Resources

If you have a suggested link for this list please email me with your link and I will consider adding it here.

Data

Open Educational Resources (OERs)

Free Training in the Basics

The below list is for those of you that did not take GEOS 270 or if you feel you need some background practice.

Software Resources

  • How to obtain a student version of ArcGIS Pro
  • GeoNet – a discussion board for ESRI products.
  • GeoDa – GeoDa is a free and open source software tool that serves as an introduction to spatial data science. It is designed to facilitate new insights from data analysis by exploring and modeling spatial patterns.
  • Open Basemaps for ArcMap – a package of some openly licensed and free basemap layers.
  • GIS Services – the Library offers access to many different spatial and non-spatial databases, as well as a computer lab with ArcMap installed on the computers.
  • QGIS Download – free and open source, download for Mac or Windows.
  • GIS Stack Exchange – a very active forum for all technical GIS matters.
  • For those looking at avalanches, slope stability and associated processes, check out this blog on ArcGIS Pro’s new surface analysis capabilities.
  • Also, for those interested in doing projects in the U.S. on flooding, earthquakes and other hazards, check out Hazus from FEMA.
  • For the geomorphologists among us, WhiteboxTools-ArcGIS is an amazing resource.  You can easily add this python toolbox to ArcGIS Pro (just download, unzip and Add Toolbox to get hundreds of useful geomorphological routines ready to use:

Professional Networking

Further Training Options

Web Mapping Services

There are an increasing number of ‘web services’ available with which to add content to your maps. It is important to note that these services are only providing data for viewing, not for processing. That is, while you can display the data on a map, you cannot extract elements from the maps and process them (e.g., create buffers around features). As stated on the BC Government web site: “This service does not contain any functionality to extract vector based features from the BC Geographic Warehouse.”

ESRI Services:

BC Government:

Open Geospatial Consortium:

Indices and other measures (ideas for use in projects!)

Some useful links to diversity and other indices that could be useful in a project. You can calculate various indices and map then in order to highlight areas of high (or low) diversity, using measures such as local Moran’s I.  We explore the use of a simple index in Lab 1, looking at linguistic diversity in Edmonton and Vancouver.

Here is a paper (PDF) that provides ‘A review of methods for deriving an index for socioeconomic status in British Columbia‘ from a health services perspective.  If you are looking into health-related issues you should look over this comprehensive review.

  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herfindahl_index While the wiki page talks about firms, when working with census data you would use % of different ethnic groups or % mother tongue,  or any other grouping that you wish (that adds up to 100%).
  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diversity_index The Shannon index is a popular one–again, the p values would represent the proportions of people in different groups (the numbers should add up to 1).
  • US Bureau of Labor Statistics: Location Quotients explained. This index allows you to compare  the spatial distribution (clustering/dispersal) of a group in a census tract (for example), compared to the entire city or province (e.g., which census tracts have a greater proportion of recent immigrants, compared against all of the census tracts in the city).

Once you have created the indices, you can then explore the spatial nature of them (e.g., Are they clustered in certain areas? Do they display spatial autocorrelation?) using some of the tools available in the Spatial Statistics Tools toolbox

You should explore the tools, reading their help files in order to fully understand what the results are showing you, and build upon that knowledge.

Here is a detailed explanation of how to use the hydrology tools in ArcMap, written by GIll Green.