What I’m learning with my Facebook Map Atlas of the Day πŸ—Ί

What I’m learning with my Facebook Map Atlas of the Day πŸ—Ί

Since mid-January, I have been posting a new Map Atlas of the Day to my Personal Facebook account. Most of those maps are created with QGIS, using data I’ve been able to pull from a variety of sources but a lot from the tidycensus R package and exported to an GPKG. I tried to spend less then 10-15 minutes each day on the map.

Each day creating the map, it makes me look for ways to automate processes, pull data together quickly. Often I discover a new problem with the layout, forcing me to dig a little deeper into the documentation, learning a new function or technique in QGIS. As time is tight, I often try to do things as quickly. Once you do things constantly, you get quicker and quicker each day, and find ways to take shortcuts. You find ways to improve beauty, make things more visually attractive.

Broken Roadway

Piles of broken roadway sit after the rebuilding of NY 8 along the East Branch, where a brief but severe rain storm hit the Adirondacks in late October 2019.

Taken on Saturday April 18, 2020 at East Branch Sacandaga River.

Upcoming Sunrises

Upcoming Sunrises πŸŒ…

6:00 am sunrise – Friday, April 22
5:45 am sunrise – Tuesday, May 3
5:30 am sunrise – Monday, May 16
5:45 am sunrise – Friday, July 15
6:00 am sunrise – Saturday, July 30
6:15 am sunrise – Sunday, August 14
6:30 am sunrise – Sunday, August 28

Another day comes to a close

How to create a Shapefile with the Percentage of Polish Americans from the US Census Bureau πŸ—Ί

How to create a Shapefile with the Percentage of Polish Americans from the US Census Bureau πŸ—Ί

Often you may want to make maps of Census Data. While you can certainly make good maps using ggplot in R, often using full GIS software like QGIS or ArcMap might be a better option. It is very easy to create shapefiles to use in your favorite GIS application using tidycensus. Changing the resolution setting can help if you are exporting to PDF or SVG from your GIS program to reduce file sizes.

library(tidycensus) # you will need a free Census API, see tidycensus docs
library(sf) # required for export

# Use this to find Census variables in RStudio. Browse and search the table for
# desired variables.
# load_variables(2020, “acs5”, cache = TRUE) %>% View()

# Get data. By setting geometry = TRUE,
pol <- get_acs(
  geography = “county subdivision”,
  variables = c(“B04006_061”, “B04006_001”),
  survey = “acs5”,
  state = “ny”,
  year = 2020,
  output = ‘wide’,
  resolution = ‘500k’,
  geometry = T,
)  

# calculate percent polish
pol$polish <- (pol$B04006_061E/pol$B04006_001E)*100

# use .gpkg extension for a geopackage, .kml for a KML file
# saves by default in your RStudio directory but change path to where you want
pol %>% write_sf(‘Polish_Americans.shp’)