Data Management via Maps

Government data can get pretty messy. I know, Its hard to believe; with all the projects, novice GIS users, and employment turn-over putting all the messy data to use can be hard. Yet, a good way to get my feet wet with the data is make maps--and do some cleaning house as I go.

First up,

'Juniper Tree Management on Ranch Lands'.

Alright, I'll admit it, this topographic map doesn't show juniper tree management; what happened was while I was cleaning house, improving our data collection of ranches and juniper thinning, I was asked to produce a map for a rancher (as a good gesture for him allowing us access to his property). At the very moment I was done being a good citizen and compiling 10+ layers of random ranch layer, I was asked to produce this map, my first for the department.

The key to quickly producing this topo was spending the time to clean up the data! For me, the most important part of this story is the journey.

'Ranch Topology'

In addition to spatially joining the ranch layers, and the consequent deleting of the unnecessary fields, I then performed a topological check to be sure their was no overlapping polygons nor any gaps. I do, however, have a lot to learn with topology--but a lot less after making this map.