Final Project: Conflict in the South China Sea Map
Final Project: Conflict in the South China Sea Map
"The purpose of this final mapping project is to provide you an opportunity to showcase your academic interests, analytical abilities, cartographic skills, and artistic talents through the production of a map (or series of maps) that tell a story. This project is a summative in nature and is therefore requires you to incorporate cartographic best practices that you learned in lecture and assigned readings and have applied in previous exercises this semester. The type of map(s) produced, and the format in which they are delivered, is up to you."
For the final project, I decided to create a map showcasing conflict in the South China Sea. This is especially relevant, as China often is in the news headlines more and more these days. With this project, I tried to create a map that shows to the viewer just how tumultuous this region of the world.
Taken from the project's methodology:
Taken from the project's methodology:
"For this map, a variety of variables had to be considered. Using
a feature service obtained from ArcGIS Online, mappable features included
countries and their claims, oil/natural gas deposits, military bases,
fisheries, etc. While these features are all relevant to the South China Sea
and the conflict that surrounds it, including all of them would create a messy
and confusing final product. It was decided that that the countries’ claims
(centered in the Nine Dash Line) and the military bases in the Spratly Islands
would be focused on, as these are most central to the conflict.
Once this data was singled out, it was then imported and cleaned up in ArcMap. This involved symbolizing the military bases by country ownership and assigning the same color to that country’s landmass. A new feature class was created using the Erase tool to extract the areas of countries’ claims within the Nine dash Line. This feature class was then further edited with the Erase tool to eliminate the areas which were over land. Lastly, a new field was added for the number of claimants per zone, and values were assigned based on comparison to the input claims layer. For both the conflict zones and military bases, Cynthia Brewer’s “Color Brewer” site was used to obtain sequential and qualitative color schemes respectively. With basic styling complete, the World Imagery (Firefly) basemap was added for color contrast, and a gold styling was applied to countries’ borders for the same reason. Map content was then exported as an ai file for use in Adobe Illustrator.
In Illustrator, clipping masks were removed and map content was limited to the area of interest by deleting unnecessary landmasses. A neatline and legend were created to house both map and reference content. The overall layout of the map document and legend were viewed in both landscape and portrait orientation; landscape orientation was eventually decided on as it better fit the alignment of the data and map elements.
Labels were added for both major countries in the region as well as minor ones which still ended being in the map due to their location. Major labels were given a heavier weight with both size and a lighter color (for contrast) to emphasize their importance; minor labels were given a smaller size with a color that blended into the background more while still being legible. Whenever possible, major labels were set to fully take up the extent of their associated feature. This entailed some labels being aligned at a certain angle, or being set to a curve, such as Vietnam’s label. However, all major labels were kept in the same font size, in order to maintain balance.
As some labels stretched across multiple islands/stretches of ocean, both callouts and color “band aids” were used. A callout had to be used for Brunei, which was much too small of an area at the map’s scale to house a full label. Color “band aids” were used to make labels such as the Philippines and Vietnam more legible, as they crossed their countries’ borders/the ocean multiple times."
This final project helped me bring together many of the concepts and techniques learned over the course of the semester. Using the five essentials of map design, I was able to create an informational and visually pleasing end product.
Once this data was singled out, it was then imported and cleaned up in ArcMap. This involved symbolizing the military bases by country ownership and assigning the same color to that country’s landmass. A new feature class was created using the Erase tool to extract the areas of countries’ claims within the Nine dash Line. This feature class was then further edited with the Erase tool to eliminate the areas which were over land. Lastly, a new field was added for the number of claimants per zone, and values were assigned based on comparison to the input claims layer. For both the conflict zones and military bases, Cynthia Brewer’s “Color Brewer” site was used to obtain sequential and qualitative color schemes respectively. With basic styling complete, the World Imagery (Firefly) basemap was added for color contrast, and a gold styling was applied to countries’ borders for the same reason. Map content was then exported as an ai file for use in Adobe Illustrator.
In Illustrator, clipping masks were removed and map content was limited to the area of interest by deleting unnecessary landmasses. A neatline and legend were created to house both map and reference content. The overall layout of the map document and legend were viewed in both landscape and portrait orientation; landscape orientation was eventually decided on as it better fit the alignment of the data and map elements.
Labels were added for both major countries in the region as well as minor ones which still ended being in the map due to their location. Major labels were given a heavier weight with both size and a lighter color (for contrast) to emphasize their importance; minor labels were given a smaller size with a color that blended into the background more while still being legible. Whenever possible, major labels were set to fully take up the extent of their associated feature. This entailed some labels being aligned at a certain angle, or being set to a curve, such as Vietnam’s label. However, all major labels were kept in the same font size, in order to maintain balance.
As some labels stretched across multiple islands/stretches of ocean, both callouts and color “band aids” were used. A callout had to be used for Brunei, which was much too small of an area at the map’s scale to house a full label. Color “band aids” were used to make labels such as the Philippines and Vietnam more legible, as they crossed their countries’ borders/the ocean multiple times."
This final project helped me bring together many of the concepts and techniques learned over the course of the semester. Using the five essentials of map design, I was able to create an informational and visually pleasing end product.
Future Changes:
- While I only included territorial claims within the Nine Dash Line, perhaps it would have been better to include all of the one country claim areas.
- In future edits of the map I might re-include some of the region to the south of the area of interest, simply to help increase element spacing. The data/projection sources and scale bar feel somewhat cramped in the corner.
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