Data Visualization with GIS, Dr. Chris Badurek Visualization and Computing Teacher s Workshop Part 1: Getting Started with Tectonic Hot Spot Mapping Lesson Overview This lesson is designed to help students visualize earth science data with GIS. They will also use the Internet to acquire the most recent data on earthquakes and volcanoes worldwide. By exploring this data through GIS, students will construct a current World Tectonic Hot Spots map. This lesson could be an independent research project completed over several days. In this investigation, you will use the Internet to acquire the most recent data on earthquakes and volcanoes worldwide. Objectives The student is able to: Use the Internet to locate data for recent earthquake and volcanic activity. Use a GIS to map data acquired from the Internet. Compare the pattern of recent earthquake and volcanic events with the patterns of seismic events in the past. Identify world regions and cities where human populations face the greatest threat from current seismic events. 1.1. Locate earthquake data on the WWW The Web is a great source for geographic data. In this step, you will go to the US Geological Survey (USGS) website to find earthquake data. Open your web browser and go to the USGS National Earthquake Information Center at: http://gldss7.cr.usgs.gov/neis/epic/epic.html For search area, select Global (Worldwide) For output File Type, select Spreadsheet format (comma delimited) For search Parameters, select USGS/NEIC (PDE) 1973-Present. For Optional Search Parameters, type the following range of dates: 2004 Starting Year 01 Starting Month 01 Starting Day 2005 Ending Year 12 Ending Month 31 Ending Day Set the Minimum Magnitude to 7 and Maximum Magnitude to 10. Do not type any values for Depth or Intensity. Click Submit Search. 1.2 Prepare data for ArcMap Use your mouse to highlight and select all the data shown. Be sure to include the field names, but do not include other text on the Web page. From the Edit menu, select Copy. Open the Notepad Program. From the Edit menu, choose Paste. 1
Delete the (hhmmss.mm)utc section of the Time column heading. Shorten Latitude to Lat, Longitude to Long and Magnitude to Mag. Save this file as a text file and name it Quake05.txt. Exit the Notepad program and minimize your web browser. You will use the Latitude and Longitude coordinates in this text file to create a new layer of point features that indicate the locations of the earthquakes. 1.3 Start ArcMap and open a map document. Start ArcMap Open the Adv2.mxd map document from your VizWkshp\Mod2 folder. When the map document opens, you see a world map. Two layers are turned on (Continents and Ocean). 1.4 Add x,y data to the map From the Tools menu, choose Add XY data. The Add XY Data dialog appears. Near the top of the dialog under Choose a table from the map or browse for another table, click the Browse button. The Add dialog appears. In the Add dialog, navigate to the location of Quake05.txt and click Add. Confirm that the X Field is set to Long. Click the Y Field down arrow and choose Lat from the list. 2
Click OK to create a new layer from the data in Quake05.txt. Quake 05.txt Events appears in the Table of Contents. Note: When you add geographic locations in the form of x,y coordinates to your map, these geographic locations are referred to as events. Examine the new layer to see where recent earthquakes have occurred. Because ArcMap randomly selects a symbol color, the layer may be difficult to see. Change the symbol color to see the points better. In the Table of Contents, right-click Quake05.txt Events, point to Data, and click Export data. In the Export data dialog, confirm that export is set to All Features. Choose Use the same Coordinate System as the data frame. Near the bottom of the dialog, under output shape file or feature class, click the Browse button. The Saving Data dialog appears. At the bottom of the Saving Data dialog, click the Save as Type down arrow and choose personal Geodatabase features classes. Navigate to the World 2 geodatabase (VizWkshp\Mod2\Data\World2.mdb). Name the feature class according to your initials and the dates of the earthquake data. For example, if your initials are ABC and the data covers 2004-2005, name the feature class ABC_quake0405. Click Save then click OK. Click Yes when you are asked if you want to add the exported data to the map as a layer. Remove the Quake05.txt Events from the Table of Contents. Now Save your map document. It is recommended that you save your map document as ABC_Adv2 where your initials are ABC. 3
