Introduction: ArcView Controls and Political Boundaries

Introduction:
ArcView Controls and Political Boundaries

There are a few objectives of the Introduction.

The first objective of this lesson is to introduce students to ArcView and its controls.
The next objective is to view the location of Fort Collins in the context of political

The last objective is to introduce students to the concept of watersheds.

STEP 1: First, we will learn about the ArcView terms and controls.

ArcView Terms:

Shapefile: the type of computer file that ArcView uses.
Theme: the type of data you are looking at. For example, roads, rivers, soil, mountain peaks, or wilderness areas. Each theme will be either a point, line, or polygon. Think of it as a layer of a similar type of information.
Attribute: all of the different types of information that are stored about a theme. These attributes are contained in a table for each theme known as an attribute table.
Query: selects a portion of a theme based on its attributes. Basically, when you make a query, you are asking the table or the spatial data a question.
Scale: relates to the size of the area that is being shown on a map.

STEP 2: OK, let's open ArcView,

, by double-clicking on the icon.

The dialog box "Welcome to ArcView GIS" will open, click on "Open an existing project". Then click "ok".

Locate the file called "Intro.apr". You teacher will tell you where it is. Once you have found it, click "ok". Your screen should look like this,

The top of the screen contains of the following items:

The menu bar contains drop-down menus.
The button bar contains icons that perform different tasks.
The tool bar contains icons that perform different tasks.

To find out what a button does, move the mouse pointer over the button and a description appears in the lower left-hand corner of the screen.

The project window is where you can access the different documents such as views.

The large window on the right is the current view, titled "Location." This is the "map" that we are working with.

Does this map look familiar?
What does it show?
That's right, it's the U.S.A.

On the left-hand side of the view, there is a list of the themes that the view contains. This is called the Table of Contents. Notice that "USA (Lower 48)" has a checkmark next to it. That means that theme is turned on and visible in the view. Notice also that there is a box around "USA (Lower 48)" that appears to be raised. That shows that the usa theme is selected and will be the theme that functions (i.e. query, etc.) are performed on.

STEP 3: Let's learn how to do a query. Click on the "Query Builder." It's the icon in the toolbar that looks like a hammer with a question mark.

The query builder appears,

Double click on [State_name] in the list on the left-hand side. Notice that it appears in the window below the list.

Now click on the "=" sign. Again, it appears in the window.
Double-click on a state name from the right-hand list. Pick any state you want.
Click "New Set". The state you chose turns yellow in the view window. That means that the state is selected.

You can now close the Query Builder. Right-click on the top of the Query Builder and click "close".

Let's look at the attribute table for "USA (Lower 48)".

Click on the "tables icon", . This displays the attribute table for "USA (Lower 48)".
Click on the "promote button", , this will bring your selected state to the top of the table.
Notice that this row is colored yellow. It's the state you selected in the query and promoted to the top of the table.
Scroll across, and notice all of the other information that is stored in the attribute table.

What is all this stuff?

Notice that the menu-bar, toolbar, and button bar are now different. Each type of document (view, table, chart, etc.) has its own set of menus and icons.

STEP 4: Now we'll make a chart of some of the data for the state you selected.

Click on the "chart button", , to make a chart of the data for the state you selected. The chart properties box appears.

You can change the name of the chart and call it the name of the state you selected.

In the list on the left, scroll down to "Age_under5" and click on it.
Now click "Add". Notice that it appeared in the list on the right.
Do the same thing for "Age_5_17", "Age_18_29", "Age_30_49", "Age_50_64", and "Age_65_up".

Then click "ok". A chart appears with each of the age classes for the state you selected.
Click and drag on the lower right-hand corner to make the window larger. Now you can see each of the class names.

Pretty neat, eh?

Close the chart by clicking on file from the menu-bar and clicking "close".
Now click on the "unselect all button", , to unselect the state.
Close the table from the file menu when you are finished.

STEP 5: Now we're going to take a look at the location of Fort Collins.

Click on the box next to "Colorado", "Larimer County", and "Fort Collins" in the view window to turn on these themes. Fort Collins is in Larimer County, which is in Colorado, which is in the U.S.A. Notice how small Fort Collins is compared to the U.S.A. We can hardly see Fort Collins... so let's zoom in.
Click on the "zoom button", , in the button-bar. When you move the pointer over the view of the US, notice that it is now a magnifying glass. If you click on Colorado, it zooms in a little bit.
We want to zoom in further, so click and drag a box over the whole state of Colorado. Now you can see Fort Collins a bit better.
If you zoomed too far, click the "zoom to extent of all button",, This will zoom back to the US. Now, try it again.
Now zoom in to Larimer County by clicking and dragging over the whole county.
Zoom out by clicking the "zoom to extent of all button". Now click on the theme "Larimer County" in the table of contents. It should appear raised. "Larimer County" is selected.
Click on the "zoom to extent of active theme button", . This is a different way to zoom to all of Larimer County. Notice where Fort Collins is located within Larimer County.
Now zoom to all of Fort Collins.

What are two different ways to do this?
Do you know where your school is located within Fort Collins?
We'll take a look at that next lesson.

The boundaries of Cities, Counties, States, and Countries are called political boundaries. These are determined by people. Often they are straight lines that do not follow any natural boundary.

What is a natural boundary?
Is a river, coastline, or a lake a natural boundary?

Zoom out to all of the US.

What parts of the US follow natural boundaries?
How about the border between the US and Canada to the north?
Do you notice any parts of the border that follow natural boundaries?

Now look at the US / Mexico border to the south.

Zoom to the south-west border of texas.

Is this border a straight line?

It follows the Rio Grande River. It is a natural and political boundary.

That's all for the introduction. You learned about ArcView, its commands, and some political boundaries. In the next lesson, we'll learn more about natural boundaries as we look at watersheds.

Close ArcView by clicking "exit" from the File menu.
Click "No" when asked to save changes.

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