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GISA01
Cartography and Map Projections
2.1. Purpose
When working with geographical data it is very common that you use data from several
sources with the data often having different projections, coordinate systems and/or
reference systems. In order to integrate data layers, some of it might have to be
transformed to make all of the data geometrically compatible. Transforming geographical
data often involves complicated mathematical calculations.
Advanced GIS software applications include tools for transformation between different
projections. Much software also include tools to transform between different geodetic
reference systems where empirical parameters are either defined by the user or
predefined.
The aim of this exercise is to provide you with an introduction to map projections. More
specifically, you will learn the following:
- What map projections are.
- How the shape and properties of a land surface area on a map changes depending on
the map projection.
- How to choose the most appropriate projection for a certain area or application.
- What parameters that are required for different types of map projections and how they
should be interpreted.
- Projection operations in ArcGIS.
Note: You can find tips and tricks in the manual How to in ArcGIS located in
Course Information on the course homepage. There is for instance a section,
Coordinate Systems in ArcGIS, that might come in handy for this exercise. The
manual was written for ArcGIS 9.2 but it is in almost all cases also valid for
ArcGIS 9.3 as well.
2.2. Data
In Moodle, you can find a zip-file with the name DATA2_Cartography_and_Projections.
Download and save the file to your computer and use WinZip to unzip the files. The
unzipped files contain the following data over Canada:
Canada Shapefile: .shp, .shx, .dbf, .prj. Coordinates in lat, long with reference
system WGS84.
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Cartography and Map Projections
Can_cities Shapefile: .shp, .shx, .dbf .prj. Coordinates in lat, long with reference
system WGS84.
Create a folder in your local working directory with the name 2_Cart_projections (e.g.
C:\GISA01\Practical\2_Cart_projections). It is recommended that you keep an organized
file structure on your computer.
2.3. Background
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Cartography and Map Projections
Transversal cylindrical
Cylindrical projection Conical Azimuthal
projection
(normal)
Cylinder touches the Cylinder touches a Cone touches a Plane touches one point
Earths equator central meridian standard parallel
Since the Earth is basically round and maps are flat, the process of flattening the Earth
will inevitably cause distortions in some of the metric properties area, distance and angle.
No map projection can preserve all of these metric properties and as a result, all flat maps
are distorted to some degree. Distortions are always at a minimum where the projection
surface tangents the Earth. Fortunately, you can choose from many different map
projections, each distinguished by its suitability for representing a particular part of the
Earth's surface and by its ability to preserve metric properties, mainly area or angles.
Some map projections minimize distortion in one property at the expense of another,
while others strive to balance the overall distortion. As a mapmaker, you can decide
which of the properties that you find most important and choose a projection that suits
your needs.
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Cartography and Map Projections
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Cartography and Map Projections
ArcMap uses a projection process called on-the-fly projection that temporally transforms
layers to the coordinate system of the layer added first. On the fly projection is only
temporary and does not affect the original coordinates in the data file.
Sweden
The central meridian has the longitude coordinate value 15 48 29.8 (15 degrees, 48
minutes, 29.8 which equals approximately 15.81 decimal degrees). The unit of the plane
coordinate system is meters. The rest of the parameters defining RT90 can be found in
the table below.
Parameter RT90
Unit: Meters
Datum: RT90
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Cartography and Map Projections
2.5. Method
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Cartography and Map Projections
Scale
Coordinates
It is possible to change units of the displayed coordinates in the bottom right corner.
- Open the data frame properties dialog box by right clicking the data frame
. The Data Frame Properties dialog window appears.
- Click the General tab and choose a different Display unit and then click OK to
apply.
Notice the change in units at the bottom right when moving the cursor over the map
display window.
- Change display units back to Decimal Degrees.
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Cartography and Map Projections
Both Canada and Can_cities are located under the same data frame, which means that
these two layers have a common coordinate system (projection). ArcMap sets coordinate
system (projection) of the data frame to be the same as that of the first added layer. Other
layers added afterwards will be transformed on-the-fly to the current coordinate system of
the data frame if necessary. If the first layer does not have a coordinate system, ArcMap
sets the coordinate system of data frame to Unknown.
