For my final project,
I chose to do a map on something of interest to me. I decided to look into the
mapping of hurricanes. I will map the intensity of hurricanes that made
landfall on some part of the United States in 2005. I chose this because
outside of class most of my friends and family know me as a weather nerd, so
following hurricanes and tracking events such as snowstorms and tornadoes are a
true interest of mine.
My intended audience
is our GGS 310 class and anyone else who looks at my blog. I hope to display
the information in a way that someone who is not in the discipline of Geography
will understand what the map is about. I figure the best way to show my data
and for people to see the intensity difference is to do a proportional symbol
map. I hope to find a symbol like the one they use on the weather channel to
show the projected path of hurricanes that are a threat to the United States.
The base map I will need
I would have to get from ArcGIS; showing a map of the states I need. Considering
most Atlantic hurricanes start off the Coast of Africa and end up in the Gulf
of Mexico, I would need the states from the Gulf as well as the states on the
Eastern Seaboard. Due to water
temperature at the peak of hurricane season, some hurricanes take a turn around
the Florida coast and head up the East coast.
My data set comes
from the National Hurricane Center. I decided to go back to 2005 because there
is a difference in the number of hurricanes and the intensity of the hurricanes
so it will give my map some variation. The size of my data isn’t too large but
it is somewhat complex, due to all of the different lines crossing paths of
pervious hurricanes. Finding which hurricane path is which is going to take
some time but the intensities when they make landfall are easy to figure out.
As far as production
goes, I ideally would like to have most of the mapping done before we go into
Thanksgiving. I don’t want to map all of the data in case you all find some
something during final critiques because I don’t want to have to start all over
either. I think having lab time in class is going to be helpful as well and
should keep me on track for finishing most before going into the holiday
instead of having it hanging over me.
I face similar
challenges as with my first proportional symbol map. Making sure my legend
shows the data set well so that others who aren’t in this class know what each
symbol size means. The other challenge I face is in terms of mapping: do I just
map where the storm makes landfall or do I map its track as well? If I map the
track as well how do I make that different from the map that is on the National
hurricane website?
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