is provided by the Wine Institute (http://www.wineinstitute.org/ and is cited as the data source on the map. Specifically, Table 5.1 World Wine Consumption is the data source.  The link for the data is http://www.wineinstitute.org/files/WorldWine%20ConsumptionbyVolume.pdf .  The European wine consumption data was already in an Excel® file so that made that part much easier. Germany was missing so I added that from the source mentioned above. Note that the data is in thousands of Hectoliters per year and was annotated on the legend.

Below are UWF map requirements:

• Create your proportional symbol map by utilizing the conventional mathematical scaling (Square Root) method for determining the sizes of circles.

• Use Excel to calculate circle size
• Use ArcMap to create the base map
• Use Adobe Illustrator to complete the map
• Make sure you include all required map elements are clearly evident

Now I think I will go have a nice glass of Merlot.

Module 6 - Cloropleth Maps

In this lab, the requirement was to producing two population change maps of the United States of America using census data. The maps illustrate the percentage change in population of each state for the period of April 1, 1990 to April 1st, 2000.

We had to decide what data values to use for the choropleth maps as well  as the artistic properties needed in order to convey the appropriate information.

Included below are the map requirements:



1)  Two choropleth maps
2)  Notice that Alaska and Hawaii are included though the scales were changed.
3)  ArcMap was to produce the maps showing changes in population at the state level,
4)  Adobe Illustrator CS4 was to adjust the state map to create the regional map using calculations done in Excel.
5)  Both maps were touched up in Illustrator.