Introduction

The world is a complex network of nodes and connections. Ideas, goods (tangible or intangible), money, matériel, and (dis)information move between people and across space. Sometimes people carry these with them from place to place; other times they move through cyberspace. While it is tempting to focus solely on the way these things flow, it is imperative also to recognize the importance of where things originate and where they culminate. The conditions at either end of a connection — that is, what it is like at the place where something emerges or where it goes — provide context that is crucial for understanding and predicting political and social movements, insurgency, and the needs of people before, during, and after emergencies.

Place, connection, flow — all of these are geographic concerns.

This lesson is designed to introduce you to geography (and specifically cultural geography) as a discipline. As a foundational lesson, it focuses on three core concepts in geography (space, place, and scale) that will enable you to understand and develop a geographic perspective. It will also discuss what we mean by culture, and how culture and geography are related.

Finally, this lesson also introduces you to ArcGIS Online and StoryMaps, two powerful visual-spatial tools that are useful for analyzing and presenting information to a wide range of audiences. You will use this technology to complete an exercise that will demonstrate the importance of scale as an analytical framework for understanding a complex real-world issue, using real data.

We encourage you to carefully read the examples and do the other exercises strewn throughout the lesson, as they will reinforce your understanding of the concepts and enable you to use them to assess, critique, and predict phenomena in the world.

Learning Goals and Objectives:

Upon completion of this lesson, you will be able to:

1. Evaluate the role and importance of space and place in everyday life.
2. Assess the role and function of scale in analyzing real-world phenomena.
3. Appraise culture as a factor in lived experience.
4. Produce a simple visual to present spatial information.

Note: You might have already seen the following message in the orientation material. If you have already successfully logged into our ArcGIS Online Organization, you can proceed to the next page.

Special Task

At the end of this lesson, you will complete a StoryMap exercise using Penn State's ArcGIS Online Organization. Please make sure you have access to the system by using the following link, Penn State's ArcGIS Online Organization [1], and logging in with your Penn State UserID (abc123@psu.edu [2]) and password.

After successfully logging in, you should see the following page with your name and ID in the upper right corner.

Contact the instructor if you have any problems logging in.

Note: Please log into the ArcGIS Online system as soon as you can so we can give you access to the files you will need for the first mapping exercise.

This lesson is one week in length. Please refer to the Calendar in Canvas for specific time frames and due dates. To finish this lesson, you must complete the activities listed below. You may find it useful to print this page out first so that you can follow along with the directions.

Note: Please refer to the Calendar in Canvas for specific time frames and due dates.

Geography can be a challenging field to introduce (or reintroduce) students to. As academic disciplines go, it is among the widest in scope and among the most integrative in approach. It is also one of the oldest academic disciplines, with writings that date back to thinkers such as Eratosthenes and Strabo in ancient Greece, and the unnamed authors of the Shujing in ancient China. The word "geography" derives from the Greek geo- (earth) and -graphia (writing); to study geography is, quite literally, to describe or write about the land.

Ancient geographers wrote about everything from the physical topography of the world, to the distribution of raw resources, to the rituals and beliefs of people in different regions. This incredible breadth is still evident in contemporary geography, though today’s geographers tend to specialize in one of geography’s many subdisciplines. Broadly speaking, those subdisciplines fall into one of four main fields: physical geography, human geography, nature-society or human-environment geography, and geographic information science.

Fig 1.1: Major fields of geography and their cognate disciplines.

Credit: Based on divisions in the Annals of the Association of American Geographers [6]

Physical geography - If you have ever looked out the window of a car or plane at the landscape outside and considered the movement of water across its surface, or the shift in tree species as you travel, you are engaging with physical geography.

Human geography - If you have ever visited another place and wondered how it developed its unique architecture, economy, history, or cultural practices, or wondered at what makes it feel different from other places, you are engaging with human geography.

Nature-society or human-environment geography - If you have ever gone to a national park and wondered what kind of fire management practices are being used and why, or if you have ever considered the ways that federal agencies respond to hurricanes, you are engaging with nature-society geography.

Geographic information science - If you have ever used an online mapping site or a GPS device to find directions to your destination, or if you have ever considered the ways that data can be presented on maps, you are engaging with geographic information science.

