Lesson video

Hello, my name is Mr. Conway.

I'm very pleased to have the opportunity to guide you through today's geography lesson.

The emphasis is gonna be very much on using geographic information systems, otherwise known as GIS.

So let's get started.

This lesson is part of the fieldwork unit, and by the end of today's lesson the intended outcome is that you'll be able to use 3D GIS to visualise and analyse physical geography fieldwork data.

You'll be learned to use GIS, which may be unfamiliar with you, but it'll have wide applicability.

So if there's anything you struggle with, I'm here to help you along the way.

To help us achieve the outcome, we need to learn or remind ourselves about some keywords.

Here are the keywords for this lesson.

Georeferenced, attribute, bearing, and elevation profile.

Let's have a look at the definitions for each of these keywords briefly.

Georeferenced refers to information which has been tied to a particular location, in other words, geolocated, using an agreed system such as latitude and longitude.

Attribute refers to a data value associated with a feature or variable measure.

In fact, sometimes we call them variables, which is in a GIS layer.

The term field is also used sometimes when referring to attributes.

Bearing is an angle that's measured clockwise from north, that's 0 degrees through to 359 degrees, used to orientate attribute symbols to show direction.

An elevation profile is a really useful GIS tool, which can visualise changes in height above sea level or below sea level along a transect line, and it can be on any part of the earth's surface, on land or the sea floor.

There are two learning cycles for this lesson about using 3D GIS for physical geography fieldwork, and we're gonna start looking at the first of these ones now, which is about 3D GIS primary data for fieldwork.

Fieldwork is often conducted in physical landscapes where 3D visualisation is particularly useful, such as river valleys.

3D GIS is a vital aspect of fieldwork because it can visualise and analyse river valleys and processes including human impact on the physical landscape.

As we'll see in this lesson, 3D GIS can use both primary or secondary data or both.

For data to be used in GIS, whether it's primary or secondary, it must be georeferenced.

In case you're not sure what that means, we'll be looking at that very soon.

But let's, first of all, see our fieldwork context.

Welcome to the beautiful Shropshire Hills, which were shaped by glaciers, but since the Ice Age, river processes have dominated the landscape.

They've created landforms such as these classic interlocking spurs.

This particular valley has been shaped by a river called the River Ashbrooke, which has created the area now known as the Carding Mill Valley.

But human activity has also had a significant impact on the physical landscape.

There have been many centuries of changing economic activity here.

In fact, a hillfort on nearby Caer Caradoc is thought to have been established around 3,000 years ago.

The most significant economic activities in recent times fall into the four sectors.

Primary activities such as agriculture, including hill farming, quarrying, and the water industry.

Secondary sector activities such as textile manufacturing were very important here, and in fact, the valley takes its name from a mill where carding of wool took place.

That was a process that disentangled, and cleaned, and mixed fibres from the sheep to be used in the textile industry.

Tertiary industry is important too.

There's a strong tradition of leisure and tourism in the area as a spa are more recently for all kinds of outdoor activities.

The quaternary sector also has a role to play.

There's a wide range of research that takes place in the area due to the fascinating local geology and wildlife, and also the rivers and conservation.

Consequently, there's an absolute wealth of geographical interest in the area for which fieldwork is required.

Why do we need GIS fieldwork data about such areas? Well, one reason is that it's used to improve understanding of a river's behaviour and it helps us to take decisions about how it may be managed.

And river management along the River Ashbrooke is nothing new.

It's taken place for hundreds of years.

Hard engineering, weirs, dams, and river straightening sometimes called channelization have all taken place there.

Now let's pick up on this crucial aspect of GIS we referred to earlier, georeferencing.

It's the precise location of a place using decimal degrees of latitude and longitude so that it can be used by GIS.

So we can see the precise location of one of our fieldwork sites in Carding Mill Valley.

There are various ways to find this, but we've used the location tool in ArcGIS Online and the selected option which gives us decimal degrees, which is abbreviated to DD, which GIS can use very easily.

The value of this is that we can then use the GIS to link any data collected at Site 1 to that precise location.

