LAB 1: Photoshop Before and After Image

Above are two images that were used in the first Lab. The two images are photos of Indonesia before and after the tsunami. The first image at the top is the before image, notice the outlines of the coastline, bridges, and major roads.

The after image below the first image shows just how devastated this area was after the tsunami. The Bridges are pretty much gone and much of the coastline has been severely damaged. Many of the roads have become flooded.
This type of mapping is very effective in showing change and is used frequently for these types of incidents.

A New Semester - A New Class

With the start of 2008, a new semester begins at George Mason University. I am now enrolled in Geography 411: Advanced Digital Cartography. So now this blogger site has been updated to 411. I hope to learn new mapping skills to make future maps even better.

This Map shows the political sway per county. The more blue a county is the more democratic the county is and vice versa for the Republicans. The purple counties are counties that are more split between democrats and republicans.

Average Gas Prices per County!

After several days of tweaking my final map is complete. This is a Chloropleth map of the amount of money above or below the average price for unleaded regular gasoline. I find this topic interesting because of the variations in prices of gas from county to county. I wanted to find out just how much of a differance there was from county to county.This map was the most difficult to make because it required me to collect the data manually. No site has the data in one page.

Here is a list of sources that I used and looked through to make this map.

Motortrends.com: This site not only lists different cars but also lists registared gas stations per state. Once you click the state, you then choose the county, then you choose the city, and then you will get a list of gas prices in the city.
http://www.motortrends.com/
WFAA.com: An article about rising gas prices in Texas during the month of November. http://www.wfaa.com/sharedcontent/dws/wfaa/latestnews/stories/wfaa071109_wz_gasprices.1f2bb5e59.html
Virginia Gas Prices.com: this site lists the gas prices for the state of virginia. It even put the prices on mapquest and made a Cholorpleth map of the state.
http://www.virginiagasprices.com/
Fuel economy.gov: a government website which gives you a list of links for gas prices in that state.
http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/gasprices/states/VA.shtml
Fuel Gauge Report.com: this last site shows the market for crude oil and shows the average price of gasoline for the nation during the year. The site allows you to select cities in the United States and look at the gas prices in that area.
http://www.fuelgaugereport.com/

Bivariate Map

This Map is a map of two variables, the Total Population of North Carolina and the projected percentage of people in poverty per county. This Map was very difficult to complete since I had to think about what would be the best way to present these two variables. I do like the results though and they make an interesting pair.

Color Maps!

We finally got to work with color for the first time! The Map below is a colorized version of lab 6, a chorpleth map of the United States.

I noticed a couple of differences between the web version of the map and the printed version of the map. The first thing I noticed is that the printed version is darker than the computerized version. The next thing I noticed is that the computerized version has two colors which seem a little close together. The yellowish gold and the orange colors look a little close when they are put side by side. This is not a problem on the printed version of the map. The closeness of the two colors is pretty minor and I wouldn't really want to tweak the map unless my audience would be viewing this map solely online.

Final Project Proposal

Geography 310: Final Project Proposal
By Chris Mackey

The map subject I have chosen for my final project will be a map of the average price of regular unleaded gasoline in Virginia, per county. I chose this topic because of how topical this issue is to the average driver. With winter getting closer gas prices are sure to go up and I thought a map of what we pay for unleaded gasoline would be interesting. Whenever I drive down to my Grandparents house in Fredericksburg, I always make sure to get gas before I leave to go back to Fairfax since gas is much cheaper. The last time I went down to Fredericksburg, I paid $2.49 a gallon for regular while the price was at $2.99 up in Fairfax.
The audience for this map would be the commuters in Virginia. With gas prices rising above $2.50 last year and another increase coming up in the winter, Americans have begun to gripe over the escalating prices. With the traffic congestion every morning in the Northern Virginia Area, Virginia Beach, and Richmond, people are looking everywhere to find cheaper prices to pay at the pump. This map could show an interesting trend for counties outside the border counties to major cities in Virginia.
The type of map I am envisioning for this project is a color scaled map showing the average price for unleaded regular gas per county in the State of Virginia. The color scale would show how the counties average price compares to the states average price for unleaded gas. The scope of the map would be the state of Virginia since many commuters travel through this state to reach other destinations such as Washington D.C., Virginia Beach, Memphis, etc.
The main data set I will be using will be from a website called, Motortrend.com, the site is updated everyday and is accurate. I wrote down a few of the gas prices in Fairfax County and visually checked each one and concluded its’ accuracy. The site lists the Counties for the state, and when you click on them, it will list the city districts within that county. Each city district has a list of gas stations in that district. The site has a disclaimer stating that their data comes from OPIS (Oil Price Information Service) which is a site devoted fuel economy. OPIS gets its data by using credit card transactions as its primary source of information. There is another site which offer similar information such as internetautoguide.com which offers a setup somewhat like Motortrend.com but does not offer a disclaimer as to how it gets its information.
The basemap I will need for this project would be a map of the Counties in the State of Virginia. The first step I will take for this project will be to accumulate the data of the highest and lowest prices for unleaded gas fro each city in each county for the State of Virginia. The next step would be to calculate the average price of gasoline for each county and then the average price for the State. The next step would be to input the average prices into each county polygon on the basemap. The next step will be to create a Legend with a four class color scale. The final step will be to edit the map so it can visually be understood and easy to read. In total the project should take me about 2-3 weeks to complete.There are going to be a few challenges in the production for this map and they are all in the data collecting step. I will have to collect the data on the same day or else the prices may change and the final map will be less accurate. Another problem will be collecting the highest and lowest prices for each city. There are 130 counties in Virginia and some counties can have more than 10 cities per county so it will take a while to collect all the data. The next challenge will be to calculate the average prices per county. This isn’t challenging but just a long process. After getting past all these hurdles I don’t fore see a problem with the other steps.

Dot Density Map

Although this type of map is rarely used, dot density maps are a great way to show density in a map. The map I completed is a projected population map of the state of West Virginia per county. I had to make each dot represent a certain number of people. It was a long road to completing this map but I do like the end results.