Georefrencing
To get our all of the trails in the Arb into one map, we started by georefrencing both Carleton’s 2016 Arb map as well as a screenshot of a map from OpenStreetMap, which has crowdsourced data of all of the trails in the Arb. We uploaded images of both of these maps to David Rumsey’s Georefrencer, then georefrenced them to make sure all of the trails were in the right location. From there we uploaded our georectified maps to ArcGIS, and began creating feature layers.
Making Layers
Line feature layers, describing the various trails (walking/biking and paved/unpaved), were created by drawing over the georectified maps (set as the base layer) and satellite imagery. The point layers were used to describe locations (fishing/parking/hammock spots). To create our topographical contour layer we uploaded the contour data after downloading it from MnTOPO. Maps from from the US department of forestry and geology were referenced when choosing icons for the point layers. A polygon layer was used to categorize different ecological regions. regions were defined using the 2012 Cowling Arboretum map as reference. A large portion of arboretum is successional forest (or forest in the process of restoration). Since the ecology of these regions is still growing, they labeled according to what they will grow to become.
Presentation
Once we had all of our feature layers created, we put them together into one ArcGIS instant app. We enabled users to toggle all of the layers on and off individually. Using the ArcGIS instant app option made embedding the map in our website very straightforward.
Using WordPress we put together all of the research that we can done to give users the option to either utilize the maps or explore some of the history of the usage of the Arb.
