ESRI Canada - Creating an Isopleth Map Using Spatial Analyst

Lessons

Creating an Isopleth Map Using Spatial Analyst

Due to Canada's enormous landmass, Canadians experience a wide range of weather patterns. Climate is not the same as weather, but rather, it is the average pattern of weather for a particular region. Weather describes the short-term state of the atmosphere. Climatic elements include precipitation, temperature and other measures of the weather.

In this exercise, snowfall data obtained from an Environment Canada website will be used to create an isopleth (climate) map of Southern Ontario. An isopleth map represents data that is continuous, such as temperature, precipitation, and elevation using lines (contours) or colour ranges. Spatial Analyst, an ArcView extension will be used in this exercise to make predictions about unknown locations based on the sample data, and to create an isopleth map.

ArcView 9.x

Setup.exe or Winzip File	PDF or WordDoc

Before you begin this lesson you will need to download the data that is used throughout the exercise. The dataset for this lesson is available in .ZIP or .EXE format. Using the .EXE file, the data will be extracted to the correct folder when you double-click the downloaded file to execute it. If you are unable to download the .EXE file due to your network or service provider's security measures, download the .ZIP file and be sure to extract the data to the folder indicated in the lesson instructions. If you cannot download either of the files available here, contact your system administrator. If you have any questions, send an e-mail to k-12@esricanada.com.