These are maps of the Fulton Chain of Lakes using NYS DEC data, Open Street Map, and a variety of other public data sources like the mining database, the dam safety database, and DEC lakes and waterways shapefiles.
To see and download PDFs click and view maps.You may have zoom in and/or print the maps to see the 20-ft contour lines cleanly.
Note: Before attemping to kayak the Hudson, make sure you review the tidal charts first. The Hudson River, even in Albany, can have very strong currents either heading north or south, depending on the tide.
The river increases and drops on average of 5 feet per change of the tide, with the strongest currents at roughly 3 hours after the last tide change. Expect especially strong currents around that time. And do not expect to be able to easily paddle against the tide. When the tide is going out, and water levels are dropping, the river pulls strongly to the south, when the tide is coming in, the river pulls to the north.
When a city council, county legislature, or state legislature redistricts itself to reflect changing population, they usually release data in two formats:
If you planning on making a map, Metes and Bounds won’t be particularly useful. Computers don’t understand english very well, they need numbers and lists. In contrast, the Census Block Equivalency is very useful for mapping things.
Every year, the Census Bureau puts out series of ERSI Shapefiles known as TIGER/Line. You can download TIGER/Line for any state and county in the United States from their website. They provide many different shapefiles and layers such as a Highway, Faces, Edges, and County Subdivision layers, however the one you will be most interested for making district maps is the Tabulation Block (tabblock) layer.
You can use these files in the free program known as Quantum GIS or QGIS. While this tutorial will not explain the ins and outs of QGIS, this should get you started on making redistricting maps.
The Tabulation Block Layer is the file containing all of the Census Blocks for a particular county. A Census Block is the smallest unit of population gathered by Census Block, and consists of all bordering features (bounds) — roads, rivers, shorelines, along with all imaginary lines (metes) — town lines, village lines, other lines drawn for statisitical purposes.
Each Census Block has a number, that is a subdivision of the Census Block, County ID, and State ID that it resides within. For example, the Governor’s Mansion in Albany is located in Census Block 2000 in Census Track 23.00 (zero padded to 002300) in Albany County (Federal Information Processing Standard — FIPS ID: 01) which is in NY State (FIPS ID: 36). County subdivisions are not applied to Census Tract Numbers, as they may in some cases cross county subdivisions, as is the case of smaller districts.
You put those numbers together to get the GEOID — which is the key used for redistricting block lists and most other block-level census data. The Governor’s Mansion is located at a block with a GEOID 360010023002000.
| 36 | 001 | 002300 | 2000 |
| State ID | County ID | Zero Padded Census Tract Number | Census Block Number |
|---|
The block list you get from a redistricting commission typically is in Database Exchange Format (.DBF) or Comma Deliminated Format (.CSV) which are both openable by common spreadsheet applications like Microsoft Excel or OpenOffice Spreadsheet and GIS programs like ArcGIS or Quantum GIS.
This is taken from the LATFOR State Senate Proposed Districts (January 2012) DBF file. It shows you that the Governor resides in Proposed Senate District 44. Across the river in Census Block 4010, Census Tract 524.03, in Rensselear County (FIPS ID 83), NY State (FIPS ID: 36) is located in Proposed Senate District 43.
| 360010023002000 | SD44 |
| 360010021002008 | SD44 |
| 360010021002004 | SD44 |
| 360010021002001 | SD44 |
| 360830524034017 | SD43 |
| 360830524034010 | SD43 |
Download the TIGER/line “Tabulation Block” Shpaefile file for the district you are interested in. You will want the 2010 version. You can download a state-wide tabulation block file, however that is not recommended as the next step will be impossibly slow on most computers. You may also want to open the .CSV or .DBF file in your spreadsheet program and cut out the county you want to speed things up.
You will then want to open up the file in Quantum GIS. You will get a nice map of the county you downloaded, showing all of the Census Blocks.
Then wait. A typical county will take 10-40 minutes to join on my 5 year old laptop; your computer may be quicker. If you have a dual processor machine, go on to doing other work in other programs. You will end up with a map that looks like this (stylized for your enjoyment). Each block will be assigned a Senate District (in this example).
