Lab 5: Projections in ArcGIS

It's amazing how one week can make a world of difference with regards to using a program.  After last lab, working in ArcGIS was a much more fluid experience, albeit, still taxing.  Basics of the program came naturally, while more advanced concepts were slightly easier to work through.  Creating a map projection in ArcGIS is one of the more simple tools seeing as how all the coordinate systems needed for these projections are already pre-loaded.

With these projections however, there is a large potential for misunderstanding with a user.  The differences between conformal projections and equal-area projections aren't common knowledge, which can lead to misuse of these maps.  From distortion of land masses to preservation of navigation angles, each map projection provides something different.  For someone to try and navigate with an equal area projection would be a grave mistake because conformal maps are the ones that keep navigation angles the same.

For this lab, the standard for measuring the distortion between projections was a linear distance between two points (Washington D.C. and Kabul, Afghanistan).  Some projections had distances around 7,000 miles, while others had distances of more than 10,000 miles.  This drastic difference is an example of how much a map can be distorted, and in the end, how big of a mistake it would be to use one of the projections wrongly.  Of course, it is entirely possible to use these maps correctly, and to utilize their benefits appropriately - for example, using a conformal map for navigation.

While many of these map projections can be confusing, they can also be very beneficial.  The most intricate projection that I created was the Fuller projection.  This one took a long time to render in ArcGIS, a testament to its immense data usage, and looks very intricate.  It uses triangles to correctly preserve area.  While this is the most confusing of the projections, it is also one of the best ones.  

In the end, each of these projections provide useful information to the user.  However, there is a lot of room for error in interpretation if one doesn't know how each projection changes the map, whether it be changes in area or angles.  Regardless, this lab continued to prove the usefulness and power of ArcGIS and the benefits of GIS technologies in general.