Hello all! 

This month I’ve been performing a new job duty near and dear to my heart: map making with GIS! As a short recap, through the resource assistant’s program (RAP) I work with the US Forest Service in Lands and Special Uses. There are positions available to work as GIS interns or assistants, but even in my position there is occasional need for mapmaking or use of GIS tools. No matter what position or series you may be in right now, if you deal with spatial data at all, it’s a good idea to have some knowledge of GIS applications. I had the fortune of taking college courses that taught or utilized GIS, but you don’t need a full curriculum to learn the basics, so for this blog post I’d like to walk you through 5 tips and tricks I’ve used this month in ArcGIS. 

Tip #1: Conversion Tools.

Sometimes (or even usually) the data files you start out with aren’t the correct file types to use in ArcMap. Luckily, ArcMap has conversion tools in its toolbox we can use directly! In the standard toolbox (with the red box symbol) there’s a Conversion tools drop-down. For example, lately I’ve used KML to Layer and GPX to Feature to convert data from Google Earth and GPS data so that I can use it in ArcMap.

Tip #2: Using Editor toolbox.

Sometimes you need to mark points, lines, or areas on a map directly through ArcMap if the data doesn’t exist yet. For this, we can use the Editor toolbar. You can add the editor toolbar by right clicking in the header and checking Editor from the list of toolbars. The key to Editor: START-SAVE-STOP, repeat until all the points are in. To use the tool, you first have to click start editing to draw any features you need, save the edits and then end it using stop editing. 

Tip #3: Select by Attribute & Export as Layer.

By far my favorite ArcMap tool is the ability to Select by Attribute, since it helps reduce the amount of data on the map to just what I’m interested in seeing. Open up the attribute table of the layer you want by right clicking the layer name, and from there the first menu under Table has Select by Attributes. All the table’s columns are shown in the menu to the right, so for example I would click DATA_SOURCE and the Get Unique Values button. Now I can use the = button to select just the trails on the map that were sourced from corrected GPS. 

Tip #4: Extent maps.

If you really want to elevate your map, you can add another, smaller map! Sometimes its helpful to show the same area at different scales, and to do so, you can create a new data frame (from the Insert tab), drag and drop in your layers, and zoom in or out to the second scale you want to display. ArcMap will keep track of where the display for each layer is in relation to each other by a red box. Just double click the bigger data frame and go to its Properties menu. In the extent tab, you can add in you smaller data frame.

Tip #5: Saving a map vs saving a map document.

This one’s very important! To save the lovely map you’ve now created, go to the File tab and “Export map”. You can save as a pdf or image file, whichever you prefer, just remember, clicking save under the File tab won’t save your map! Instead, what is saved is the map document in ArcMap. Opening up a saved map document will load in the layers you had and even zoom in the last extent you were at (it saves the space you were working in). So always double check that you’ve saved correctly!

Agency: U.S Forest Service

Program: Resource Assistant Program (RAP)

Location: Southwest Regional Office