Halfway there. Now you need to “dissolve” each Census Block into it’s larger political district. Go to Vector -> Geoprocessing Tools -> Dissolve . Set the Input vector layer to the file you previously joined. Then set the Dissolve field to the field containing the district number — such as DISTRICTID or whatever it is named. Enter a name to safe the file. Click Dissolve.
Outputed will be a Shapefile containing all the political districts in the county you joined and dissolved. This will take 5-20 minutes on my laptop. Other data may exist in that file, such as Census Block number, however at this point that data will be invalid, as only the district number is accurately preserved in such a join. All other data will be picked at random, so delete those columns.
I hope this is helpful. If you just want the Proposed State Senate or State Assembly Districts you can download them from Center for Urban Research. These are the same data, joined using the above process by somebody with a much faster computer. I have also made up a Shapefile containing the Albany County Legislative Districts using this process.
| ED | DEM | DEM % | REP | REP % | CON | CON % | WF | WF % | ICE | ICE % | Write-In | Over Vote | Blank | Blank Percent | Total Votes | Sandy Total | Bush Total | Sandy % | Sandy Net Votes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Berne 1 | 88 | 37.13% | 89 | 37.55% | 34 | 14.35% | 6 | 2.53% | 20 | 8.44% | 0 | 0 | 10 | 4% | 248 | 94 | 143 | 39% | -49 |
| Berne 2 | 210 | 52.11% | 113 | 28.04% | 41 | 10.17% | 12 | 2.98% | 27 | 6.70% | 0 | 1 | 4 | 1% | 409 | 222 | 181 | 55% | 41 |
| Knox 3 | 97 | 40.59% | 79 | 33.05% | 36 | 15.06% | 15 | 6.28% | 12 | 5.02% | 4 | 0 | 9 | 4% | 253 | 112 | 127 | 46% | -15 |
| Rensselaerville 1 | 87 | 43.28% | 50 | 24.88% | 35 | 17.41% | 13 | 6.47% | 16 | 7.96% | 0 | 0 | 2 | 1% | 204 | 100 | 101 | 50% | -1 |
| Rensselaerville 2 | 87 | 37.50% | 61 | 26.29% | 53 | 22.84% | 10 | 4.31% | 21 | 9.05% | 0 | 1 | 16 | 6% | 250 | 97 | 135 | 42% | -38 |
| Rensselaerville 3 | 162 | 43.55% | 106 | 28.49% | 63 | 16.94% | 22 | 5.91% | 19 | 5.11% | 0 | 0 | 13 | 3% | 386 | 184 | 188 | 49% | -4 |
| Westerlo 1 | 130 | 37.57% | 131 | 37.86% | 63 | 18.21% | 7 | 2.02% | 15 | 4.34% | 0 | 0 | 14 | 4% | 361 | 137 | 209 | 39% | -72 |
| Westerlo 2 | 183 | 56.48% | 84 | 25.93% | 29 | 8.95% | 8 | 2.47% | 20 | 6.17% | 0 | 0 | 26 | 7% | 351 | 191 | 133 | 59% | 58 |
| Westerlo 3 | 105 | 34.31% | 117 | 38.24% | 53 | 17.32% | 16 | 5.23% | 15 | 4.90% | 0 | 0 | 16 | 5% | 323 | 121 | 185 | 39% | -64 |
| Total | 1149 | 43.20% | 830 | 31.20% | 407 | 15.30% | 109 | 4.10% | 165 | 6.20% | 4 | 2 | 110 | 4% | 2785 | 1258 | 1402 | 47% | -144 |
ED by ED percentage of votes for Sandy Gordon.
I often prefer to use Net Votes per Election District, as this more clearly shows were a person lost and won the race, because Turn out can very quite widely from Election District to Election District. Moreover, some Election Districts are more populus then others.
Turn out was particularly high in districts that Sandy lost, particularly in Westerlo ED 3 (Dormansville), one of most conservative EDs in Albany County currently.