Question 2.1: Why are Decimal Degrees set as map units in the Data Frame
Properties?
- Save a map document in your working folder by clicking File > Save as in the
main menu. Give it the name Projections.mxd and make sure to double-check
that you really saved it at the right place.
In the scale drop down menu you can either choose one of the options in the drop down
menu or you can specify a custom scale by typing and pressing Enter. This is basically
yet another way to zoom in or out in the map display window.
- At scale, type 1:500000000 and press Enter. Also try 1:50000000000 and
notice the changed extent in the display window.
Now lets locate the cities or towns Whitehorse and Schefferville and find out what their
latitude and longitude coordinates are. We will use the attribute table to locate the cities.
- Right click on Can_cities in the TOC and choose to Open Attribute Table.
- Select one of the two cities in the attribute table and zoom in on them in the
display window.
Tip: When one or several features are selected you can zoom in on them by
clicking Selection > Zoom to Selected Features in the main menu.
- Now click the Identify tool and click on the city you zoomed in on. View the
details of the city in the Identify results window.
Notice that the Identify Results window also shows you the coordinates of the selected
object. There is also an option to show coordinates in different units by clicking the tiny
arrow button to the right of Location coordinates box.
- Change units in the Identify results window to Degrees Decimal Minutes and
answer the question below.
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When you place your cursor over one of the boxes, the cursors symbol changes to a
double-headed arrow. When this happens it is possible to change the size of the map.
Placing the cursor inside the map allows you to move it.
- Change the size of the data frame by dragging the small boxes. Make the data
frame square, about the 1/6 the size of the whole page and move it to the upper-
left corner.
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Cartography and Map Projections
- Click Finish and finally OK in the Data Frame Properties dialog window.
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When you activate or select a map or data frame by clicking on it in the Layout View (the
small boxes around it becomes visible), the corresponding data frame is also activated or
selected in the TOC (indicated with bold letters). You can also activate a data frame in
the TOC by right clicking the data frame name and selecting Activate from the context
menu.
As opposed to Layout View, you can only view one data frame at a time in Data View.
However, you can toggle between different data frames in Data View by activating them.
Note: You can sometimes encounter graphical glitches in Layout View that
cause map elements to not be properly displayed. If this happens, switching
over to Data View and then back to Layout View again normally solves the
problem.
If by clicking, dragging or moving action your maps get different sizes you can change
them to the same size by following the steps below.
- Click first on the map which size you want to change to select it. Press SHIFT
and then click on the map to which size you want the first one to change to.
This procedure selects both maps but they must be selected in this order.
- When both maps are selected, right click on one of them and select Distribute >
Make Same Size.
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Cartography and Map Projections
Notice how the shape of Canada changed dramatically. Also note that the data frame has
a new name in the TOC.
- Open the Data Frame Properties dialog window again and take a more
thorough look at the information in the Coordinate System tab.
Take a look at the info in the upper part of the dialog box in Current coordinate system.
These are parameter settings for the chosen map projection. Lets try to interpret them.
Also, look at the map window and try to locate the central meridian and standard parallels
by using your cursor.
- Central Meridian: -96.0. This is the longitude (96 W) where the projection is
centered. In this case it is in the middle of Canada.
- Standard Parallel 1: 50 and Standard Parallel 2: 70. These are the parallels (50 N
and 70 N) where the cone touches or tangents the Earth.
- Latitude of Origin: 40. This is the origin of the plane coordinate system in north/south
direction (40 N).
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Cartography and Map Projections
- False Easting: 0. There are no added or subtracted values to the East/West plane
coordinate values.
- False Northing: 0. There are no added or subtracted values to the North/South plane
coordinates.
A conic projection is appropriate for Canada as the country is located on mid latitudes
and covers a large area extended in east to west direction. Since this is the basic type
where the projection surface gets as close as possible to the globe where Canada is
located. The projection is centered in the middle of the area which is to be mapped. The
cone touches the globe along parallels distributed evenly in North/South direction over
the area to be mapped.
You now have Canada projected in the first projection Albers Equal Area Conic
projection.
- Save your map document. Continue to do this regularly so you dont loose what
you have done so far.