How accurate is this? Well, using six decimal places as we have with this georeferenced, a simple ruler can help us to appreciate that this provides a precise location on the planet to an accuracy of a circle with a diameter of just 111 millimetres.

Such precision becomes very useful if we're comparing places or sites for fieldwork which are quite close to each other.

So how can we georeference our primary data? Here we see a GCSE student measuring river depth and width attributes, so later they can calculate the cross-sectional area of a river channel in square metres.

In other words, CSA for short.

When measuring such attributes of a river channel, we need to record the precise location of the site, and there are different options for doing so.

One way is to use an automated GPS-enabled device with an app such as Survey123, which can record the decimal degrees of latitude and longitude alongside the observations being made.

Or another way is to mark the location on traditional map and then use GIS later to georeference the location.

As well as the georeferenced location, it's important to record other information which can be used by GIS.

For example, the time of day, the date, the day of the week, all of these things should be recorded because our results may be influenced by these attributes.

Also, it's useful to record the compass bearing in degrees for data involving orientation such as the direction of river flow.

When we visualise georeferenced data, it makes it much more useful and powerful to enable us to address inquiry questions to test hypotheses or compare places.

Here's an example of an inquiry question for a river.

"How does the river change with distance downstream from the source?" We can link hypotheses to that inquiry question.

For example, we might hypothesise that an attribute such as cross-sectional area or CSA will increase with distance downstream from the source.

And then we obtain data to test that hypothesis.

We're going to use GIS with some real data for the River Ashbrooke.

It was collected by small teams of students from eight sites in the upper course.

At each site, they collected quantitative data including measurable attributes of the river channel, such as velocity, discharge, width, and depth.

Width and depth could then be used to calculate the cross-sectional area at each site.

As recommended earlier, they also recorded the compass bearing for the direction of the river, and temporal data such as the time of the observations.

Furthermore, they collected qualitative data at each site, including photographs and field sketches.

How does this attribute data need to be set out in a spreadsheet for GIS? Well, here's an example.

We have columns for georeferenced data and site numbers.

We have columns for the attributes of the river channel.

We've included the calculation of the CSA, so there's a column for that.

Another column shows the bearing for the direction of flow at each site, and the date and time of the observations are being recorded.

We don't have room to show it here, but there could also be columns for other data such as the URLs of photographs taken.

Here's a video guide about how to do these things so that we can use 3D GIS primary data for physical fieldwork.

We're using a ready-made 3D scene, "Fieldwork P" for physical 3D.

And you can see the title at the top of the screen here.

The first thing we're going to do is to see how you can use your georeferenced data as proportional, orientated 3D symbols.

So the first step is to click time over here, and then the cog at the bottom of the screen, and switch Apply time filter off.

And then once again, click time.

We're gonna use those functions later in this presentation.

So at the moment, the data is visualised simply as orange dots at each site.

But to configure them, we need to open the layer to configure it.

So we click the layers panel and then the three dots at the end of the layer name.

We're going to use River Ashbrooke data CSA, which stands for cross-sectional area of the river channel.

So the three dots gives us some options, and we're going to click layer style within those options.

And then we're going to click the dropdown in the first element, which is choose main attribute.

So in the dropdown we select CSA, and we can see that just here.

And clicking that changes the symbols to be proportional to values of the data.

But the default symbols aren't necessarily what we want, especially for 3D presentation.

So we go to step two, choose a drawing style and select from that panel, 3D Counts and Amounts.

We select that and then click Options.

Then find marker and click that, and you'll see that one of the options is a cube.

So we select that and click Done.

Next, we have a colour box beneath that.

So we click the colour box.

We're gonna switch the solid colour on, and that's a little button down here, easy to miss.

Then click the pen to choose a colour.

We're going to suggest this code here, and that's a kind of blue colour which seems appropriate for this data.

If we click Done twice, what we then need to do is to move to size to alter that so it's appropriate.

So if we make the smallest size 40, and we're gonna suggest the maximum size is gonna be 100, and that will change the size of the symbols.

And furthermore, we're going to go to rotation to rotate the symbols by the bearing data, and that will change to show the direction of flow to some extent.

We're also going to add labels.

