Module 6 - Georeferencing - Connecting the Dots

 

This week's lab was all about georeferencing and creating georeferenced data. The first part of this lab consisted of georeferencing the aerial photos of the UWF Campus to polygons shapefiles of the UWF buildings. I learned the importance of selecting the unknown layer first as, when I accidently inverted the process order, the photo raster started rotating and compressing in strange and unproductive ways. While the picture was never perfectly lined up to every corner of every building, I managed to get it close enough to be acceptable (RMS Error = ~<10 for both northern and southern aerial photos). After this I created two shapefiles (polygon of building 72 and line designating Campus Ln) using the georeferenced photos as a guide. Then we added The location of an Eagle's nest just off of Campus Drive and added a link to the photo to the attribute table of the nest data. I then added a protection barrier around the Eagles nest, designating an area of land that should not be disturbed (330 ft barrier) and an area that should not have any construction done to it (660 ft). All of this data was used to make a map layout, including the RMS data and an inset map showing the location of the Eagle's Nest in relation to Campus Dr. (pictured below).

I then made a 3D scene of the UWF campus including the data for all buildings and roads. I highlighted the two features I created (Building 72 and Campus Ln). I ended up using the UWF_DEM elevation data because it made the picture clear and displayed the most of the UWF Road data. However, no matter what adjustments I made, The Campus Lane feature I created was never fully pictured. Whether I used the UWF_DEM, World Elevation data, made the line thicker, or made it thinner, it still would only display portions of the road. Therefore, I used the settings previously mentioned that showed the most of the road and used that scene to make a map layout that clearly shows the elevation, building heights, and my created data. It was very interesting playing with the orientation of the 3D scene, looking at all the ways it could be moved and rotated and finding the right angle that displayed all of the relevant data. It felt strange to cut out the corners at first, but I realized that for this purpose, a clearer image of less of the scene was better than a smaller picture of the entire scene.