GIS Blog | Page 2

Can I use my own symbols on maps?

This post covers how to use your own custom symbols in ArcMap I had a good question in one of my classes recently (thanks Jacque!): can I use my own symbols on maps in ArcMap? Short answer – yes! It may not be as easy as we might like, but it’s certainly doable. We’ll look…

What Do Cave Orcs and Riverbeds Have in Common?

In this post we look at how a hand-held laser scanner is being used in the water lab to capture high-resolution elevation data of a scale model of the Waiho River. Lincoln has a long history of using physical models of to study gravel bed river systems, and the West Coast’s Waiho River in particular. …

The Evolution of a Map

In the post, the ongoing process of developing a map with a colleague is documented. For many people, GIS is all about the map. And fair enough, too. Why use GIS if you’re not interested in a map? The final destinations for maps are many-fold but their main intent is to communicate the results of…

Aerial Oddities

This post follows up Image(ry) is Everything and looks at a few apparent anomalies in the image. In a previous post we looked at a high resolution image of post-earthquake Christchurch from 2015-16. We briefly return to that same image in this post to look at a few oddities. In particular, let’s look at part…

Image(ry) is Everything

This post covers obtaining a high-resolution image of post-earthquake Christchurch and creating a mosaic dataset to manage it. It’s that time of year when the students in ERST310/607 are hard at work on their independent GIS analysis projects; this also means a bit of trouble shooting at GIS Central. One student, who is looking at…

Star Trek at 50: So how did they Boldly get there?

The 8th of September, 2016 marks the 50th anniversary of the first screening of the original Star Trek television series. In this post we cover some of the locational aspects of the Star Trek phenomenon. Growing up, Star Trek was a pretty big part of my life (more than you wanted to know, I’m sure). …

…And Standing Up Straight

In this post we cover New Zealand’s new gravity-based vertical datum, NZVD2016. Along the way we’ll get familiar with the weirdly wonderful geoid and WGS84. This post follows on from Keeping Our Heads Above Water, hence the title, and has benefited greatly from comments by LINZ’s Geodetic team – thanks! In a previous post we…

Keeping Our Heads Above Water

In this post we discuss the highs and lows of sea level. So everyone knows where sea level is, right? When we talk about elevation, we usually put it in the context of how far above (or below) sea level something is. Simple, yes? Well….not quite. Sea level is one of those things that’s easily…

Getting to the Point(s)

In this post we look at how points can be mapped from their raw coordinates in a text file or table. So the GIS Helpdesk got a call last week – a postgrad was having some trouble mapping some points. Ah, it reminds me of that time all those years ago, before I knew about…

A New Window on the World – ArcGIS Pro

In this post we look at a new application in the ArcGIS suite – Pro. Like most behemoth software applications, ArcGIS is ever changing. There’s a new horse in the ArcGIS stable and it’s probably one that’s worth getting to grips with, especially as the tea leaves seem to point to this as the direction…