So if we click this, it adds labels, which are not necessarily we want, but if you scroll down a little bit, you can choose which labels you want, and the most appropriate one is going to be the site number, and you can see that's much clearer.

And then click Done twice.

Now what we haven't done so far is to take advantage of this 3D facility, but we're gonna do that now.

So if we start tilting the map like this, we can start seeing the 3D landscape and appreciate the topography and appreciate the 3D symbols.

So we can make adjustments like this using the pan and zoom controls or the mouse.

There are different ways of doing this, but you can see, you can get a really good impression of what the landscape looks like.

What we can also see is that Church Stretton, which is a quite a sizable village just here at the base of the river valley, and that's where the river water flows through just here.

And what you might want to do is to experiment with different basemaps.

So if we just shut the layer manager for a moment so we can get a better appreciation of the landscape, and then we can change the basemap perhaps just to one other for now, Topographic 3D.

Now this is very similar to the topographic in 2D maps, but as you'll notice, it does actually have all the buildings shown.

In the future, these will be available probably and look quite lifelike.

But at the moment, we're not quite there.

So you can use that to really get an appreciation of how the river is interacting with the landscape and the people's activities there, particularly their housing, their industry, their shops, public buildings, and so on.

And we can evaluate how the basemaps work.

Obviously, the contrast with topographic is very good.

We can see everything very clearly on that.

But then if we put that back to Imagery Hybrid, perhaps there's some advantages of that.

So if we just go to Imagery Hybrid here, we see a more realistic landscape and perhaps there's more emphasis on the landscape here, whereas with the topographic there's a bit more emphasis on the data.

But here we can make perhaps stronger links with what's going on in the landscape and our data.

And having done this good work, it's probably a good time to save our work.

So we can click Save.

If you want to add your initials after that, you can, to distinguish it from other people's work.

Next we're gonna see how to configure the pop-ups for these 3D symbols.

So we go to the Layer Manager, and in the options for the outer layer, we click Layer properties.

Not Layer style, but Layer properties.

Then we click Configure pop-ups and check the Enable pop-ups is switch on.

And in title, we're gonna type this formula of words, which is going to pick up the site number from the dataset.

And for the fields list, we just want to show one piece of data.

So we're going to click Delete, and then we're going to add what we want.

We're gonna customise what the pop-up shows.

So in text, we're gonna type this formula of words.

Once again, we're picking up the data from the dataset, that's the bit in the curly brackets there, and I've added square metres after it.

So it's CSA equals what's in the dataset.

And then we've added square metres for the units.

After that we click OK.

Then we're gonna add one more piece of content, so we add content, this time it's gonna be an image, we click Image, and in URL we type image URL in curly brackets with an underscore between the words, and you can see an image has appeared in the pop-up.

Then click Done three times, and you can check to see that your information in the pop-ups is appearing for all the sites.

And this is a good time to save our work.

So we save our work like that.

Our next step is to configure the time enabled data, so we need to switch the time slider by switching the clock and then the cog at the bottom.

And we need to switch the time filter on by applying it like that.

There's small dropdown in time slider mode.

And in that one we choose Show data progressively.

And in the time intervals tab just here, we can leave that as 30 minutes.

In play rate, which is the third tab, we can click that to fast.

And we just make sure we can see the valley where our data has been recorded.

And if we press play or stepping forward, stepping back, we can see the data appearing.

And of course, some of the sites are slightly hidden around the corner.

So if we tilt the map, we can see those, the early sites, Site 1 and Site 2, like that.

And then we can play the whole thing.

And there's Site 8 at the end.

Then the time slider can be toggled on and off by simply clicking the clock.

Soon you'll have the opportunity to use 3D GIS primary data yourself.

But let's just check up on some of the points from the video demonstration.

The first check is this.

In ArcGIS Online Scene Viewer, which symbol provides access to different basemaps? You may wish to pause the video here and restart it when you've selected your answer.

Well done if you selected B, the icon which represents the selection in the basemap gallery.

Now for a second check.

In ArcGIS Online Scene Viewer, which of these three symbols provides access to the time slider settings? If you wish, pause the video here again and restart it when you selected your answer.

