Data Acquisition and Manipulation

For this project, the following data were used. My acquisition and manipulation of this data was as follows:

Agricultural Land Reserve

Data

This data was obtained online from the Integrated Land management Bureau. Details about this image are as follows:

• Title: ALC Agricultural Land Reserve Polygons
• Date: April 30, 2006
• Scale: 1:20,000
• Projection: BC Albers
• Datum: NAD_1983

Manipulation

This data was clipped from its full BC size to represent areas of the ALR which are within the GVRD. This clipped form was created in ArcMap. This was then converted into a raster file and imported into Idrisi.

Land Use data for the GVRD

Data

This data was obtained from the S: drive data collection available for students of Geography 355. Details about this image are as follows:

• Title: GVRD Land Use 2001
• Date: 2001
• Projection: NAD_1983

Manipulation

This data was converted to raster in ArcMap and imported into Idrisi in the Integer format. I n Idrisi, this was resized using the module CONCAT and a blank image of the population statistics image. Secondly, this data was converted to Real numbers using the CONVERT module so it would be in the same format as the population statistics data. This was necessary to allow operations to be performed with both images. Lastly, using the ASSIGN module, this image was assigned a new .avl file 16 times to create a Boolean image of each land use (See Cartographic Model).

Population Statistics for the GVRD

Data

This data was obtained from. Details about this image are as follows:

• Title: BC Population Statistics
• Date: 1996
• Projection: NAD_1983

Manipulation

The original shapefile was for BC in its entirety, so this was clipped to the GVRD using ArcToolbox. This file was then projected with UTM_10N to standardize the data files imported into Idrisi. This data was then converted to raster using ArcToolbox, at a resolution of 250 meters to match the GVRD land use image, and imported into Idrisi. This was imported with Real numbers, because the population value range was too large for either Integer or Byte formats. As this image was somewhat larger than the GVRD land use image, a blank version was created using the INITIAL module to allow for operations to be performed involving both images.

Farm Inventory

Data

I created this dataset through a web-based search for farms in the GVRD. The address of each farm was geocoded with the help of www.geocoder.ca and plotted with X and Y coordinates based on latitude and longitude position. The .dbf file used here is a truncated version of the one I produced as part of my position with the Centre for Sustainable Community Development’s Local Food Project.