1.5 Locate and format volcano data. You will now follow a different data processing procedure to collect and map volcano data. Restore your web browser and go the Weekly Volcanic Activity report produced by the Smithsonian and USGS at: http://www.volcano.si.edu/gvp/reports/usgs Open each link for New Activity and Ongoing Activity. Record the data for 5 volcanoes as directed on your volcano data sheet (see handout). Next, open the Notepad program. Use the information on your volcano data sheet to create a comma-delimited file. When creating this file, be sure to eliminate all spaces! Convert all south latitudes and west longitudes to negative numbers. For date of activity, use the date the volcano first began erupting. See example for guidelines: Save this file as a text file and name it Volcano06.txt. Follow the procedures outlined in the previous steps for adding the earthquake data to create a Volcano06.txt point layer on your map. You will need to select Volcano06.txt in the Add XY Data dialog. Follow the procedures outlined in the steps with the earthquake data to convert the Volcano06.txt Events layer to a feature class in the World2 geodatabase. (VizWkshp\Mod2\Data\World2.mdb). Name the feature class according to your initials and the dates of the volcano data. For example, if you initials are ABC and the data covers 2006, name the feature class ABC_Volcano06. 4
Remove the Volcano06.txt Events layer from the map document and Save your map document again. Now, turn off the continents layer. Now Add the volcanoes, earthquakes_all, and plates_line layers from: VizWkshp\Mod2\Data\World2.mdb\. Do you see any patterns emerging based on the small sample of earthquakes and volcanoes we have selected and mapped? How does our sample set of data compare to the greater number of earthquakes and volcanoes? 1.6. Explore the data You may also explore the data you have mapped by reclassifying the data points in a variety of ways: earthquake magnitude, earthquake depth, or date of most recent volcanic eruption. Right-click the Quake layer and select Properties from the drop-down box. Click the Symbology tab. On the left, you ll see Show: Quantities. Select Graduated Symbols. Under Fields, change the value to Mag and using 5 classes examine the relative magnitudes of these earthquakes. Use the Identify tool to finds the locations, dates, and magnitudes of the recent catastrophic earthquakes in Indonesia (tsunami) and Pakistan. Where did the largest earthquakes in your sample occur? Were any of the largest earthquakes near cities and what is the population of those at risk? Identify them. 1.7. Map your observations and save the map document. Now, switch to the layout view. Right-click in the white space of the map and select change layout. Select LetterLandscape. Create a Layout and title it Earthquake Hot Spots, 2004-2005. The following items in your map are generally required on maps: Title, Legend, Map Scale, North Arrow, Author of Map, Date of Map creation, and Data Sources. You may edit these elements by double-clicking each on the map. Go to File > Export Map to Save your map as an image (.jpg) to take with you. 5
Part 2. Global Environmental Science and Issues Lesson Overview As a way of measuring how well countries are doing in terms of environmental sustainability, international agencies often collect data on indicators of their performance. Indicators are measures used to represent qualities that are not directly measurable, such as ecological friendliness. Countries around the globe practicing good environmental stewardship can be determined using various environmental, social, and political spatial data as indicators. Indicators are usually aggregated to create summary measures or rankings of good or poor performance. This exercise examines the relationships between environmental indicators and global climate change. Objectives The student is able to: Use spatial data of environmental indicators. Compare maps of climate change predictive models (Canadian and Hadley) at both the global and local scale. Observe and analyze population growth by looking at the natural increase of different countries. Examine the relationship between population growth and access to water in developing countries. 2.1 Global Maps: Vehicle Concentration and CO 2 Start ArcMap Open the Region5.mxd map document from your VizWkshp\Mod4 folder. When the map document opens, you see a world map and reference to Population Growth and Standard of Living Indicators. Before we examine these themes, we want to make maps that show the following 2 themes: global CO 2 emissions and the number of cars per country. 6
