M5 Lab: Choropleth Mapping

 The focus this week are choropleth maps. Choropleth maps are one of the more common thematic maps which shows a aggregated data for an area. The area, an enumeration unit, represents some geographic division like state, country, county, etc.  To solidify the lecture and further develop our cartography skills using ArcGIS Pro the lab assignment guided us with just enough instructions to create a map showing population per kilometer and wine consumption per capita for European countries.

The map I created utilizes a color scheme inspired by one of my favorite wines, Juggernaut Vineyards, Hillside Cabernet Sauvignon. The base color of this wines label made for a great graduated color to show the population density of each European Country. Then the contrasting turquoise color is ideal to for a graduated symbol showing the wine consumption.

The map also use data from World Bank Official Boundaries and the IHO Sea Area from marinerregion.org provided by the Flanders Marine Institute. These two datasets were used only for labeling and accurate background context.

Creating the gradient color schema was easy once selecting the lowest value. Then it was just a mater of creating breaks at specific percentages and adjusting the colors value. Adjusting the value is best using either the HSL or HSV format. 

Another skill show in this lab is data exclusion us an SQL statement. This method would show the feature on the map but the data population and/or wine consumption was excluded from the statistical analysis. This is a great way to ensure that outliers are not skewing the data.