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Chapter 1
Introducing GIS
Learning objectives
Learn what geographic information systems are used for
Learn how GIS layers work
Differentiate between GIS features and surfaces
Obtain preliminary knowledge of feature locations, scale, and
attributes
Obtain preliminary knowledge of spatial relationships between
features

For a long time, people have studied the world using conventional
models such as maps and globes. In the last 40 years or so, it has become possible to put these models into computerswith more sophisticated models inside smaller and smaller computers every year. These computer models,
along with the tools for analyzing them, make up a geographic information system (GIS).
In a GIS, you can study not only this map or that map, but every map there
is. With the right data, you can see whatever you want to seeland features,
elevation, weather and climate zones, forests, political boundaries, population
density, per capita income, land use, energy consumption, mineral resources,
and a thousand other thingsin whatever part of the world interests you.
Most importantly, you can map where things are. GIS lets you search for
places that have the features youre interested in, find information about these
places, and discover new patterns in the data or observe existing ones.
For example, a population density map shows the distribution of population
in specific mapping areas (census tracts, counties, states, countries). This type
of information plays an important role when the mapping areas vary greatly in
sizea total population of 200,000 means different things in an 8-square-mile
county versus an 80-square-mile county. Population density in turn provides a

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Chapter 1: Introducing GIS

context for other maps, which may show demographics, economic statistics, or
housing prices. Such maps are commonly seen in the newspaper or on the web.
Some organizations map quantities of things to find locations that meet
their criteria and to inform their decision making. A real estate company might
keep a GIS database of properties to map property values and generate sales
data. A utility company might have thousands of repairs a year to complete
and require GIS to coordinate, map, and manage the work efficiently.
GIS can also be used to analyze whats happening around a specific area. An
environmental agency, for example, might map wildlife species habitats and
take inventory of vegetation across a region to better understand the relationship between them. A water conservation agency might analyze areas adjacent
to stream watersheds to gauge how natural features, seasonal water flow, and
existing habitats change.
Finally, organizations use GIS to map how and where things evolve over a
period of time to learn about subject movement and behavior. Public health
officials, for example, might track an influenza outbreak geographically to try
to determine its origin, find disease clusters, and identify areas of high risk. GIS
can be used to evaluate current situations and anticipate future conditions.
Hurricane tracking and modeling, for example, can provide early warning for
evacuation schedules that can help save peoples lives.

Basic GIS principles

The following sections will introduce you to some basic principles of GIS. These
concepts will become clearer and more understandable as you work with the
software in chapters 320.
A GIS map contains layers
On a paper map, you cant peel cities away from countries or countries away
from the ocean, but on a GIS map, you can. A GIS map is made up of layers, or
collections of geographic objects that are alike and defined by a visual symbol.
To make a map, you can add as many layers as you want. In the map shown, the
transmission lines are layered on top of the electricity generation circles, which
are then layered on top of the coal basins, and finally layered on top of the terrain and ocean layers. This creates an important layer hierarchy on the map.

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This map of North America shows state boundaries, lakes, rivers, terrain, and the ocean. It also shows the
amount of electricity generation, transmission lines, and locations of coal basins. The map is accompanied by
a legend that shows some of its layers. Map courtesy of Kansas Geological Survey at the University of Kansas.

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Layers may contain features or surfaces

In the map shown above, the coal basins layer includes many different basins,
and the transmission lines layer contains many different lines. The same is true
of the states and lakes layerseach layer contains many of the same types of
things. Each geographic object in a layereach state, lake, transmission line,
or coal basinis called a feature.
Not all layers contain features. The ocean layer is not a collection of geographic objects the way the other layers are. It is considered a single, continuous expanse that changes from one location to another according to the depth
of the water. Similarly, the terrain layer shows the elevation of the landscape. A
geographic expanse of these kinds is called a surface.

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This topographic map shows the terrain of a landmass and the seafloor. Map made with Natural Earth.

Features have shape and size

Geographic objects have an endless variety of shapes. They all, however, can be
represented as one of three geometric formsa polygon, a line, or a point.
Polygons represent objects that are large enough to have boundaries, such
as countries, lakes, and tracts of land. Lines represent objects that are relatively too narrow to be polygons, such as rivers, roads, and pipelines. Points
are used for objects that are relatively too small to be polygons, such as cities,
schools, and re hydrants. (The same object may be represented by a polygon
in one layer and a line or a point in a different layer, depending on how large it
is represented.)
Polygons, lines, and points, collectively, are called vector data.