To do so, we first need to add a table of environmental indicators. Use the Add button to add the esi.dbf table. Try right-clicking this file and examine its contents. Note it is a spreadsheet of environmental indicators downloaded from the web. Now, we want to join this table to our global map. Right-click countries.shp and select Join. We want to join the esi.dbf based on the column name GMI_CNTRY at the top and ISO3CODE at the bottom. Click OK. Now we are able to associate this data with spatial reference. Now, right-click the countries layer and select properties. Go to Symbology to select Quantities > Graduated Colors on the left. Under Value select CO2PC. A problem with international data sets is that there are several countries without data collected for their country. So, we need to fix this by changing the values listed under Range. Type in the following numbers as you go: 0.1, 2, 4, 10, 70. Change the first Label (0) to No Data. Click Apply and OK. We now want to compare this theme with the amount of cars per country. Therefore, we need to copy and paste another of the Countries.shp shapefile. Right-click countries and select copy and then up to the Edit menu and paste. We should now have 2 data layers to work with. We need to change the values in the second data layer in a similar manner. In the symbology, change the value to CARSKM. Change the Range values to the following: 0.1, 5, 15, 50, 4000. Change the labels so that the first label is No Data and the last is > 50. What conclusions can be drawn about carbon dioxide emissions and density of cars? Write another question that you might explore on this topic with GIS. This data was developed in conjunction with the organization CIESIN. What is this place and what do they do? http://www.ciesin.org. Data for this exercise came from ESI found at http://www.yale.edu/esi/ 7
2.2 Global Climate Change Now let s explore the global climate change data. In particular, let s compare the two climate change models. Switch to the Layout View. Examine the differences in the projected values for the Hadley and the Canadian models. Which one projects a more severe change in climate? Why do you think such large differences occur? Now, let s look at this dataset in more detail. Add the following data layers to your project: HCS.shp from the VizWkshp/ClimateModels folder. First we will create a thematic map of the Hadley climate model showing Temperature Predictions for the year 2020. Double click on the layer name HCS.shp to open up the Layer properties. Click Quantities > Graduated colors. Then select T20 under Value. Under Classification on the right side of the box, set the number of classes to 6. Create a new color ramp by clicking the dropdown arrow. We now have a layer of cells colored by the values in the database. In this case the values of the cells are predicted change in temperature in degrees Centigrade for the year 2020. Now lets make the country boundaries layers visible so we have a better understanding of were the cells are located. Right-click the HCS layer and Select Properties. Then click the Display Tab. Make this layer 50% transparent. Click OK. Then change the countries layer to Features > Single Symbol and click the box in the center. Change the Fill color to No Color. Be sure to also turn off the ocean layer. Now use your Pan and Zoom tools to explore different regions. We can also look at the temperature changes for the years 2050 and 2080. To do this, reclassify the grid using the T50S and the T80S variables. Next, take a look at the predicted precipitation change using the variables P20S, P50S or P80S. Save your project by going to File/Save Project and Saving as Region4ABC.mxd using your initials. In the last step we will add the boundaries of the states to take a closer look at what the predicted changes mean for the greater North Carolina region. 8
Add the following layers from VizWkshp\ClimateModels folder: NCcounties.shp and USstates.shp. What effects are predicted for the North Carolina region over the next 80 years? Which places in the US are expected to have the greatest changes according to the Hadley and Canadian climate change models? 2.3 Population Growth and Water Resources We will now turn our attention to the global problem of access to water. We want to make a map of projected population growth and compare it to a map of water stress, a measure of the degree of difficulty in providing an adequate water supply. The world s population is growing because there are more births than deaths each year. This fact can be expressed as a simple formula: Birth rate = BR and Death rate = - DR BR- DR = NIR (Natural Increase rate) This table from the US Census Bureau shows the number of births, deaths, and rate of natural increase for the world population for 2004. Click the box next to Birth rate to turn on the layer. This layer shows the number of births for every one thousand people in a country. Which world region or regions have the highest or lowest birth rates? Turn on the Death Rate layer by clicking the box to the left of its name. Which world region or regions have the highest or lowest death rates? Compare these 2 themes: If the overall rate of growth is based on the formula BR-DR = NRI, which world regions do you think are growing the fastest? Which world regions do you think are growing the slowest? You can use the Identify tool to learn more about the birth and death rates of specific countries. Click the Identify tool and choose Birth rate form the layers list in the Identify 9
