Collector Project

Introduction:

Data is the lifeblood behind GIS that makes it such a powerful tool.  ESRI has created the Collector application that makes it very easy to collect data that can be used to further analysis.  The objective of this lab is to ask a question and answer it using data that is collected using the collector application.

College students who have lived off campus for a few years often get accustomed to the uncleanliness of their fellow students.  Whether it be in the house or out, it is well known that college students are not the most tidy people in the world.  One thing they often do is throw trash in people yards, or their own, and fail to pick it up in a timely fashion, if not ever.  Is there a pattern to trash in college students yards?  Do houses nearer to water street have more garbage in them than houses farther away?  This seemed like a question that could be easily answered with some data collected using the Collector Application!

Methods:

This study was to take place on and near water street in downtown Eau Claire Wisconsin.  Before any data collection could take place an empty feature class was created, the proper fields were added, and a proper symbology was given to the feature.  This feature was then published to the University of Wisconsin Eau Claire Organization ArcGIS Online account.  Once it was published, a webmap was created to host this data.  This webmap can now be accessed from the collector app and used to collect data.  The first step to collecting data was to decide where to collect data.  To thoroughly answer this question, data was collected on the amount of garbage in yards on water street, and the next three streets that parallel water street, Chippewa Street, Niagara Street, and Broadway Street.  This data will provide some detail to whether or not garbage in yards has to do with being on water street.   The fields used to in this data were, Street Address, Amount of garbage, Whether a majority of the garbage was in the front of back yard (Street of Alley side), and additional comments.  With everything set to go, it was time to collect data.

The data was collected by walking in the alley behind the houses and counting garbage then walking on the street side of the house and counting garbage and collecting the data on collector.  The address of the house was recorded, the amount of garbage was recorded, whether there was more garbage in the front or back of the house was recorded and any other additional comments were recorded. This was done for water street and the next three streets that parallel it.

Results:

The resulting data is very interesting yet not surprising. There was by far more trash on houses that were on water street than on the other streets.  The map below shows the numbers for how much trash was in each yard.

One of the Water Street yards had thirty pieces of trash in the yard!

If you look closely, almost 15 pieces of garbage can be seen in this picture of the yard.  There was even more in other places in the yard.

The following map shows the amount of garbage with labels for the addresses.  The house with the most amount of garbage was 609 Water Street.

The final map shows whether or not there was more trash in the front or back yard.  This is important because it helps answer the question if it's residents or just passerby's who do the littering.

The data from front or back shows that a majority of trash in people yards is in the front yard, next to the sidewalk.  This is especially true for the houses on water street.  The following link is to the webmap used to collect the data. 

Webmap

Conclusions:

It can be concluded that there is more trash in people yards nearer to water street.  More data would need to be collected to conclude whether or not distance to water street affects the amount of trash in peoples yards but it can be seen that being located directly on water street leads to more trash accumulating in peoples yards.  This could be because of the higher amount of foot traffic or more people littering out of there car.  When the data was actually being collected, by the time data was collected on water street, then all the other streets, there was actually a brand new empty chip bag in on of the water street yards.  This helps reinforce that the littering might being committed by the cars passing by.  This along with a higher amount of drunk hooligans that pass by on a regular basis leads to more garbage being present in water street houses.  

Priory Navigation Activity

Introduction: 

Field navigation skills are very important skills that are required to be an effective geographer in the field.  If there is data to be observed and collected in the field, there is a chance that it may be remotely located.  Driving straight to a point of interest is not always how it works, being able to navigate in the field is an essential skill.  In this lab, the class was to put their navigation skills to the test by finding points in the woods that were placed by Dr. Hupy.  The class was to use GPS and a map to locate the points, then go back out using just a compass and a map.

Methods:

The class met at the Priory on a dreary Saturday the first weekend of November to do some field navigation.  The Priory is located just south of highway 94 on the south side of Eau Claire.  It is a heavily wooded piece of land owned by the University that is ideal for learning how to navigate in the field.  When people started to arrive, they broke off into their groups and plotted their points on the print out maps that were given to them.  These points were plotted using using coordinates for the GPS activity and the UTM grid for the compass activity.  Each group was given five points on a course to plot.  Once the points were plotted, GPS units were handed out and the groups connected their GPS to their IOS devices and BadElf app.  The BadElf app had to be set to UTM to be the same as the map.  Once this was done, groups were ready to go out into the field and find the points.  The group first decided to go to a known point that was near where the first point was.  This was at the corner of the building near the woods, the group then entered the woods walking to where the first point was.  Once near the point, the GPS was used to find the current location, this location was then used to reference what direction the point was in, the compass was then used to head the appropriate direction.  This was the method used to find all points in the course with a GPS.

Floppy Wet Map

Brian with a Point

Mark with a Point

Me with a Point

Anna with a Point

After the group found all the points, the class reconvened to prepare for the compass navigation.  To prepare, the points had to be plotted on the map with the grid. The points were then connected using a straight edge.  The next step was to get the bearing from one point to the next, for this, the map was orientated so that north was north and the compass was placed on the map and also orientated north.  the direction the line was going was the bearing that should be walked from point to point.  This number was written down for each line. Before the group began to find the points with a compass, a known location was picked out (corner or building) and a bearing was found, this is how the compass activity was started.

Finding a bearing on the map 

As well as finding the points with a compass, the distance between the points was also found during this activity.  To do this, a 100 meter pace count was found and recorded (62 paces per 50m for the group) .  These numbers were recorded and used to calculate the distance between the points.

Results:

Our group got off to a rocky start,  we were looking for the first point when a bowhunter came up to us and told us we were on private property,  we believe the property lines may have changed and one of our points was on the part that was no longer the Universities, or the hunter was trespassing.  After this dilemma, our group successfully navigated to the remaining 4 points in our course.  The following image is the  coordinates given by our professor (top) and the coordinates of the points taken from the GPS when our group found them.

Given and Actual Coordinates

The following map shows the track log from the GPS activity.  The area in the bottom left is when our group was looking for the 5th point and ran into the hunter, we then went around by the building and fount the rest of our points.

GPS Route

The following map shows the route when finding the points with a compass.  This shows that the track goes much more directly towards each point.  Our group found it much easier to use a compass and bearing to find a point.  We doubted the method at first, but when we walked straight into our points, we were thrilled!

Compass Route

The following map shows the two routes together.  It can been seen that the blue route (GPS) involves much more wandering to find each point.  We often veered in the wrong direction for a while before we realized it.

Combined Routes

Conclusion:

This lab was great for learning how to navigate the woods.  I have personally been hunting since I was 12 and have spent lots of time in the woods, but this lab taught me a lot about navigating.  I enjoyed the compass method but felt that it will only work if navigating a small area.  Traveling a slightly wrong bearing for a small distance is not a big deal but if trying to navigate a long distance by a bearing, being off a small amount can make you completely miss the target.  If you are trying to navigate a large expanse of woods and get lost using the compass method, it will be very hard to get back on track.  The GPS method of navigation might not be quite as efficient, but is much more effective in the long run.  I think a combination of the two would be the most effective on finding points.