What unifies this vast discipline is not a specific set of texts, theories, or concepts, but rather a perspective and a basic set of questions. That is, regardless of their subdiscipline, all geographers share a spatial perspective. By this, we mean a view of the world that prioritizes the relationships between places in terms of distance or proximity, flows or movement, and connectivity. This perspective leads geographers to ask similar types of questions, namely:

• Where is this happening?
• Why is it happening there (and why—or why not—in some other place)?
• How is it happening differently there?
• Why does it share similarities (or why doesn’t it) with the same thing elsewhere?

These are the kinds of questions that all geographers tend to ask, regardless of whether our focus is on physical processes, human interactions with the environment, economic practices, or the analysis of spatial data.

Any course in geography that you take should encourage you to further develop your understanding of this spatial perspective. Ultimately, that perspective serves as a means of understanding the spatial complexities of the world. Geography’s breadth as a discipline means that there is no clear canon of texts with which all geographers are familiar. However, there are some concepts that are central to geographic inquiry. Among these are space, place, and scale. (We could expand this list to include region or connectivity or flow, but for our purposes we will stick with these three.) The remaining sections of this lesson will discuss these three concepts, as well as culture and cultural geography in conjunction with your readings for the week.

Space is the primary concept used in geography. To define it briefly, it is “an areal extent on the earth's surface, in and around which all humans exist and their activities occur” (Fellmann et al., 2013, p. 487). Thrift (2009) posits an admittedly rough typology of space—with the caveat that space is far more complex than this typology suggests—that consists of empirical space, flow space, image space, and place space.

While flow space, image space, and place space are important, empirical space is perhaps the most fundamental form of space. Empirical space is the measurable, volumetric construction of space that we invoke when we measure distances between points on a map, estimate how much paint we need to cover the walls of a room, or what size truck we should rent to haul our possessions to a new home.

Conceptually, empirical space enables us to talk about the spatial distribution of phenomena in the world. In human geography, this means that we are generally concerned with the distribution of people, but we may also be concerned with resources, human activity, beliefs or ideas, businesses, and so on. We can think of spatial distribution as having three qualities: density, concentration, and pattern.

Density is the frequency with which something occurs in space; measured in terms of how many things (e.g., people, houses, trees, etc.) appear per unit of area (e.g., square miles, square kilometers, acres, etc.).

Fig. 1.2: Density. The two boxes represent the same area, but differ with regard to the number of triangles within that area. Box a. has a higher density of triangles than box b.

Credit: Cristopher Livecchi © Penn State University is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 [7].

Concentration is the extent of a feature's spread over space. Things can be close together (clustered) or far apart (dispersed).

Fig. 1.3: Concentration. The two boxes contain the same number of circles but the circles in circles in box a. are relatively evenly dispersed, while those in box b. coalesce in two distinct clusters.

Credit: Cristopher Livecchi © Penn State University is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 [7].

Finally, pattern is the arrangement of objects in space. Patterns can be regular (geometric) or irregular.

Fig 1.4: One square mile of street plans in Portland, Oregon and Rome, Italy.

Credit: Maps captured from ArcGIS Online [8]

References:

While Thrift (2009) qualifies place as one construction of space, other human geographers often conceptualize place as something that is embedded in space and has spatial qualities, but also as something that is conceptually distinct from space. In its simplest form, we can think of places as meaningful, material locations in space. Yet the same caveat applies here as with space: this is a crude simplification of place that downplays its incredible complexity.

What makes place, like space, so complex is that people (and other creatures) construct places through their daily activities within them. Over time, places take on significance—be it personal, historical, economic, political, or some other form. And here, too, significance is complex, and it is experienced across a range of intensities. Consider, for example, various people regarding the statue of Giuseppe Garibaldi in Washington Square Park, in New York City. One may be moved by it, citing Garibaldi’s role as a founder of the Italian state. Another may find it interesting for its artistic style. A third might have fond memories of the monument because of a first kiss that took place by its base. A fourth might find it distasteful or un-American. A fifth be aware of its existence but be completely uninterested in it—and so on.

Cresswell (2004) provides a concise but thorough discussion of the nature of place. One particularly important thing to bear in mind in discussion of place is that although geographers have historically written about place as static or unchanging, it is actually quite dynamic—and this is one of the factors that makes place difficult to pin down, but also such a rich subject to study.

