Lab 4: Vector Analysis

 

This map shows potential campsites in De Soto National Forest near Hattiesburg, Mississippi that are within 150 meters of a lake, 500 meters of a river, 300 meters of a road, and are not within designated conservation areas. The color gradient indicates the darkest color as the area with largest amount of potential campsites in hectares.

Using the water and road data, I created buffers around the lake, rivers, and road data. From there, using the overlay tools, I created a union. To do this, I first created a new filed in the attribute tables of the water buffer and and road buffer layers and used the field calculator to assign a 1 value to all the areas that were within the buffer. Once this new union layer was created, I used a Selected by Attribute query to selected only the features that were assigned a 1 value, meaning they are within the buffer areas. This data was then exported to create a new feature class. All other layers were removed from the map except the Water, Road, and the Buffer Union Export layers. To ensure the potential campsites displayed on the map were not within conservation areas, I added a layer showing all the conservation areas in the park. I used the Erase tool where the conservations area layer was the erase feature which removed all areas where the two areas overlapped. The above map is the result of these criteria.