The correct choice is A, the cog icon.

Well done if you remember that because it's not entirely obvious.

Now for the task which will help you to use 3D GIS primary data yourself.

For these tasks, you'll need to open the link provided, which takes you to a ready-made 3D scene called Fieldwork P3D.

The letter P is for physical.

For Task 1A, you're going to visualise your data as proportional, orientated 3D symbols.

For Task 1B, you're asked to evaluate two basemaps to assess their effectiveness with visualisation.

In Task 2A, you'll be configuring pop-ups for 3D symbols for the CSA data.

And in Task 2B, you'll configure time, that's temporal data, for the 3D symbols.

So pause the video now to take some time to undertake the tasks, and when you're ready, press play to obtain some feedback on these tasks.

Hopefully you are able to undertake the tasks effectively.

For Task 1A, your web map visualising primary data as proportional, orientated 3D symbols for CSA data, your map should look something like this.

For Task 1B, your evaluation of the two basemaps.

Let's just compare topographic 3D basemap with imagery hybrid by toggling between them.

The topographic 3D basemap has quite good contrast and its topography is very clear.

It also shows a local golf course which could be significant due to the impact of runoff because it's a largely treeless area above the valley.

And irrigation might take place there such as watering the greens.

There are trees but they're not very realistic and we're not quite sure if they're located in the right places.

However, there is a strong visual focus on the data.

By contrast, a very different basemap is imagery hybrid, where the contrast is very good.

It's probably fair to say that the topography and vegetation are more realistic, and this helps to provide a strong focus on the landscape, but perhaps less so on the data.

That's a debatable point.

For Task 2A, your configured pop-ups for 3D symbols for CSA data should look something like this.

And here's an example of a pop-up which has been configured to show the CSA data with a photo for each site.

For Task 2B, here's an animation to show the time-enabled 3D symbols for CSA data.

Hopefully, it looks a little bit like your work.

We can see the 3D symbols that provide a useful visualisation of change in CSA downstream, which is supported by the bearing data to provide a good indication for the direction of flow.

If your answers were very different or you recognise some errors, take another look at the video demonstration.

Our second learning cycle will focus on how we might use 3D GIS secondary data for physical fieldwork.

How can secondary GIS data do this? There are various ways.

For example, we can use attribute data which has been collected by others at different times, or georeferenced historical maps.

We might use current georeferenced flood risk maps or sketch maps, georeferenced as media layers.

Let's take a quick look at how these might work for us.

Attribute data collected by others at different times of year.

It could be that your data is collected in the autumn, but how would it compare with one of the other seasons? Or how would it compare with different years? So one year group at a school might be able to collect data one year when it's wet or another year when it's very dry.

And one thing that schools do sometimes is compare this year's data with data collected by year groups in earlier years.

They may have collected data in very different conditions.

As a source for historical maps, the National Library of Scotland Maps department, which we abbreviate NLS Maps, is second to none, not least because they've georeferenced many thousands of historical maps.

You can see an example here of just one of the historical map layers for Shropshire.

It's on their website using their 3D options, and they really bring the old map to life and provide many useful comparison opportunities including with other basemaps such as Imagery or the ordinary survey maps.

A very important secondary source for us to use is GIS flood risk maps, and they're produced by government departments such as the Environment Agency.

Part of their role is to provide free access to their visualisation of risk of flooding from surface water.

That's a bit of a mouthful, so it's called RoFSW for short.

These layers can be easily loaded into scene viewer to make links with your primary data, which you can see here laid over the excellent "Open Street Map 3D" basemap, which includes 3D buildings and labels of places including street names.

Each level of risk is expressed as a probability, and it's colour coded like this.

So 3.

3% probability or a one in 30 year flood is shown in blue.

Less likely, is a 1% probability or one in a hundred year flood is shown in yellow.

And then the rarest flood type, which is 0.

1% probability or one in a thousand year flood is shown in green.

You'll have a chance to work with these soon in the tasks.

Another way to use secondary data is the excellent media layers tool in ArcGIS Online, which enables direct georeferencing of certain types of spatial data such as historical maps or in this case, a sketch map of the Carding Mill Valley by a local person called Ian Jones.