Now, you will repeat the procedure of projecting and naming the other data frames in
your Layout View.
- Open the Data Frame Properties dialog window for the upper right frame.
- Change the name of the data frame to Lambert Conformal Conic in the General
tab.
- In the tab Coordinate System, choose Predefined > Projected Coordinate
System > Continental > North America > Canada Lambert Conformal Conic.
- Click Apply and OK. Ignore the warning message as before by clicking Yes.
Now continue with the other three data frames using the following data frame names and
map projections:
- Data Frame 4:
- Name: Mercator.
- Coordinate system: Predefined > Projected Coordinate System > World >
Mercator (World).
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Cartography and Map Projections
- Data Frame 5:
- Name: UTM.
- Coordinate system: Predefined > Projected Coordinate System > UTM > WGS
1984 > WGS 1984 UTM Zone 15N.
- Data Frame 6:
- Name: Orthographic.
- Coordinate system: Predefined > Projected Coordinate System > World > The
world from space.
You may have to adjust the extent of some of the data frames in order to view the whole
of Canada. Make sure to set the scale to 1:150000000 again afterwards.
If needed you can pan the data using Pan in the Tools toolbar just as you would in
Data View.
If you want you can also change the colour of Canada in the different maps to distinguish
the different projections. To do this, just click on the symbol below Canada in the TOC
for each of the data frames. Your layout should look similar to the figure below.
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Cartography and Map Projections
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Cartography and Map Projections
globe). The conformal projection makes all angles (and thereby shapes) locally correct,
but the areas in the map will not be accurate according to scale.
Finally take a look at Albers Equal-Area Conic projection. This projection gives true
values for areas (according to scale) and is suitable for area calculations. Remember that
a map can never be both conformal and equal-area at the same time.
Question 2.3: For each of the five projections, which metric properties do the
projections have? Combine projections and metric properties correctly. Note that
some of the following alternatives might not be appropriate at all!
A, Albers Equal Area Conic I, Conformal VI, Cylinder
Question 2.4: For each of the five projections, which projection surface does the
projection have? Note that some of the following alternatives might not be
appropriate at all!
A, Albers Equal Area Conic I, Conic VI, Ellipsoidal
E, Orthographic V, Conformal
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Cartography and Map Projections
Question 2.5: At which meridian does UTM zone 15 have its tangent (central
meridian)?
Question 2.6: Which UTM zone should you choose to depict Yukon, the Territory
where the city of Whitehorse is located, as accurate as possible? You can use the
global UTM zone map on the last page to solve this question.
Question 2.7: Give an example of the usage of each of the projections listed in
question 2.3 and 2.4.
Imagine that you are put to the task of inventorying Canadian forests and that you would
have to do some area calculations.
- Save your map document by clicking File > Save and then create a new one by
clicking File > New.
Question 2.10: What are the latitudes for the standard parallels in the predefined
Canada Albers Equal Area Conic projection? Why do you think these latitudes are
chosen?
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Cartography and Map Projections
- Make three new data frames through using Copy and Paste. Name them B, C
and D respectively.
- Go to Layout View. Distribute the data frames evenly on the layout page and
give them the same size and scale.
You will now keep the same projection for all of the four data frames, but you will
change the latitudes of standard parallels to see the effect of the shape and scale of
Canada when performing the changes.
- In the Data Frame Properties dialog window for B click the tab Coordinate
Systems and click Modify. Change the value of Standard Parallels 1 and 2 to 8
and 18 respectively. Then click OK twice to confirm the changes.
- Change the Standard Parallels 1 and 2 to 20 and 60 for data frame C and 5
and -42 for data frame D.
- Compare the maps. Change the extent of all of the data frames if necessary, but
make sure they all have the same scale before comparing them.
Now that you have changed values of the standard parallels in the three data frames B, C
and D, you might notice that these data frames are no longer suitable for mapping
Canada, but for other regions.
Question 2.11: View the map of the World showing latitudes and longitudes in the
last page of this document. In what regions do you think the data frames B, C, and
D would be best suited? Choose between the proposals below:
B Hawaii
C South America
D USA
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