Start to type a property and the tooltip narrows. In this image, the items starting with L are Latitude, Longitude and Leader s. The image below shows several columns returning Latitude, Longitude, Population, and Leaders. Once you have the first row of data, double-click the fill handle to copy the formula down to all rows. To download the excel file: geography-data-types-in-excel. As of 13 July , Prior studies have demonstrated that local socioeconomic and built environment characteristics may significantly contribute to vira Authors: Christopher Scarpone, Sebastian T.
Published on: 13 August This behaviour results from a complex combination of factors, including social ones, which lead to significant differences Content type: Methodology. At the same time, be aware of whether you actually need GIS to find out or demonstrate what you want.
If the amount of data needed is relatively small, and not exclusively tied to one place, GIS may be unnecessary. The bottom line here is the bottom line.
Consider your resources. Even if you can afford a GIS software package, and you have the hardware to run it, do you have the staff time available for someone to learn the program which may involve a college course, or a several-week training and run it? Remember that the person who does that will be taking time away from some other job in the organization as well as spending time on GIS. It may be cheaper in the long run to contract for GIS when you need it.
The list of those who might benefit from the use of GIS mapping is long. In fact, news organizations and think tanks use it all the time, as do weather forecasters, space scientists, and the intelligence community. GIS is a visual, graphic process.
If the material is hard to visualize, you may want to visit a site that demonstrates or explains the process, and gives visual examples. Whether you do your own GIS mapping or hire someone else to help you, you still have to understand how to use the system to find out what you need to know.
The steps sound simple: frame your question, collect the data, integrate it, make your maps, and analyze the results. Falbo, Lloyd P. Queen, and Charles R. Blinn, on the website of the University of Minnesota Extension Service.
The questions you might want to answer will therefore have to do with place. There are, fundamentally, five types of questions that GIS can help you answer — and you may be asking all five at the same time. John Snow, a London physician, famously mapped the locations of cholera cases during a 19th century epidemic. From his map, he determined that a particular water pump, which brought polluted water from the Thames River, was part of the cause of the problem. When the pump handle was removed, the epidemic eased; Snow had found a pattern in the geographic data that made it possible to change conditions and save lives.
You might easily be tempted to try to fit as much information as possible into a GIS map project. The more information the map can show, the more likely it is that hidden relationships — if there are any — will come to light. On the other hand, data may be difficult to find, or may have to be entered into the system by hand at the cost of many hours of labor. You may be paying a consultant or firm to make the maps for you. If the data is easily available and easily fed into the system and you can afford the expense if someone else is doing the work , then, by all means, examine the situation from as many different angles as you can.
But if data gathering, data entry, or the cost of the process strains your resources, it makes more sense to keep it simple. GIS, like any other computer application, is only as good as the data it has to work with. There are, as explained above, two types of data: spatial , or map data, which locate geographic areas and objects, including political and other boundaries; and attribute data, which tell you about those areas and objects.
The data needed, then, include the actual map information for the whole area you want to look at, broken down in the ways that will give you the information you want e. Some of the most common types of data that might be of use to Tool Box users are demographic, those that identify people in an area by different categories or levels of categories. Another common type of data concerns the location and frequency of particular events or conditions:.
The list could go on. There are as many possibilities for data that might be entered into a GIS system as there are possibilities for a condition, an event, a population, or a situation to be connected with a place. Various groups use GIS data to study consumer buying patterns, the spread of weapons around the globe, oil exploration possibilities, endangered species protection — practically anything you can think of. Data sets take a variety of forms.
They may be in the form of tables or lists; pictures, charts, or other graphics including maps ; or 3-D images. They may be in print, slides, computer files spreadsheets, databases, graphics files, etc. Much is free, but some you may have to pay for, especially if you get it on CD. Your data can also come from a variety of sources.
The most easily accessible is data you have collected yourself. Similar data may be available from other organizations, or from local officials or agencies. For the U. There are many other places on the Internet from which data can be downloaded. Many municipalities and government agencies have their own websites, or websites for specific programs or initiatives, that may contain data you need, and there are numerous commercial data sources easily findable on the Internet as well.
At Geographic Information Systems you can find links to a large number of data sources, both free and commercial. Stanford University offers even more , including international data. The U. Geological Survey is another source, as is the U. Fish and Wildlife Service for environmental data. This means entering the data in a format recognized by the software. It may involve typing in a table, loading data off a CD, downloading from the Internet, or importing data from a computer file.
Not all software will necessarily accept data in all of these ways, and so you may have to change the format before you can enter what you have. A few words about software. Other data — tables, charts, graphs, lists, statistics, etc. Will the software accept data from other applications, such as Access? Can data be easily entered from the keyboard, or does it have to be translated in some way first? What kinds of math functions will the software perform? Most will perform at least simple math functions, and will calculate such things as population density, if they have data that they can translate to both the population and the size in square miles, for instance of a particular place.
Some will do a lot more, both separating and integrating many levels of maps. How does the software make its maps? There are two kinds of mapping: vector, which constructs maps through a series of points and lines; and raster, which uses polygons many-sided geometric figures. Each is better for certain applications. Some software incorporates both, and some does not.
Most software contains methods of integrating the two. The technical differences are too complicated to explain here, but the software companies, colleagues familiar with GIS, or the Internet can help you understand the distinction and decide what your needs are. There are four major software producers. There are also public-domain GIS programs available free on the Internet, and smaller software manufacturers whose products or support may be best for you.
