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

The Getrich Saga

You have been presented with some potentially valuable information! In a western state, in a county named Getrich_county, a miner long ago buried gold now worth at least 4 million dollars but was never able to come back to dig it up. He buried it within 1900 meters of the edge of one of the wagon trails that run throughout the county, but at least 300 meters away from the edge of the trail. He put it into sandy soil—more than 2500 meters away from any of the old oil wells. It will cost two cents ($0.02) per square meter to search for the treasure—using metal detectors and Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers. You may assume that if the gold is in the area you search, you will find it.

This information comes to you by way of a friend/client who knows you are taking an excellent GIS course, have access to an Esri ArcGIS software system, and have some data available. Your friend certainly doesn’t have money to launch the search, but he has some friends who have money to invest in the search if the cost is low enough and the maximum cost is well known in advance. There is not nearly enough money to search the entire county (besides, that would cost more than the gold is worth). For a modest cut in the profits, you agree to create a map showing the areas where the gold might be buried and to compute the total cost of searching those areas. You will do this by making a personal geodatabase feature class (PGDBFC) named Look_Here that contains only the polygons ...