That dynamism becomes most visible in periods of economic growth or decline in a place. For example, cities that are experiencing considerable gentrification may lose some aspect of what once made them unique as locally-owned small businesses are replaced by high-end boutiques, or as neighborhood demographics change with an influx of wealth. Likewise, if a major employer leaves a place and there are no other employers who can offer jobs at comparable rates, the resulting economic decline may result in deteriorating houses as people have less disposable income to put into maintenance, or crumbling infrastructure as the city’s tax revenues decline. Long-term residents of a place that has undergone significant change over the years might point out the locations of businesses or other institutions that have disappeared, or buildings that stand on what was once undeveloped land; in either case, the location might be the same, but the place and the way that people think or feel about it will have changed.

References:

In light of our discussion of space and place, it may seem like space is boundless, or like place is inherently small, yet this is not necessarily the case. To fully understand the complexity of these concepts, it is important to have an understanding of scale. Scale is essential to developing a spatial perspective because it enables us to organize how we think and talk about space and place.

We can begin by thinking of scale in what is probably its most familiar form: map applications like Google Maps, MapQuest, or OpenStreetMap. All of these applications allow the user to choose a point and either zoom into that point, or zoom out from it. Just to see how this works, choose whichever map application you prefer and pan the map to some part of the world that interests you.

Once you have the map centered as you like it, zoom in using the plus (+) icon. Click several times until you can’t zoom in anymore. (You may have to recenter the map to keep your point of interest on the screen.) As you zoom in, the part of the map that is visible on the screen covers a smaller area. The features—bodies of water, streets, and so on—appear larger and in greater detail. If you zoom in far enough, the outlines of buildings may appear. Now, zoom out using the minus (–) icon. Again, click several times until you can’t zoom out anymore. You will notice that the view becomes less detailed, the shapes of features like water bodies or cities lose their details and become more generalized, and some features disappear altogether.

When you zoom in or out of the map, you are changing the map’s scale. When you zoomed in and the application is displaying a smaller area with greater detail, you are looking at a large-scale map. When you zoom out and the application is displaying a greater area with less detail, you are looking at a small-scale map. We refer to this as cartographic scale, and the designations ‘large’ and ‘small’ here refer to the ratio of the area on the map to the equivalent area that it covers on the ground. A map with a scale of 1:10 would therefore be a map where one inch (or centimeter) on the map represents ten inches (or centimeters) on the ground. A map with a scale of 1:1 would have a perfect correlation (one inch on the map represents one inch on the ground). Both of these would be considered large-scale maps. A map with a scale of 1:250,000 would, by contrast, be a small-scale map. (For more on cartographic scales, see the USGS report listed in the references.)

Fig 1.5: Left: a large-scale map of Valencia, Spain. Right: a small-scale map showing Spain and Portugal. Notice that the large-scale map shows a smaller area but the features are larger; by contrast, the small-scale map shows a larger area but the features are significantly smaller.

Credit: Large-scale map of Valencia, Spain Creative Commons [9] Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported [10],
Small-scale map of Spain and Portugal Creative Commons [9] CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication [11].

Research in human geography often relies on a different rendering of scale. In this version, scale refers to the extent of the area at which phenomena happen, or the extent of the area at which we can perceive certain phenomena. We refer to this as organizational scale: a relative hierarchy of areal extents that traditionally include local, regional, national, and global scales, and may include additional designations such as the scale of the body or the extra-state regional scale.

As Herod (2009) discusses, there has been considerable debate in human geography about the nature of scale. Some argue that scale is an inherent, material property of the world, while others argue that it is purely socially constructed. Beyond this, human geographers use various metaphors of scale that reflect different theoretical orientations. 

Several popular metaphors for scale include ladders, concentric circles, Russian nesting dolls, and tree roots. For our purposes, the concentric circles and tree roots metaphors will likely be the most useful. The concentric circles metaphor suggests a couple of things: first, that scales have clear boundaries; second, that things that happen at narrower scales are set within the context of things that happen at broader scales (e.g., the laws of a city in the US can be unique to that city but they have to be legal within the broader framework of the state’s legal system, which in turn have to meet certain federal standards). In this metaphor, narrower scales are contained by broader scales.

Fig 1.6: Scale represented as concentric circles.

Credit: Cristopher Livecchi - Following Herod (2009)
© Penn State University is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 [7].