This map shows the Average Democratic Preformance of Statewide candidates by 2010 Voting Tabulation District, with the 2011 County Leg districts superimposed. Be aware that all statewide Democratic candidates preformed quite well across 2010 Albany County,but it also shows the weakness in Dormansville (Westerlo ED 3), and Cooksburg-Preston Hollow-Potters Hollow (Rensselearville ED 2). The entire district was and is marginal Democratic, and can easily swing into the Republican column.
While Sandy Gordon got a higher percentage of votes on Democratic line then Debra Bush on the Republican line, the heavy Conservative-block vote in Renselearville EDs and South Westerlo (ED 1) provided a margin of victory for Debra Bush.
Sandy Gordon lost 2/3rds of Knox in the redistricting. He preformed worst in the new portion of the district — specifically Westerlo — and failed to hold onto Renselearville.
While he faced a Tea-Party Movement in Renselearville that organized against him, if he had spent more time going door-to-door in this portion of district, along with introducing himself to Westerlo voters, he may have been able to hold on to his seat.
Regardless, it was tough year for Democratic Incumbents, especially those with a long record and many difficult votes to face, such as over-riding the tax-cap, which will hurt rural residents and those of the hilltowns who own a lot of land hardest.
More then one out of every 5 acres in NY State is publicly owned and is used as parkland. Here are a series of maps of various regions of NY State showing the boundaries and classifications of various types of land.
This past year, I got up to nine different Adirondack Wild Forests as part of my explorations of the Adirondack Park. Did a lot of hiking, kayaking, and camping. The map below shows the Adirondack Park’s various units.
I camped in Aldrich Pond (1 night), Black River (4), Debar Mountain (3), Ferris Lake (5), Independence River (2), Moose River Plains (3), Taylor Pond (2), Vandwhacker Mountain (1), and Wilcox Lake (4). My preference for certain Wild Forests over others, is not just based on scenic beauty or activities to do, as much as closeness to Albany and compatability with weekend plans.
I saw quite a bit of Adirondack Park for sure.
Camped one night on Streeter Lake Road in Aldrich Pond Wild Forest near the hamlet of Oswagatchie. Paddled part of Little River and Streeter Lake.
Camped two nights at Wolf Lake Landing Road. Paddled around Woodhull Lake, hiked over to Remsen Falls.
Camped two nights at North Lake. Sat down by the lake, enjoyed the moonlight. Explored Atwell and part of South Lake.
I camped for two nights at Mountain Pond near Paul Smiths, NY, while visiting the Saint Regis Canoe Area.
Then coming back from North Country, I decided to spend a night at Jones Pond, which is between Rainbow Lake and Paul Smiths.
I did two weekend trips up to Ferris Lake Wild Forest. The first was during Memorial Day Weekend, which was pretty wet and rainy for most of the weekend. The second was during the mid-summer on a super oppressive, hot and humid day out. While I explored Edick Roadside Camping, and also Good Luck Lake, both times I roadside camped on Piseco-Powley Road, three nights at PR 9, one night at PR 4, and one night at 11.
Camped two nights at Independence River Wild Forest on Smith Road, at field Campsite 1. There are ten campsites on this road, including one with an outhouse. Several of them are located in old logging load pads, that are now mowed as fields for camping. Nothing particularly fancy here.
Planned to spend a week at Moose River Plains, brakes failed on third day up there. Still got three days of fall camping in along Cedar River – Limekiln Lake Road. Camped one night at Campsite 24, and two at Campsite 57 this year.
Camped up at Union Falls for two nights in the fall, while hiking and exploring several locations in Clinton County and eastern portion of the North Country.
Camped one night at Cheney Pond at the Vanderwhacker Wild Forest.
Camped three nights up off of NY 8 — one at an old Gravel Pit along the East Sacandaga River in April when the snow was still there, two nights at Fox Lair Campsite, and one night at Hope Falls Road, which is off of NY 30, near Northville.
This an automagically generated list of recent the maps I’ve uploaded to my blog. Click on map to display a high resolution version of the map for printing and download.
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