M6: Isarithmic Mapping

This week we learned about Isarithmic Mapping, Methods of Interpolation, and Flow mapping. I did not understand what an Isarithmic map was, once we started working on the project it started to make sense to me. This week’s lab I made an Isarithmic Map and I learned how precipitation data is derived from PRISM which is an analytical model that estimates monthly and annual precipitation and temperature, as well as other climatic parameters. I worked with a continuous tone and a hypsometric tint. Adding the hypsometric tint was puzzling, but after researching more about what exactly the Int analyst tool did I was good to go. The Int tool converts each cell value of a raster to an integer by truncation. After I added the contour lines, I realized that all the contour lines were one color and no matter what color I chose it did not look right to me, I was aiming for each contour line to be a darker shade of its hypsometric tint. I accomplished this by changing the color of the contour line to black and making it 60% transparent. I added halo to the north arrow, I made it transparent so it would blend in nicely. I also did this to the text on the scale, my name, the date, and the data source. Some of the locations I chose for the placement had a rocky terrain in the background and by adding a halo it made the text a bit more legible. In order to take the contrast to another level, I added a white 80% transparent rectangle over a basemap then added the hypsometric tint over that layer. I did have to add two basemaps to the layout but it helped make the whole map lighter, and make the basemap look like a background.