Once the previous three steps have been completed, actually making maps is the business of the software. These are by no means exhaustive lists. The actual situation, especially with an understanding of the context — the history of the condition in the area, for instance — could suggest many more layers. Analyze the results. If, for instance, all the areas where the medical condition used as an example above is most common are areas occupied largely by a particular ethnic group, the overlap will be immediately apparent.
If there are certain kinds of industrial plants nearby, that also will be clearly visible. These connections could also be made by studying several paper maps, or, more likely, creating your own map — either actual or mental — from written information. That task would take a great deal more time, however, and the results would probably be a lot less obvious. Observation of ocean tide s and current s constituted some of the first oceanographic investigations.
For example, 18th-century mariner s figured out the geography of the Gulf Stream , a massive current flowing like a river through the Atlantic Ocean. The discovery and tracking of the Gulf Stream helped communications and travel between Europe and the Americas. Today, oceanographers conduct research on the impacts of water pollution, track tsunami s, design offshore oil rig s, investigate underwater eruptions of lava , and study all types of marine organisms from toxic algae to friendly dolphins.
They also might look at how consumer s in China and India adjust to new technology and market s, and how markets respond to such a huge consumer base. Human geographers also study how people use and alter their environments. When, for example, people allow their animals to overgraze a region, the soil erodes and grassland is transformed into desert. The impact of overgrazing on the landscape as well as agricultural production is an area of study for human geographers.
Finally, human geographers study how political, social, and economic systems are organized across geographical space. These include government s, religious organizations, and trade partnerships.
The boundaries of these groups constantly change. The main divisions within human geography reflect a concern with different types of human activities or ways of living. Some examples of human geography include urban geography, economic geography, cultural geography, political geography, social geography, and population geography.
Human geographers who study geographic patterns and processes in past times are part of the subdiscipline of historical geography. Those who study how people understand maps and geographic space belong to a subdiscipline known as behavioral geography. Many human geographers interested in the relationship between humans and the environment work in the subdisciplines of cultural geography and political geography. Cultural geographers study how the natural environment influences the development of human culture, such as how the climate affects the agricultural practices of a region.
Political geographers study the impact of political circumstances on interactions between people and their environment, as well as environmental conflicts, such as disputes over water rights.
Some human geographers focus on the connection between human health and geography. For example, health geographers create maps that track the location and spread of specific diseases. They analyze the geographic disparities of health-care access. They are very interested in the impact of the environment on human health, especially the effects of environmental hazards such as radiation , lead poisoning, or water pollution. Geographic Techniques Specialists in geographic techniques study the ways in which geographic processes can be analyzed and represented using different methods and technologies.
Mapmaking, or cartography , is perhaps the most basic of these. Cartography has been instrumental to geography throughout the ages. As early as BCE, Polynesian navigators in the Pacific Ocean used complex maps made of tiny sticks and shells that represented islands and ocean currents they would encounter on their voyages. Today, satellites placed into orbit by the U. Department of Defense communicate with receivers on the ground called global positioning system GPS units to instantly identify exact locations on Earth.
Today, almost the entire surface of Earth has been mapped with remarkable accuracy, and much of this information is available instantly on the internet. Technological developments during the past years have given rise to a number of other specialties for scientists studying geographic techniques. The airplane made it possible to photograph land from above. Now, there are many satellites and other above-Earth vehicles that help geographers figure out what the surface of the planet looks like and how it is changing.
Geographers looking at what above-Earth cameras and sensors reveal are specialists in remote sensing. Pictures taken from space can be used to make maps, monitor ice melt, assess flood damage, track oil spills, predict weather, or perform endless other functions. For example, by comparing satellite photos taken from to , scientists from the U.
Every year from to , about 45 feet per year of coast, mostly icy permafrost , vanished into the sea. Computerized systems that allow for precise calculations of how things are distributed and relate to one another have made the study of geographic information systems GIS an increasingly important specialty within geography.
Geographic information systems are powerful databases that collect all types of information maps, reports, statistics , satellite images, surveys, demographic data, and more and link each piece of data to a geographic reference point, such as geographic coordinates.
This data, called geospatial information, can be stored, analyzed, modeled, and manipulated in ways not possible before GIS computer technology existed. Geographic information scientists study patterns in nature as well as human development. They might study natural hazards, such as a fire that struck Los Angeles, California, in A map posted on the internet showed the real-time spread of the fire, along with information to help people make decisions about how to evacuate quickly.
GIS can also illustrate human struggles from a geographic perspective, such as the interactive online map published by the New York Times in May that showed building foreclosure rates in various regions around the New York City area.
The enormous possibilities for producing computerized maps and diagrams that can help us understand environmental and social problems have made geographic visualization an increasingly important specialty within geography.
This geospatial information is in high demand by just about every institution, from government agencies monitoring water quality to entrepreneurs deciding where to locate new businesses. Regional Geography Regional geographers take a somewhat different approach to specialization, directing their attention to the general geographic characteristics of a region.
A regional geographer might specialize in African studies, observing and documenting the people, nations, rivers, mountains, deserts, weather, trade, and other attributes of the continent. There are different ways you can define a region. You can look at climate zones, cultural regions, or political regions. Often regional geographers have a physical or human geography specialty as well as a regional specialty.
Regional geographers may also study smaller regions, such as urban areas. A regional geographer may be interested in the way a city like Shanghai, China, is growing. They would study transportation, migration , housing, and language use, as well as the human impact on elements of the natural environment, such as the Huangpu River. Whether geography is thought of as a discipline or as a basic feature of our world, developing an understanding of the subject is important.
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