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Earthquake epicenters and seismic hazards in Indonesia. Polygons are used to represent landmasses, points
to represent earthquakes, and lines to represent subduction zones. Map courtesy of US Geological Survey.

Surfaces have numeric values rather than shapes

Unlike countries or rivers, natural phenomena, such as elevation, slope, temperature, rainfall, and wind speed, have no distinct shape. What they have
instead are measurable values for any location on the earths surface.
(Wherever you go, for instance, you are either at sea level or a number of
meters above or below it.) Geographic phenomena such as this are easier to
represent as surfaces than as features.
The most common kind of surface is a raster, a matrix of identically sized
square cells. Each cell represents a unit of surface areafor example, 10 square
metersand contains a measured or estimated value for that location.

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A close look at this raster of ocean depth shows that it is

composed of square cells. Each cell holds a numeric value,
indicating ocean depth. Data from Esri Data & Maps 2010,
courtesy of the ArcWorld dataset, DeLorme, Esri, and ArcWorld
Supplement; made with Natural Earth.

The world is not divided neatly into features and surfaces. Many things can
be looked at either wayas a feature or as a surface. For example, polygons are
often used to mark the boundaries of different vegetation types in a region, but
this implies that the change from one type to another is more abrupt than it
probably is since one type of vegetation often blends into another. Vegetation
can be represented not only as a polygon, but also as a raster surface, with each
cell value standing for a type of vegetation.
Features have locations
If you were asked to find Berlin, Germany, on a map of the world, it probably wouldnt take you very long. But suppose Berlin wasnt shown on the map.
Could you make a pencil mark exactly where it should be?
Now suppose you could lay a grid or graticule over the world map and you
knew that Berlin was a certain number of marks up from and to the right of
a given starting point. In that case, it would be easy to put your pencil on the
right spot. A grid of this kind is called a coordinate system, and its what a GIS
uses to put features in their proper place on a map.

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On this map, a coordinate system has an x-axis and a y-axis. The intersection of the axes is called the origin. Feature locations are specied by their distance from the origin in meters, feet, or a similar unit of measurein this case, lines of latitude and longitude. Data from Esri Data & Maps 2010, courtesy of ArcWorld, DeLorme,
Esri, and ArcWorld Supplement; made with Natural Earth.

The location of a point feature on a map is dened by a pair of coordinates.

Berlin has coordinates of 5230N (latitude) and 1325E (longitude). A straight
line needs two pairs of coordinatesone at the beginning of the line and one
at the end. If the line bends, like a river, there must be a pair of coordinates at
every location where the line changes direction. The same holds true of a polygon, which is simply a line that returns to its starting point.
Features can be displayed at different sizes
On a GIS map, you can zoom in to see features at a closer range. As you do, the
scale of the map changes.
Scale, commonly expressed as a ratio, is the relationship between the size
of the features on a map and the size of the corresponding places in the world.
If the scale of a map is 1:1,000,000, it means that features on the map are
1/1,000,000th of, or 1 million times smaller than, their true size.

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A utilities map at a scale of approximately 1:1,000,000. County, state, and shoreline boundaries are
shown. Copyright Platts, a division of the McGraw-Hill Companies Inc., 2008. All rights reserved.

Zooming in gives you a closer view of features within a smaller area of the
map. The amount of detail in the features does not change, howeverits a
matter of whether you can see those details or not. A river has the same bends,
and a coastline has the same crenulations, whether you are zoomed in and can
discern them or are zoomed out and cannot.

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A city transit map at a scale of approximately 1:12,000. Building footprints, roads, and transit lines are visible. Copyright RMSI & Universal Map Group LLC, 2009. Reproduced by permission.

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How much detail features have depends on the layer you are using. Just as a
paper map of the world generalizes the boundaries of Brazil more than a map
of South America does, so do different GIS layers contain more feature detail
or less.
Internet basemaps, such as those on the ArcGIS Online platform, cover a
wide range of map scalesand a wide level of detail. A map can have several
levels of detail that are correlated to the scale range. As you zoom in, layers at
small scale with less detail will be turned off, and new layers at large scale with
more detail will be turned on. Each zoom level can be perceived as being made

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up of seamless data each level, however, is made up of layers composed of

several datasets, all with varying amounts of detail, and all of which is contained within a spatial database.
Features are linked to information
There is more to a feature than its physical shape and location. There is also
everything else that might be known about that feature. For a country, this
might be its population, capital, system of government, leading imports and
exports, average rainfall, mineral resources, and any number of other things.
For a road, it might be the speed limit, the number of lanes, whether it is paved
or unpaved, and whether it is one-way or two-way traffic. There is a great deal
of information to be had about any feature, whether it be a humble length of
sewer pipe or the vastness of an ocean.
Information about the features in a layer is stored in a table. The table has a
record (row) of each feature in the layer and a eld (column) for each category
of information. These categories are called attributes, and the table is called an
attribute table.