By contrast, the tree root metaphor suggests that phenomena occur in relation to one another across a network of space. This metaphor is less totalizing than concentric circles imply; rather than assuming that all local-scale phenomena are subject to precisely the same external forces, it allows for some particularity: the thick bands of global influence extend downwards to smaller localities, but in some cases in different ways and with different outcomes. Likewise, this metaphor operates on the assumption that scales do not always have clear, identifiable boundaries, and indeed that they cannot always be considered as separate spaces.

Fig 1.7: Scale represented as tree roots.

Credit: Cristopher Livecchi and Pixabay [12] - Following Herod (2009)
© Penn State University is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 [7].

The reading from Massey gets to the heart of this issue, underscoring the ways that globalization has compressed space and time, and how the technologies of our globalized world have linked distant places through flows of information, goods, and money—and changed the scale at which we think of place.

References:

With this basic understanding of space, place, and scale, we turn now to a brief discussion of how these concepts are related. 

First and foremost (and as we discussed above), places are located within space, and they have space within them. For example, we can situate University Park, Pennsylvania with a set of coordinates that mark its location in space, and we can also measure its area in square miles using that spatial data. For many people, the most familiar place they can think of is one where they regularly sleep, and they may have spatial concerns about that place (does it have enough closet space? Is there enough space for a bed, a dresser, and a bookshelf? Is there enough space for the dog to sleep on the bed too?).

Likewise, we can consider the space of place: when terrorists brought down the World Trade Center, it impacted the entire United States (and, arguably, much of the rest of the world as well). In the immediate aftermath, the entire city of New York shut down, and people across the United States felt some emotional impact from the news as they watched the images of the towers falling. In that moment and for some time afterward, a highly localized place (which we now refer to as Ground Zero), which was thought to be bounded by the block on which the World Trade Center was located, extended to encompass the whole of New York City in some ways, and in other ways, its space radiated outwards to the rest of the United States: that is, in a particular moment, New York stood symbolically for the US. (The same could be said for the Pentagon; we focus on the Twin Towers here because of their status as an icon within civil America.)

The extending outwards of a site of collective trauma from its origin point to the rest of the country is not just an expansion of space: it is also a kind of upscaling of a phenomenon. We can scale place and space upward or downward even without such extraordinary circumstances: consider, for example, presidential election maps. Many of the maps that we see during presidential elections display each state within the US in a single, solid color, with the implication that one candidate won the votes of the entire state. Yet if we were to scale downward to look at a narrower scale, such as each county, we find that most states are a patchwork of red and blue. Scale even further inward to each district, and we find that, even within counties, there is quite a bit of variation in voting. When election results are presented at the scale of the state, it is effectively an upward scaling of more localized voting habits.

This leads us to one of the most important relationships between space, place, and scale: varying the scale at which we observe phenomena may reveal clues about spatial distribution. In turn, what we see with regard to density, concentration, and pattern may lead us to a greater understanding of how places form, how people experience them, and how people perceive them.

The subject of our course, cultural geography, is one of the many subdisciplines of human geography. It focuses on the relationships between human culture, space, and place.

Culture is a notoriously difficult term to define—in part because we use it in casual speech. There is a long history of debate about the meaning of the term and its utility (see the reading by Mitchell for more on this). For our purposes, we will follow Rubenstein’s simplified definition of culture: “the body of customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits that together constitute a group’s distinct tradition” (2019, p. 365).

In everyday life, we see culture manifest in both material and nonmaterial forms. Culture is reflected in things like which language we speak and how we use it; the clothing we are expected to wear and the clothing we choose to wear; the foods we eat and the utensils we use to eat it; the holidays we celebrate and the symbols that represent them; the way people greet one another, both formally and informally; the expectations we carry regarding age and gender; what constitutes responsibility or respectful versus disrespectful behavior; and so on. Culture also appears in things like architectural style and the materials we use for constructing buildings; modes of transportation and the rules (explicit or tacit) surrounding them; the way we dance, the music we listen to, and the television or movies we watch; and even things like the size of a roll of toilet paper and how many of those rolls are sold in a single package.

Although we often think of culture as something that exists somewhere else, we live within, use, argue with, and push back against culture every day. Given the incredible breadth of culture (it encompasses, to some degree, everything within the realm of human activity), it becomes normalized in everyday life, and thus operates in ways that are often invisible to people—until they find themselves at odds with it, encounter a new culture, or find themselves returning to their home culture from some other cultural environment.