Once created, it's very easy to import the media layer then into 3D scene and drape it over the topography.

We're now going to see a second video clip providing a step-by-step guide showing how to use 3D GIS secondary data for our physical fieldwork.

We're continuing to use the ready-made 3D scene fieldwork, physical 3D to complete these tasks.

And the first task is to do a 3D visualisation, which is comparing primary and secondary data.

So for the purposes of this we have some slides which have been saved in the ready-made scene.

We access them along the bottom here.

You can also see them in slide manager on the left, and you'll see them shown down here.

Each one has a title and is captured a different view within the scene.

To make it easier to look at, we're just going to hide that panel for the moment so you can see each one of these as we move along.

And the first one actually starts by looking at the context of the UK, and then the second one zooms in on River Ashbrooke.

So each of these thumbnails at the base of the map looks at the river from a different point of view.

And it's also saved certain views with layers in as we'll see here.

And we're gonna tilt that just slightly to look at that from this point of view because we can see all the sites have been labelled.

So this has saved a view with that layer switched on.

Now what we can do is look at the data that's been recorded at those sites on other occasions.

So if we click the next thumbnail, we see some discharge data, which we can compare our CSA data with.

And in the slide after that we have velocity data, which we could also compare our data with.

So if we go back to the discharge data, the way we do this is if you see the layers panel here, it says layers and legend, if you click layers, you can actually switch on your data.

So there it is.

And if we zoom down, we can then get some idea of how the discharge data compares with the data that we were looking at for CSA and we can do that for every site.

So if we return to the original view and then we look at the velocity data, we can make a similar comparison.

Once again, we go to layers and switch on our CSA data, and once again we can look at the comparisons.

Let's look at it from the other side this time.

The velocity data's been configured so that it shows slightly above the site, and that enables easier comparisons with other data.

So, for example, we might look at the data here and it would appear that the CSA and velocity both increase downstream, but the velocity seems to increase at a slower rate and it doesn't seem to increase that quickly until you reach Site 7 and 8, where there's a more rapid increase possibly due to local drainage.

We can then look at the discharge data and compare that.

Once again, remember we're ticking that to show the CSA data.

And if we go upstream and perhaps turn the whole scene sideways, we also see a corresponding increase in the same way as we move downstream.

The correspondence may not be so close.

We might notice there's a slight anomaly around Sites 4, 5, 6, where the rate of increase doesn't seem to be quite the same for discharge as it is for CSA.

One good way to present this data would be to screenshot a view showing the comparisons between two datasets.

Then you could paste and crop that and add annotations to show the similarities and differences.

We've used the Open Street Map 3D View with buildings on here.

If we click the first thumbnail, we can see the 3.

3% annual chance of flooding.

The next one shows the 1% annual chance of flooding.

And then we see the 0.

1% annual chance of flooding in green.

And we can tilt them up to see what the extent is of those different flood risk zones.

And we can see quite extensive flood risk zones in the middle of the town there near to the railway line and the main road.

And we can change the basemap, perhaps go back to Imagery Hybrid or one of the other ones.

So the next view shows that.

And the final view moves back up the valley towards where our sites were.

And we could see very low flood risk indeed.

But of course the way the river behaves in this area and the way the river is managed in this area is going to have implications for what happens downstream in Church Stretton.

Another very useful thing we can do is make use of another loss of secondary data which is embedded in this scene.

There are literally millions of points of elevation data.

So how do we make use of them? Let's go back to one of the views that shows all the sites, and then we're going to orientate the scene so that we see as much of the river profile as we can.

And we can see the river running down stream, down the Carding Mill Valley into Church Stretton and beyond.

We access the elevation profile tool by clicking the spanner symbol for tools, then elevation profile, and it opens the elevation profile dialogue.

This is gonna help us visualise the elevation data that is embedded in the map.

We leave Ground ticked, unticked Layers and Line.

Then if we then select Line, move the cursor.

And if we click the Line just once, it will generate the elevation profile and it's as quick as that.

