Mark's Spatial History Baby Steps

 We all know that the ArcGIS Pro check did not go exactly as planned for me.  The lesson was learned: listen to the professor when he gives a very basic instruction ("pull in the shape files first").  On the upside, I now know how to change map coordinate systems "from scratch," and I also figured out which map coordinate system I needed to be able to change the map to ("USA Continuous Albers Equal Area Conic").  On the downside, it took me nearly the entire hour to figure out these two less-than-crucial pieces of information, not the most efficient use of my time. I returned to the lab today, gave myself an hour to retry the midterm, and I did much better.  Of course, I had the advantage of having seen what was expected, and I still didn't finish the whole exercise.  I also am not totally sure that I did what we needed to do correctly.  But here are my first three maps with some questions and comments.  [Edited on October 24: map 4 has now been a...

I am no master of spatial joining (yet!), and I will admit that creating these maps is still rather overwhelming for me.  But I am glad to present three maps, each of which tell something of a story about the first half of each decade from the 1970s to the 1990s and the extent to which various counties in South Carolina were susceptible to tornadoes and hurricanes during that period.  I could not figure out how to "lock in" maps in the layout setting, so I did end up having to create new maps and layouts for each of these time periods, but I am at least heartened that they are fairly similar maps.  (The bookmark function was useful, but I did learn that--depending on how "crowded" various areas on maps were--it actually helped not to have the legend in the same place on each map.) We can see that over the course of the first five years of the 1970s, large swaths of the state were affected by at least one hurricane and that the coastal and midlands areas lived throug...

Like Sam, it was that week, and I'm just happy I made it through the steps.  Look forward to debriefing with ya'll about this process soon.