Isarithmic Mapping

This week's lab assignment involved two varieties of isarithmic maps, which are used to depict continuous phenomena that can be fairly said to have a value at every point on a surface. Examples of continuous data that can be shown isarithmically include precipitation levels, temperature and elevation levels.

The two maps created this week show the same data in slightly different ways. The continuous tone map takes the precipitation data provided in the raster layer and simply assigns it a color value along the range of the color map in direct relation to the precipitation value on the number line. The data is unclassified. The raster layer is also set up to provide elevation levels, which are depicted via using hillshading.

The hypsometric tints map depicts the data in discrete classes, which were determined manually. To allow this to work, the raster data on precipitation levels were converted from floating point data to integers. The different classes were then further emphasized by creating contour lines using the same class intervals as were used to create the tint classes.

Average Annual Precipitation (Continuous Tone)

Average Annual Precipitation (Hypsometric Tint)