And what we can do is move the cursor down the long profile, and you'll see a little orange dot moving past Site 1, Site 2, Site 3, Site 4, and you can see how the profile changes.

It's quite steep in the upper course and we're just beginning to reach the beginning of the middle course here where the gradient begins to become more gentle as the River Ashbrooke proceeds downstream past Church Stretton and beyond.

And what you could do is save this elevation profile as a screenshot, paste it, and then label features such as the upper and middle course that you can see on the long profile.

Soon you'll have the opportunity to use 3D GIS secondary data yourself.

But let's just check up on some points from the video demonstration.

When using the Environment Agency maps showing Risk of Flooding from Surface Water or RoFSW, which of the following probabilities represents a "one in 100 year" flood? Pause the video here if you wish, and restart it when you've selected your answer.

The correct answer is B.

That's the one that represents a "one in 100 year" flood, 1%.

Here's our second check.

Three choices here.

In Scene Viewer, which icon represents scene tools where the elevation profile tool can be found? Pause the video here again if you need some time to think.

In this case, the correct choice is C, the spanner symbol.

Well done if you remembered that.

Now for the task, which will help you to use 3D GIS secondary data for physical fieldwork.

As for the tasks in learning cycle one, you'll need to access the same ready-made 3D Scene.

The link is here in case you don't have it open already.

So for Task 1, you'll need to use the 3D visualisations to compare primary and secondary data.

In Task 2, you'll use the elevation profile tool to visualise the river's long profile.

And for Task 3, you need to consider a more general question.

How effectively can 3D GIS present data and inform our conclusions? So pause the video now to take some time to undertake the tasks, and when you're ready, press play to obtain some feedback.

Hopefully, the task went well for you.

Here's some feedback.

For Task 1, your annotated screenshot of 3D data visualisation may have looked like these.

First, you compared CSA and discharge data.

Some similarities seem to be that the CSA and discharge both increase with distance downstream from the source.

Some differences appear that the CSA and discharge increase different rates with distance downstream from the course.

Secondly, you compared CSA and velocity data.

Some similarities would be that the CSN velocity both increase with distance downstream from the source.

But some differences are that CSA increases, what we might say steadily, but velocity increases at a slower rate until Site 7 and 8 when the rate of increase is much greater.

Then for Task 2, your elevation profile may look like this.

Hopefully, it's been labelled to show the upper and middle course.

But here are some further ideas for annotation.

For example, the change from the upper to lower course is at about 200 metres above sea level.

All fieldwork sites are in the upper course.

Most of the housing in the area is in the middle course.

For Task 3, how effectively can 3D present data and inform our conclusions? You may have expressed similar opinions to Alex who found that the 3D visualisation of georeferenced data shows that CSA increases with distance from the source.

Other attributes such as velocity and discharge seem to show a similar pattern.

Aisha comments that layers of secondary data, such as flood risk or historical maps, helps to make links between datasets, changes in river management can be spotted, and you can identify anomalies and suggest explanations.

Sofia said that 3D GIS helps to visualise topography with bearings data visualising direction of river flow.

The elevation profile tool helps visualise the link between sites and the upper and middle course of the long profile.

If your answers were very different or you recognise some errors, take another look at the video demonstration.

Excellent work.

We've really developed our 3D GIS knowledge and skills, and that's gonna be very useful for physical geography fieldwork, and it's that kind of deliberate practise that can help to make our use of GIS more fluent.

Let's summarise all that learning with these key points.

3D GIS can be used to visualise and configure primary georeferenced data attributes from physical geography fieldwork.

It can use attributes including bearings data to create proportional, orientated symbols.

Then it can also be time-enabled to use temporal data attributes so that we can enhance the visualisation.

And finally, we can use visualisations of secondary data attributes such as flood risk data to support our fieldwork inquiry.

So we found out how to use some very useful and powerful 3D GIS tools for fieldwork data.

So well done.

A good way to follow this up is to use similar approaches with your physical fieldwork locations.

Hopefully, you found this learning interesting and useful.

It's been great to learn with you.

I very much look forward to the next opportunity we have.

And until that time, all the best and bye for now.