At this point you may be wondering what a spatial perspective brings to an understanding of culture. A core aspect of cultural geography is the examination of how culture manifests across and through space, how it coalesces in place, how it is (or becomes) spatialized, and how it changes within places. For example, in recent years cultural geographers have studied things like: lived experiences of insecurity among refugees and asylum seekers in Britain as a result of precarious labor situations (Waite, Valentine, and Lewis, 2014), the way daily rhythms in a Toronto neighborhood have changed as a result of gentrification (Kern, 2016), and even the spatial origins and odyssey of an antique car during the process of its restoration (DeLyser and Greenstein, 2015).

References:

There are countless ways a person can approach their profession, and every academic discipline will bring its own perspective to bear on the issues that are the focus of that profession. Cultural geography is no different. The aim of our discipline, and of this course, is to help you develop a critical spatial perspective that enables you to understand, analyze, and evaluate the many complicated cultural factors at play in issues of human security and intelligence analysis. For human security and intelligence analysis alike, it is crucial to understand the ways that places are made, experienced, perceived, and impacted by various actors. Yet places are inherently cultural constructions; accordingly, cultural geography is uniquely attuned to these issues. Lesson 2 of this course will delve deeper into the significance of cultural geography and its relationship to both human security and intelligence analysis.

Course Design

Figure 1.8: Course Roadmap

Credit: Leanne Sulewski
© Penn State University is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 [7]

This week we provided you with the foundations of cultural geography, and lenses or tools that cultural geographers use to frame our understanding of the world: space, place, and scale. These are concepts we will revisit throughout the course.

In the remainder of this course, we continue to build a foundation in cultural (and political) geography relative to issues of intelligence analysis and homeland security. The lecture notes you read here will provide the conceptual and theoretical footing, and assigned articles and other media will give you case studies that use these concepts or that give you data that you can analyze using the concepts. It is important that you read the lecture notes fully; we recommend that you take some notes to help you process the lecture notes and understand the concepts. (And if you’re ever stuck, reach out to us with questions!)

Here is what you can expect to learn about over the rest of this term: In lesson 2 we address some of the ethical aspects of applying human geographic concepts to intelligence operations. One assignment during this lesson is a team debate in which you argue either for or against incorporating human geographic concepts in intelligence.

In lessons 3 through 5, we turn toward a key component of cultural geography: identity. Lesson 3 provides a conceptual introduction to identity at the scale of the individual, and a person’s identity relative to space and place. Lesson 4 addresses the importance of borders and boundaries at the international scale, how we identify places as belonging to particular states, and how borders and identity are related to conflict. Lesson 5 extends and combines the content of lessons 3 and 4 with a hard look at nationalism, separatism, and terrorism.

With lesson 6 we turn our attention to the physical world around us, in the form of cultural landscapes. Here we consider what the actual landscape can tell us about the people who inhabit it, and how we can read issues of human security on the landscape.

In lessons 7 and 8 we consider mobility and migration. Lesson 7 introduces these concepts and discusses their spatiality, while lesson 8 focuses more specifically on the experiences of refugees and asylum seekers and the challenges of human security that arise from the displacement of people due to conflict.

Finally, in lessons 9 and 10 we take a look at two concepts that effectively combine everything else we have laid out: home and peace. Lesson 9 introduces and critiques the concept of home at the scale of individual experience, while lesson 10 scales home upward to homeland and asks you to consider the endgame of human security and intelligence: the desire for peace in one’s homeland—not just as the absence of conflict, but as something more.

To get the most out of this course, we recommend (again!) that you read the lecture notes carefully and take notes as you do. Notice how throughout the course we rely on the previous weeks to inform our understanding of the weeks going forward. Concepts like space, place, scale, and identity recur throughout the course as ways of informing our understanding. We expect that you will apply these concepts in assignments throughout the course.

Finally, remember that the assigned readings and other media are meant to be understood within the context of the lecture notes. During most lessons you will have discussions with your classmates; your posts should use the concepts introduced in the lecture notes to analyze the assigned readings/media, and should engage with your classmates’ ideas and interpretations in a meaningful way, though we also encourage you to bring in any relevant experiences of your own that dovetail with the discussion.

Esri is best known for the ArcGIS suite of software that has proliferated the spatial analysis world since the 1980s (Esri). Esri launched ArcGIS Online in 2012, which has continued to expand its capabilities and make spatial analysis more collaborative, easy to use, and easier to disseminate. This comes with some positives and negatives; however, it is beyond the scope of this class to discuss those nuances.

