Proposed Airport Expansion

Working with ArcMap for the first time is a very trying experience. If you are not familiar with the system than there are lots of areas that ArcMap can become increasingly frustrating. It has a whole variety of buttons and sequences that if things are not just the right way the map that you are trying to accomplish will not work they way you want it to. Once this "secret" sequence is input though things will magically appear on the screen.
      ArcMap, although frustrating, is a very interesting program and can be utilized for a variety of different types of data and functions. These different applications make it a versatile tool for the engineer, biologist, and even a urban planner. The ability to take a large scale of data and input it into the program to create different layouts with in the map allows the user to make a use of a large amount of data in a small scale map. The system also uses different interfaces that make it easy for those that are trying to create different data points throughout a map and show there relevance to the reader.
     After using ArcMap for one assignment it became very clear that using the program is not the most user friendly scenario. Since the program constantly upgrades every year, if not every 6 months, the commands change and also the placement of buttons that operate the main functions also change as well. Luckily, there was a few students that had some experience with the program and they were able to help the rest of us out. Without the help of the knowledgeable students, along with Dr. D, completing the task we were asked to complete would have been a daunting task. The tutorial that was provided in the lesson, even though it was a step by step process, did have some steps that weren't clear and provided many students with sticking points until they could be resolved.
    I think ArcMap uses a variety of things that will be helpful in the future and in my career, fisheries biology. While using the program I could map the headwaters of a stream and also the different contour lines associated with the stream to show the elevational changes.  In my graduate project I think I can use ArcMap to show the different aquifer inlet points along the Spokane river to show where I did my sampling and why.