It is often useful to use a hillshade raster to show terrain to support other information in a map such as an analytical surface like population density, or a thematic overlay like soils. There is one significant problem with this; however, which is that the shading from the hillshade modifies the colors of the main information layer making ...

An aspect-slope map simultaneously shows the aspect (direction) and degree (steepness) of slope for a terrain (or other continuous surface).  Aspect categories are symbolized using hues (e.g., red, orange, yellow, etc.) and degree of slope classes are mapped with saturation (or brilliance of color) so that the steeper slopes are ...

In the first dot density mapping blog, we discussed the workflow for creating dot density maps using ArcMap.  In that discussion we emphasized the need for using exclusion or inclusion layers.  Here is an example of how we set up the inclusion and exclusion choices for mapping population density in San Bernardino County, the county ...

For many GIS users and cartographers, the use of external graphics software is a common step in his or her workflow and production of print quality maps. One of ArcMap's more popular export formats is the Adobe Illustrator (AI) export because of its wide compatibility with a number of graphics software packages. This export format was first made ...

There are a number of spatial statistical analysis tools now available in ArcGIS. Some, like the Hot Spot Analysis tool produce specially structured results that can be misinterpreted or misrepresented if you approach symbolizing them in a generic way, such as using the Natural Breaks classification method. Specifically, the Hot Spot Analysis tool ...

  ESRI’s Graphics team needed some maps for a slide for one of this year’s Users Conference presentations to show where GIS was being used in K-12 programs in the U.S. and throughout the world. I was asked to spruce up the maps for the slide and was told these maps should be really simple because everyone in the audience would be looking for ...