Map Practical: Shaded Relief with Contours in ArcMap

Cartography 101

Are you a cartographer or studying to be one? How many tricks have you found that slipped your memory and had to be re-learned? How many hours have you spent on Google looking for that long lost tutorial? Thinking back on my first mapping class, there were so many things that I figured out by trial and error, blindly groping for the right keywords in “Help.” There has to be a better way!

So, here I am teaching cartography now and thought, “What if all those tips could be in one convenient place?” Well here it is, Map Practical! This will be an ongoing process; a tip a week, a link here, a comment there, and a video tutorial when I find the time. After a semester or two it should be a good resource.

Please contribute, and it will only get better.

Thanks, Kevin

Sunday, April 11, 2010

Shaded Relief with Contours in ArcMap

One of the most common types of reference map is topographic with contours that represent changes in elevation. It is actually quite easy to produce this kind of a map using GIS programs such as ESRI ArcMap. All one needs is a Digital Elevation Model (DEM) of a landscape and within a few clicks you can have a decent looking model of the terrain. Generally, a pure USGS topo map just shows the elevation with the use of the contours set at intervals, and some simple symbolization for ground cover, such as green areas for forest. This exercise incorporates shaded relief, hypsometric tints, and contour lines to display the landscape in a more realistic fashion. Since we can, why not have the best of all worlds? The tutorial for this entire process can be downloaded here, and a great data source for the data is the GeoCommunity website. Also, after working on this, I found it easier to locate a given quadrangle at the USGS Map Locator website. So experiment with the techniques and the next time you go hiking, impress the partners with your own custom topographic masterpiece!