This course will utilize ArcGIS Online and ArcGIS StoryMaps as a mechanism for interrogating and understanding issues relating to cultural geography and intelligence analysis, as well as for disseminating and conveying your results and findings.

ArcGIS Online has several components for interrogating and conveying spatial information. ArcGIS Online’s basic features allow you to create and share maps and create web applications from those maps. Your first exercise, on the next page of this lesson, will have you create and share your first web map.

As a Penn State student in this class, you have access to an ArcGIS Online account, which you will use to complete several of the assignments for this course .

Here are the steps to access your ArcGIS Online account:

• Use the following link to access Penn State’s ArcGIS Online Organization [1]
• Log in with your PSU username and password
  • If you don't see the Penn State login page, you might have to click the “Penn State WebAccess” link.

Deliverable:

You must submit a screen capture of your Penn State ArcGIS Online home page (worth 5 points) to the Lesson 1 ArcGIS Online dropbox in Canvas. The screen capture should be similar to the image below and must include your name and student ID. Instructions for submitting the screen capture can be found on the Lesson 1 ArcGIS Login page in the Lesson 1 Module in Canvas.

Note: If you do not successfully complete the ArcGIS login, your instructor will not be able to give you access to the files you will need to complete the Lesson 1 mapping exercise (45 points).

Please check the Canvas Syllabus or Calendar for specific time frames and due dates.

One key item to remember for future projects:

• The ArcGIS Online sharing features are key to your success. The default sharing settings are to keep your work “private,” so that nobody else can see your maps while you are working on them. When you are getting ready to turn in your work, especially complex work that may include multiple maps, please ensure that the sharing settings for all of your content is set to 'Organization'.

Getting Started with ArcGIS Online:

Use the link to preview Esri's Get started with ArcGIS Online [14] lesson.

• Notes about the Getting started with ArcGIS Online lesson:
  • Lesson duration: 30 minutes
  • Cost: Free
  • The lesson provides an in-depth map-making activity that will help prepare you for our first mapping exercise.

StoryMaps

One additional capability within ArcGIS Online are the StoryMaps. StoryMaps allow users to convey their content in a story format, integrating many of the components ArcGIS Online has to offer.

Use the link to preview Esri's Get started with ArcGIS StoryMaps [15] lesson.

• Notes about the Get started with ArcGIS StoryMaps lesson:
  • Lesson duration: 30 minutes
  • Cost: Free
  • As a Penn State student, you already have access to Penn State's ArcGIS Online Organization.

Gaining familiarity with the technology you will be using to convey your information is important, but it is equally important to recognize the power one has when one is conveying and disseminating information. Choosing what content to convey and which mechanisms to use are integral to ensuring that you are presenting your information effectively for the greatest number of readers possible. The next training module explores storytelling in ArcGIS Online:

Use the link to preview Esri's Telling Stories with GIS Maps [16] lesson.

• Notes about Telling Stories with GIS Maps:
  • Lesson duration: 1 hour
  • Cost: Free
  • When Launching the course, you may select 'Access Anonymously.'
  • We will not be tracking any training records.

Other potential resources:

• ArcGIS StoryMaps: An Introduction [17] - Esri Training Video (28 min)
• Anatomy of a Story [19] - StoryMap (5 minutes)
• Getting Started with ArcGIS StoryMaps [20] - StoryMap

Introduction:

Scale is very important in societal perceptions of phenomena. One such phenomenon that is subject to significant scale differences in relation to its perception is gun violence. Global perception is that gun violence and gun related homicide is prevalent throughout the United States, with statistics being shown in media outlets like the BBC. Using ArcGIS Online and media sources, this exercise will allow you to examine global, state, and county data related to firearm-related fatalities to examine and interrogate the impact of scale on the perception of firearm-related fatalities.

All the data you need for the assignment is uploaded to the ArcGIS Online Group that we set up for this course. To gain access to the group:

1. Log into Penn State’s ArcGIS Online organization [1].
2. Go to your Groups page by clicking on the 'Groups' link in the menu at the top of the page.
3. In your groups, look for the GEOG 571 Group.
   1. Dr. Livecchi's students should use the GEOG 571 T1-Livecchi group.
   2. Dr. Sulewski's students should use the GEOG 571 T2-Sulewski group.
   3. Dr. Gaertner's students should use the GEOG 571 - Gaertner group.
4. If you do not already have access to the group, please contact your instructor to request membership.

