PPM 522 | Introduction to ArcGIS

Course Description

“An introduction to the ArcGIS software, stressing basic operation of this popular GIS package. Topics covered include system navigation, data display, data download, and printing public domain and user-created geographical data sets.”—Muskie School of Public Service Course Guide

Highlighted Work | Darling Marine Center Maps

The University of Maine Darling Marine Center is the University of Maine’s marine science laboratory located in South Bristol, Maine on the shores of the Damariscotta River approximately two-and-a-half hours from the University’s primary campus in Orono. The campus sits on the former site of the Ira C. Darling and Willett farms encompassing more than 180 acres and was established in 1965.

Since the campus was established all the original farm buildings have continued to be utilized to this day as new infrastructure has been added. The campus now includes over thirty structures including flowing sea water, geology and chemistry laboratories, classrooms, offices, storage and maintenance facilities, and over a hundred beds in housing structures that include a dormitory, farmhouses, apartments and cabins. The campus supports approximately fifty to sixty faculty, students and staff year-round. This population grows to well over a hundred during the summer months and is sustained at over eighty during the fall semester when the facility hosts the University of Maine School of Marine Sciences Semester by the Sea program. The faculty, students and staff at the Darling Marine Center and the public make good use of the campus infrastructure including the miles of trail that spread from Ira Darling Road that splits the main campus down the middle.

The Darling Marine Center has been utilizing the same trail map (Darling Marine Center) since the early 2000’s and has been utilizing a campus map (Darling Marine Center) from the same era.  Since the creation of these maps infrastructure and trails have been added to the campus and changes in professional marketing and graphic design standards have changed.

Analysis and Data Creation

The purpose for each map is distinctly different, the trail map to be utilized for recreation and education purposes while the campus map is oriented toward getting visitors to specific pieces of infrastructure on the campus. Despite their differences both revised maps will need to have much of the same data including polygons indicating the locations of building and parking lots, and lines indicating campus property boundaries and roads. While some of this data is included in existing maps available through ArcGIS Online, Living Atlas or through Maine State GIS resources, none of it exists in one location and some of it does not exist at all. In addition, the data previously discussed that will be needed for both maps the trail map also required polygons indicating the location of fields and the line data for each of the trails.

All data for this project was initially complied into one map that included all data to be utilized for the final map layouts and was completed in ArcGIS Pro version 2.7.2. New features were created on new feature layers in the map utilizing the Ersi (2020) Imagery basemap as a reference layer. Using the imagery basemap new features in the form of polygons and lines were created to indicate the location of campus roadways, parking lots, fields, buildings and piers. Where appropriate data about each element was added to the attribute table so that it could later be utilized to label each element on the final layouts.

Most of the data indicating the paths of each of the campus trails had already been created by Todd Douglass (2017) a University of Maine forestry graduate student whose thesis included creating a document called Forest Management Plan: The Darling Marine Center Forest. As part of the products that were delivered to the Darling Marine Center Douglass included the shapefiles for the trails that run throughout the campus. These shapefiles were not perfect and required some editing of both the line features as well as the attribute table to correctly identify each line. Many of these trails needed to be adjusted to accurately represent their current paths and many required being joined or separated to accurately depict the trail nomenclature and blazes that are physically utilized on each trail.

The biggest challenge in creating the final maps was not editing or creating the data that was going to be displayed, it was finding appropriate basemaps to display the data on. Because of the various types of data that needed to be displayed it was important to have a plain basemap that didn’t have existing roads, buildings and other features. However, all of the typical basemaps that would fit this description didn’t have the detail to accurately display the coastline of the Darling Marine Center campus, resulting in trails that appeared to float on the ocean.

In trying to find a basemap that would work for this set of maps I came close in identifying a vector map produced by the Maine Department of Transportation, Natural Resource Base Style (n.d), but ultimately this also had too many incorporated layers and I was unable to find a single solution that would work. I was able to utilize multiple data sources to create full set of data that had a positive result. By combining Ersi Hydro Reference Overlay (2020), Ersi World Hillshade (2020), Maine elevation Contours 20 Feet Layer (2020), and Darling Maine Center property boundaries from Maine Parcels Organized Tiles (2021), I was able to create a base for the data to be displayed upon with positive results.

Outcome

Once all the data was combined into one map, two more maps were created from the original, a trail map and a campus map. The individual layers needed for each of these unique products were copied to their respective maps and then layouts were created. Due to graphic design standards that are implemented by the University of Maine and the Darling Marine Center, the final layouts for each of the products was not created in ArcGIS Pro which does not include the required fonts and other fine control needed to meet institutional standards.

Crude layouts were created in ArcGIS Pro and, depending on the needs of the final layout, included map frames, legends, north arrows, bar scales, and in some cases element labels. The ArcGIS Pro layouts were exported as images and then utilized in Adobe InDesign to create the final layouts that meet institutional branding guidelines for the printers and online distribution.

Future Opportunities for Expansion of Project

Though the final products, trail and campus maps were needed, and the results of this work accomplished the direct needs of the organization there are still some areas where this work could be expanded.

The Darling Marine Center campus trails are utilized by a wide audience from families with toddlers and school groups, to senior citizens walking their dogs. More accurate information on the difficulty of trails and terrain would be helpful. In the near future, I hope to continue working on these maps to include trail lengths and information on trail elevation profiles to help people better judge the difficulty of each section of trail. As many of these users often utilize multiple trails in one visit it would also be interesting to see if there is way to utilize ArcGIS tools to identify the best combination of trails to follow in succession to achieve the greatest length loop for users who are looking to specifically engage in exercise.

The campus map will likely work well as developed, and is a great improvement over the dated, pixelated, and inaccurate version it replaced. However, with most people attached to their internet connected devices it would be great to make this a more useful web-based map with a directory that is linked to individual map features providing people with clear up to date and accurate information on campus infrastructure. Similarly, it would be great to utilize this data to create a “story map” tour of the Darling Marine Center Campus that could be utilized as a sales tool to orient potential visitors to the organization’s infrastructure, amenities and capabilities.

References

Darling Marine Center. DMC Campus Map. Accessed from dmc.umaine.edu on April 14, 2021

Darling Marine Center. DMC Trail Map. Accessed from dmc.umaine.edu on April 14, 2021

Douglass, Todd (2017). Trail Shape Files from: Forest Management Plan: The Darling Marine Center Forest. University of Maine.

Ersi (2020). Esri Hydro Reference Overlay (July 22, 2020). https://tiles.arcgis.com/tiles/P3ePLMYs2RVChkJx/arcgis/rest/services/Esri_Hydro_Reference_Overlay/MapServer

Ersi (2020). Imagery (June 30, 2020). https://www.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=86de95d4e0244cba80f0fa2c9403a7b2

Ersi (2020). World Hillshade (WGS84) (August 13, 2020). https://whi.maptiles.arcgis.com/arcgis/rest/services/World_Hillshade/MapServer

Maine Department of Transportation. Natural Resource Base Style. Accessed via ArcGIS Online. https://www.arcgis.com/sharing/rest/content/items/3bfd999688e0455fb9d7d6b7275a1925/resources/styles/root.json

State of Maine (2020). Maine Elevation Contours 20 feet Layer. Accessed from https://maine.hub.arcgis.com/datasets/ba4a9 1c8cbde4febaa43f2f0051de62f on April 27, 2021

State of Maine (2020). Maine Parcels Organized Towns (South Bristol, Maine tile) (March 16, 2021). https://www.maine.gov/geolib/download_parcel_by_town.html