Trekking the High Himalaya for Data

This post covers how a range of different remotely sense data sets can be acquired from around the world with a focus on Nepal In a recent post, we looked at how Open Street Map can be used to acquire some basic geospatial data for many parts of the world.  When we left off, we […]

How To Add a Locator Map in ArcGIS Pro

This post details how to add a locator map (or inset map) to a layout in Pro (updated May 2021 for Pro). Map making is part art, part science, but mainly art, in my humble opinion.  It’s often the case that you’ve done the hard yards with analysis and, in the critical map making phase, […]

Getting Started with the GIS Blog

This post provides an overview of all the (hopefully) useful things you can read about on the blog. In its short and happy life the GIS Blog has certainly done a lot for me.  It’s made it a lot easier to respond to many common questions (like mapping to the J: drive – see how easy […]

Our (Web) Maps

The Lincoln GIS Server allows us to make GIS data and maps available to anyone with a web browser.  In this post, several of the web maps we’ve developed are presented. In a previous post we covered the idea of web services, which allow data layers to be served up to web browsers without needing […]

On-Line Training Courses for ArcGIS

This post covers the on-line tutorials available to LU users. The GIS team is often asked how people can learn how to do more stuff.  One of the perks of our ArcGIS site licence is that we can free access to a range of on-line tutorials from ESRI, the creators of ArcGIS.  These range from […]

Web Feature Services Part 2 – LRIS and LDS

Part 2 of a focus on Web Feature Services (WFS), this time on connecting to data from LRIS and LDS. A previous post covered the basics of connecting to Web Feature Services (WFS).  For this post, we’ll look specifically at how to connect to Landcare’s data portal (LRIS) and the LINZ data service (LDS, not […]

Web Feature Services – real data from the web to your desktop

This post looks at web feature services (WFS) where real data from internet sources can be added to your desktop for analysis purposes. In a previous post we looked at web services that could be added to a map.  While these are great for map making purposes, they do have their limitations, especially if you […]

How do I clip raster data?

This post covers how to clip out portions of raster grids (updated May 2021 for Pro). A previous post covered how to clip vector data (feature classes and shapefiles).  Another key skill is being able to clip out portions of raster grids, such as a DEM, or perhaps a TIF image.  We’ve got three options […]

How do I Clip Data?

This post covers a very useful skill – clipping subsets of vector data from larger datasets (clipping raster data is covered in another post – Updated May 2021 for Pro). As seen is some earlier posts, most of the data on the J: drive is at a national scale.  In many cases, though, you’ll be working […]

How do I create a new feature class/shapefile?

This post covers an essential skill – creating new feature classes and shapefiles.  We’ll cover how to create a blank layer and then how to digistise new features into that.  (Updated April 2020 for Pro) Creating you own data layers is an important part of most analysis projects, so in this post I’ll cover some […]