Overall Task:

Using the data and sources provided in the ArcGIS Online group, utilize ArcGIS Online and ArcGIS StoryMaps to explain the role of scale in understanding (or misunderstanding) the prevalence of homicides committed by firearms.

Choropleth Map

In this exercise, we will be creating choropleth maps to help visualize the data.

A choropleth map is a type of map that uses quantitative (numerical) data to categorize enumeration units (such as countries, states, and counties) into a series of groups. Different colors or shading for each group of data are used to differentiate between groups.

Take, for instance, the choropleth map of July 2012 unemployment rates below. This map has six classes, and each class is represented by a different shade of red. Each state is then assigned to a class and corresponding color depending on the unemployment rate for that state.

Figure 1.9: Choropleth map showing July 2012 unemployment rates by state.

Credit: Bureau of Labor Statistics [21]. CC-BY-SA-3.0 [22].

Click here to see the unemployment data for the map above

July 2012 Unemployment Rate by State (not seasonally adjusted)

State	Unemployment (%)
Alabama	8.9
Alaska	7.2
Arizona	8.7
Arkansas	7.8
California	10.9
Colorado	8.3
Connecticut	9.3
Delaware	7.1
District of Columbia	9.1
Florida	9.4
Georgia	9.5
Hawaii	6.3
Idaho	6.9
Illinois	9.3
Indiana	8.3
Iowa	5.1
Kansas	6.7
Kentucky	8.5
Louisiana	7.9
Maine	7.4
Maryland	7.1
Massachusetts	6.6
Michigan	10.3
Minnesota	5.9
Mississippi	10.2
Missouri	7.6
Montana	5.9
Nebraska	4.3
Nevada	12.5
New Hampshire	5.7
New Jersey	10.1
New Mexico	7.4
New York	9.1
North Carolina	9.9
North Dakota	2.9
Ohio	7.4
Oklahoma	5.2
Oregon	8.8
Pennsylvania	8.4
Rhode Island	11.2
South Carolina	9.7
South Dakota	4.4
Tennessee	8.7
Texas	7.5
Utah	6.2
Vermont	5.3
Virginia	6.1
Washington	8.4
West Virginia	7.2
Wisconsin	7.4
Wyoming	5.3

Global Patterns:

A data set for 2020 global Firearm Homicide Rates can be found in the ArcGIS Online group. It is labeled Lesson 1: 2020 Firearm Homicide Rates Worldwide:

1. Beginning from your 'My Groups' page. Once you have identified your correct group, click "view details."
   1. Dr. Livecchi's students should click on the GEOG 571 T1-Livecchi group.
   2. Dr. Sulewski's students should click on the GEOG 571 T2-Sulewski group.
   3. Dr. Gaertner's students should use the GEOG 571 - Gaertner group.
2. Click on the three dots below the Lesson 1: 2020 Firearm Homicide Rates Worldwide link and click on the 'Open in Map Viewer.’
3. The data will load automatically and you will see a map that is zoomed in on the Unites States. You can zoom in and out using your mouse or the '+' and '-' buttons on the map.
4. When the map opens in the viewer, all of the countries are one color. We need to symbolize the countries based on the Firearm Homicide rates for 2020.
5. If a Layers pane is not visible, click the 'Layers' button.
   
   
6. In the left Layers pane, you’ll see your dataset. To change the symbology for your dataset, make sure that you select the dataset (if it is selected, a blue vertical bar will appear on the left side of the name of the layer). If the layer is selected, a series of options will be enabled on the right side of your map. Select 'Styles.'
   
   
7. To the left of this dialog, options for styles appear. Click on the button to add a field:
   
   The attribute you will choose is: FAHR_2020
   
8. Once you choose the attribute, new drawing styles will appear to help you symbolize your data. We are generating a choropleth map. Under 'Counts and Amounts,' click the 'Style options' button. By clicking on 'Symbol Style' you can choose a different color ramp. Ensure the color ramp you have chosen depicts low values with a lighter color and high values with a darker color.
9. Just below the color ramp/histogram, there will be a slider bar for 'Classify Data.' Slide the bar to the right to enable classifying data. Continue scrolling down on the pane. This is where you will see options to change your classification scheme (keep the default: 'Natural Breaks') and change the number of classes (for now, keep the default: 4).
10. Once you complete your amending this dataset, click 'Done' and 'Done' again.
11. Once you’re done, you can save your map by clicking the Save button in the far left menu. Add a title, tags, and description. In the title of the map, at the end have your last name.
12. Make sure to add tags, as they are required to save the map.
    