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The attribute table of a layer of countries includes each features shape, ID number, name, population, and
area, among other things. Data from Esri Data & Maps 2010, courtesy of ArcWorld, DeLorme, Esri, and ArcWorld Supplement; made with Natural Earth.

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Features on a GIS map are linked to the information in the features attribute
table. If you select Brazil on a map (see facing page), you can bring up all the
information stored about Brazil in the attribute table of countries. If you select
a record in the table, you will see the corresponding feature highlighted on the
map.

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Brazil is highlighted in the attribute
table of countries, and it is similarly
highlighted on the map. Data from
Esri Data & Maps 2010, courtesy of ArcWorld, DeLorme, Esri, and ArcWorld
Supplement; made with Natural Earth.

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The link between features and their attributes makes it possible to ask questions about the information in an attribute table and be able to display the
answers on the map. It can help locate and identify very specific features.

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Which countries belong to the continent of Asia? Data from Esri Data & Maps 2010, courtesy of ArcWorld, DeLorme,
Esri, and ArcWorld Supplement; made with Natural Earth.

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Which countries have a population of 1 billion or greater? Data from Esri Data & Maps 2010, courtesy of ArcWorld,

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DeLorme, Esri, and ArcWorld Supplement; made with Natural Earth.

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Which cities in Asia are national capitals and which are not? Data from Esri Data & Maps 2010, courtesy of ArcWorld, DeLorme, Esri, and ArcWorld Supplement; made with Natural Earth.

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Which cities in Asia are capitals and have populations of 5 million or greater? Data from Esri Data & Maps 2010
courtesy of ArcWorld, DeLorme, Esri, and ArcWorld Supplement; made with Natural Earth.

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Similarly, you can use attributes to create thematic mapsmaps that use
colors or other symbols to indicate the nature of feature attributes.

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This map shows the percentage of a state covered by the common land unit, the smallest unit of agricultural
land that can be enrolled in a farm program administered by the US Department of Agriculture. Map courtesy
of US Department of Agriculture Farm Service Agency Aerial Photography Field Office, 2009.

Features have spatial relationships

Besides asking questions about the feature information stored in attribute
tables, you can also ask questions about the spatial relationships between featuresfor example, which ones are nearest others, which ones cross others,
and which ones are contained by others. The coordinates of features are used
in a GIS to compare their locations. In the map shown on the facing page, the
relationships between parcel locations, water lines, and valves are established
in the GIS.

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This utility map shows parcel locations, water lines, and valves for Cobb County Water
System in Marietta, GA. Map courtesy of Cobb County Water System.

It is critical to the utilitys distribution operation to ensure the isolation of

the high-pressure system from the normal-pressure system. The map provides
detail for each of the essential valves located in the high-pressure water system.
Which water valve belongs to which parcel? Which water line crosses a main
road? Which valve affects the water pressure of which water line? By taking a
close look at the map, engineers can quickly make informed decisions on pressure problems reported in the area and determine whether extending the highpressure zone is a potential solution.
New features can be created from areas of overlap
Queries about attributes and spatial relationships identify existing features
based on whether they have or do not have certain qualities. To solve some
geographic problems, however, it is necessary to use a GIS to create new features from existing ones.
In the map shown on the next page, a GIS database containing layers such as
soils, slopes, rivers and streams, wetlands, floodplains, parks and natural areas,
significant habitat inventory, greenways, and natural hazard data was used to
identify regionally significant areas.

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Regionally significant landscape features are derived from other features in the area surrounding Portland,
Oregon. Map courtesy of Matthew Hampton.

To find places that meet the specified conditions, the cooperative expertise
of various federal, state, local, and private organizations was used in a GIS to
find areas of overlap among features in the different layers. The map shows significant natural systems and land patterns that define the quality and character of the region and capture its sense of place. This allows for resource
protection at a larger landscape and ecosystem scale and helps define where
future growth should and should not occur. The new features boundary is the
area of overlap, which is different from the boundaries of the features it was
created from. The result of the analysis is a new layer that shows regionally significant landscape features.
You now have some idea of what a GIS is and what it can be used to do. In
chapter 2, youll learn a little about ArcGIS for Desktop, the latest GIS software
from Esri.

Terms
vector
raster
graticule