Jennifer's GIS Blog

 I'm working on updating the St. Michael's Cemetery GIS data , with the eventual plan to create a new interface that will work better. Hopefully, the new map will be more searchable and will have a greater amount of information. Part of this process has been finding and adding information to the plot boundaries.  I've also identified a number of graves that were not recorded in the initial survey as well as the locations of some features being incorrect. This project is going to take more time than I had initially hoped due to the volume of errors that I had not realized was present.

 This week's readings and requirements really led me to see that while GIS is broadly used within multiple sectors of Anthropology and Archaeology, these are not areas that are highlighted by ESRI. I don't understand why this is the case. Many, many Archaeology jobs especialy in the Cultural Resource Management system, require at least familiarity if not proficiency in GIS. Some larger firms have GIS departments, but often those are staffed by experienced Archaeologists.  A quick survey of a dozen or more archaeology jobs found close to 75% included a requirement of some GIS knowledge.

 For my internship, I will focus on updating the GIS data for St. Michael's Cemetery to create a publishable dataset, as well as developing an updated GIS Web Application. Currently, the Cemetery GIS map is accessible in a webmap builder that has ended support, so the internship effort will feature moving the map to the new Experience Builder. This work will be done as part of my current job with the University of West Florida Archaeology Institute I'm a member of the Women in GIS user group, which has had excellent learning opportunities for members, from preparing for GISP certification. They offer virtual office hours as well as standing community of practice meetings across multiple industry sectors.  Membership is geared towards women and allies of women in the GIS workplace.  

  Vector data is generally not inherently tied to a scale, but it can be affected by the scale and resolution of the raster data it is derived from. It is important also to consider how data is going to be displayed when determining what kind of vector data (point, line & polygon) is appropriate for displaying a certain type of scale. This may involve simplification, aggregation or omission of data depending on the purpose of the map. Scale is much more significant when it comes to raster data where the resolution of the raster is predetermined by the size of the cell. The lower the resolution the larger the cell size and the less detailed a raster may be. For Blog question 2, please see the submitted document, not posted publicly for professional reasons.

 Understanding water quality across an area as dynamic as Tampa Bay often requires transforming discrete sample points into a continuous surface. This process, known as interpolation , allows us to visualize trends and identify potential areas of concern. However, not all interpolation methods are created equal, and their underlying approaches can significantly impact the resulting surface. The inclusion of a mask improves results significantly as seen in the spline examples below Technique Minimum Maximum Average Standard Deviation Non-spatial 0.8 3.5 1.81 0.567 Thiessen 0.8 3.5 1.80 0.46 IDW 0.8 3.5 1.80 0.32 Spline - Regularized -5.5 25.8 1.82 1.88 Spline - Tension -2.7 3.9 1.80 0.50 Spline-Regularized Masked -2.7 3.9 1.80 0.5 Spline - Tension Masked -1.3 3.8 1.66 0.70 Based on these metrics the Spline tension masked gives the best result.

This week's lab focused on exploring various elevation tools, covering everything from visualizing elevation to generating contours and analyzing elevation data. The ski slope suitability map was a particularly relevant exercise for archaeology. The methodology for creating this map is very similar to how we perform archaeological site modeling. While the variables we use differ—we typically incorporate factors like proximity to fresh water sources and soil preferences—the underlying analytical process is essentially the same. This type of analysis allows us to predict the location of potential archaeological sites by mapping areas that meet specific criteria known to have been important to past human populations.