    
    • Please include your last name as part of the title of your map. (e.g. Map Title - LastName )

Review the results of your map:

What spatial patterns are you seeing in the data? Where are the highest rates of firearm-related homicides? Where are the lowest?

United States Patterns:

The overall perception from media reports may be that gun violence and firearm-related homicides are widespread throughout the United States. Is that really true? Or are there spatial patterns to where there are higher rates of firearm-related homicides?

1. To add the United States data to the map, click the 'Add Layers' button at the bottom of the layers pane.
   
   
2. Change the search options from 'My Content' to 'My Groups.'
   
   
3. Search for this dataset:
   Lesson 1: 2020 Firearm Homicide Rates United States
   
4. Click on the plus sign at the bottom of the dataset:
   
   
5. Follow the same procedure for symbolizing the United States data as you did for the global dataset.
   
6. The field you will use to generate the choropleth map is called:
   FHR_2020

Reminder: When you save your map, be sure to include your last name at the end of it.

Review the results of your map:

What spatial patterns are you seeing in the data? Are there variations in the crude rates of firearm-related homicides across the United States or is it more evenly distributed?

What does this say about the considerations of scale when thinking about perceptions of firearm-related homicides for a whole country? 

Record your observations and comparisons. They will be used in your final compiled StoryMap.

Missouri Patterns:

Media articles about firearm-related fatalities in the United States often cite Missouri as a state with high rates, as likely evidenced in your review of spatial patterns in the United States data. You will now review firearm-related fatalities from 2020 to see if there are variations in the fatality rates across the state.

Follow the same procedures for creating a Missouri map as you did for the global and United States map.

The dataset is called:
Lesson 1: 2020 Firearm Fatality Rates Missouri

The field you will use to generate the choropleth map is called:
FAF_2020

Review the results of your map:

What spatial patterns are you seeing in the data? Are there variations in the crude rates of firearm-related fatalities across Missouri, or is it more evenly distributed?

Record your observations and comparisons. They will be used in your final compiled StoryMap.

Creating Your StoryMap:

To access StoryMaps in ArcGIS Online, click the square of nine circles in the upper right corner of the ArcGIS Online webpage, next to your name and user ID. You will see a series of Esri ArcGIS online 'Apps.' Scroll down and select StoryMaps.

Using the maps you have created throughout this exercise, create a StoryMap describing your observations with regards to firearm-related fatalities across the three scales we investigated: global, national, and state. Be sure to include the information listed in the StoryMap checklist below.

StoryMap Checklist:

Ensure your StoryMap includes the following:

• Contains the three web maps for all three scales of interest,

• Answers to the questions you were asked to engage with for each map,

• Ensure your answers also incorporate the media sources you were asked to read,

• Synthesizes your observations between all three maps and illustrates how scale is important in understanding human-related spatial phenomena.  Your synthesis should include answers to the following questions:

  • How does scale impact the perception of firearm-related fatalities?

  • Why is it important to consider scale when discussing phenomena such as firearm-related fatalities?

Sharing your data and maps in ArcGIS Online groups:

Make sure your StoryMap is shared with the PSU organization and with the GEOG 571 group. Go to your 'My Content' page, and click on your StoryMap. On the page for your map, there will be a series of buttons on the right side of the browser for opening in a Map Viewer, opening in ArcGIS, opening in Field Maps, creating a presentation, creating a web app, and finally, sharing.

• Ensure your StoryMap or data is shared to the course’s ArcGIS Online Group:
  1. Go to the metadata page for your story.
  2. On the right side click the button 'Share'.
  3. Set the share level to 'Organization' and Set the group settings to the course’s group by clicking 'Edit Group Sharing.' make sure there is a check mark next to the course’s group.
     

Summary

This lesson provided you with a brief introduction to geography and cultural geography, with an emphasis on the importance of space, place, and scale as analytical concepts. It also introduced you to ArcGIS Online and StoryMaps as tools for analyzing and presenting data; we will use these again at various points in the term. The concepts and exercises in this lesson are designed to foster a spatial perspective that you will continue to develop and use.

Final Tasks