results window. Move your cursor over an African country where the birth rate is very high. Click the country. Your Identify results window should look similar to the one above. As you scroll down the list you see attribute field names in one column and attribute values in another. The birth rate field is abbreviated as BRTHRATE and the death rate abbreviated as DTHRATE. In the example above, Niger has a birth rate of 51.45 births per 1,000 living people, and a death rate of 23.17 deaths per 1,000 living people. List 3 questions the birth rate and death rate maps raise in your mind on the answer sheet handout. You can test your predictions of the fastest and slowest growing regions by calculating the Natural Increase based on these data. This layer will show the yearly increase in population those results from the difference between the births and deaths in each country. Like the birth and death rate, the numbers for natural increase are expressed as a rate per 1,000 population. To explore these relationships we ll work with the PopDataset shapefile found in the VizWkshp folder. Add this file from the workshop folder. Right-click and open the attribute table. Working with this table is similar to working with Excel spreadsheets. We want to add 2 new columns: the projected population growth in 2005 based on Natural Increase Rate and the percent increase in population this growth represents. At the bottom of the table click the Options button and select Add field. Under Name type 05Pop and Type is Float. Precision and Scale are both 10. Next right-click this column and select calculate values then click Yes to Edit this table. Using the calculator use the following formula to calculate the predicted 2005 population: (([BRTHRATE] - [DTHRATE]) * [PopPerThou]) + [TOT_POP] Next, we ll add another field to calculate the percent increase in population. Follow the same steps as above, but label this column PercentIncr. Use the following formula to calculate this value: (([05Pop] - [TOT_POP]) / [TOT_POP] ) * 100 When finished we can sort these values to see which is growing fastest and slowest. Rightclick PercentIncr and select Sort Ascending. Examine the following: Which world region is growing the fastest? Which world region is growing the slowest? Think about what it would mean for a country to have a population that is growing rapidly or one that is growing slowly. Which of these 2 possibilities (fast growth or slow growth) do you think would case more problems within the country? On the answer sheet, briefly list some of the problems you would expect to see. Note: the actual growth of an individual country is based on its natural increase plus the net migration of people into or out of that country each year. 10
Lastly, let s compare these rates of growth with an environmental indicator called water stress. Double-click the countries shapefile we have worked with previously and under Symbology, change the Value to WATSTR to make a choropleth map. Let s change these Range values to 5, 20, 35, 50, 100. What conclusions can be drawn about water and population in Africa? List a question you might further explore on this topic with GIS. Conclusion Once students are comfortable with using the program you can expand your explorations. Have students create and compare maps using Hadley and Canadian data sets. Students can do research on the methods behind the development of the models to find out why they differ. Have students discuss some of the potential flaws in the models, especially the limitations of applying a global model to a relatively small area such as the North Carolina region. These data and the ArcMap program can be a great tool for the study of climate change. Have students discuss what other data layers would be useful to bring into the project. See if you can have them find some of these layers on the Internet and use them in their projects. Demographic maps can supplement a great many lessons from social studies to mathematics. Try combining the demographic information with the climate change prediction data and making hypothesis on impacts of climate change on the region. Math teachers can use the data to discuss different ways to classify and display large datasets. The maps you create using these data can become a springboard for group discussions on the interrelationship between politics, demography, environmental science and public policy. Spatial Data Units used: Global CO2 emissions (million metric tons per capita) Global Car Density (number of cars per populated km) Water Stress (percent of country where demand exceeds supply) These exercises are adapted from: Malone, L., Palmer, A.M., and Voigt, C.L. (2005) Mapping Our World: GIS Lessons for Educators. Redlands, CA: ESRI Press. Metropolitan East Coast Assessment Educators Pack. http://metroeast_climate.ciesin.columbia.edu/edumod.html Badurek, C.A. (2005) GIS Lab Manual. Department of Geography and Planning, Appalachian State University. 11