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

Exploring Soils

____ 10. Click the Preview tab. Select Soils in the Catalog Tree. You see a map of the Soils you worked with in Assignment 1-1. In the pull-down menu in the Preview text box (bottom of the window), select Table. How many Soils polygons are there? _________.

____ 11. Examine the table. Notice the fields Shape_Length and Shape_Area. These attributes are the perimeters and areas of polygons. This is information you get “for free” by using a GIS. Sort the Shape_Area column into ascending order. To the nearest tenth of a meter, what is the perimeter of the polygon with the smallest area? ____________ meters.

____ 12. Click the Description tab. Note the information there, some of which is incomplete. Expand the ArcGIS Metadata (click the link) and then see if you can read through the data and find the following values:31

Geographic Coordinate System Name: _______________________

Projected Coordinate System Name: _________________________

Lat-Lon West Longitude: _________________________________

Lat-Lon East Longitude:__________________________________

Lat-Lon North Latitude: __________________________________

Lat-Lon South Latitude: __________________________________

Now look at the extents in the Item’s Coordinate System

West Longitude: ________________________________________

East Longitude: ________________________________________

North Latitude: ________________________________________

South Latitude: ________________________________________

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