Introducing Geographic Information Systems with ArcGIS: A Workbook Approach to Learning GIS, 3rd Edition

Chapter 2

Characteristics and Examples of Spatial Data

STEP-BY-STEP

Exercise 2-1 (Mostly Outside)

Appreciating Geographic Space and Spatial Data

For this exercise, you will need a notebook and may need a calculator and a long tape measure. This exercise is couched in English units (feet). Your instructor may want you to use metric units (meters), which make a lot more sense but are not as common in the United States.

____ 1. Carefully measure the length of your stride. (A procedure that might help with this is to take several steps across a floor with fixed-width tiles or under a ceiling with uniform length panels.) To the nearest tenth of a foot, your stride is _____ feet.1 How many of your paces would constitute 100 feet? _____.

____ 2. Find an area of landscape that is a square, roughly 210 feet on each side, and walk its perimeter, examining its interior as you go. Aside from giving you an idea of what an acre2 is, this activity will probably let you view the complexity that can be contained in a small bit of ground—perhaps the land use, soil, rocks, pavement, vegetation, crops, buildings, fire hydrants, parking meters, street lights, pipes, wires, and other features.

____ 3. How many acres constitute a square mile? (Use the exact definition of an acre in the earlier footnote; the area in square feet of a square mile is 5280 times 5280.) __________. The land area ...