Maps! (1 of 3)

After the Amaro Field trip, I had an awful lot of work to do. I felt a bit like having a number of projects to do at once and then once massive term project on top of it. The next three post will go through the resulting maps, how I made them and the hurdles I faced along the way.

So, on my list of things to do, I had to make a map for each of the Amaro projects that I had seen, finish up some blogs from Kenya and put together a five day, open source GIS course. Whew, lots to do! The work started slowly though, as to begin with I didn’t have an office to work in! But, AgriService underwent some personnel changes and an office opened up. So by the second day I had an office, but still a pile of work to do.

For my mapping projects, I had one large problem. I had no data to work with. So, rather than do nothing I started to explore what little data I had and made a pretty simple map of the program area that we had been working in.

Amaro Office Visit, Version One

However, this map is a bit data sparse and I wasn’t quite happy with it. Eventually though (I’ll explain more later) I did get a bit more data and after tweaking a few elements I was able to produce a map that I was mostly pleased with.

Amaro Program Office, Version Two

While in Amaro, I had decided with Wubishet and Solomon (ASE Amaro) that I would help them make a map of the Kereda Reservior project. AgriSerivce had commissioned someone before the project began to make a map of the area, but after a few years, they could not find the cartographer again, did not want to pay for another map to be made and did not have the data that had been used to make their older map. So, I would make sure that they had a set of up to date spatial information. First I digitized the older map (and augmented it with some other information to jazz it up), and then added some newer information, since the actual implementation of the project ended up being a little bit different than the planned map illustrated.

The Original Kereda Reservoir Map

As you can see above, the original map wasn’t too shabby. The good news is that for me I would be able to get coordinates from the original map to transfer onto the new map. One problem though, we left the map in Amaro! Not to worry , there would be a few staff members coming up to Addis in a few days so as long as I could keep myself busy until then, it wouldn’t be a problem. This is why I made the first version of the Amaro Office map.

When the map did arrive later that week I started on digitizing the features on it. However, finding locations of every feature with a ruler (and the coordinates at the edges of the paper map) proved to be a bit of a nightmare, so I switched tactics.

• First, I scotch taped the map up on the wall. I grabbed my camera and took some pictures of the map on the wall as best I could. This meant stopping my lens down to its optimal aperture and using a bounce flash to give it a consistent exposure across the image.
• Second, I processed the image using some photo software and output it as a 25 Megabyte TIFF image at for optimal resolution
• Third, I brought the Image into ESRI ArcMap and georeferenced the image. This means that by specifying some known locations (the corners) on the image I could locate the image file on the ground. By doing this I could use it with my GPS and satellite data.
• Fourth, and lastly, because the image was referenced to my other data, I could simply digitize all of the features by tracing them.

This made making a duplicate of the old map really easy. Within an afternoon I had all the data that I needed from the old image and I actually had some fun doing it! It was the kind of satisfaction you get from coloring in a kids placemat at a restaurant, and doing a really awesome job at staying in the lines. Anyways, with the information taken from the old map, I synced the data up with the first maps that I had made and Voila! A Kereda Reservoir map, all done! So, although the first two maps I had made were a bit of just for fun, they were ultimately pretty useful.

Kereda Reservoir Project Map

Once I had the map finished to my liking, I passed it on to Wubishet to get his stamp of approval. He asked me to add a few things and change some others. Because I had all of the digital data available to me now, it was remarkably easy to update.

Next up: Gelana Valley Tsetse hotspot mapping!