Discussion Questions

1. What is georeferencing or geocoding?
2. Explain the three requirements of a georeferencing system.
3. What powerful qualities do metric georeferencing systems have?
4. What are the limitations of postal address georeferencing systems?
5. What is a linear referencing system? What types of linear networks are they used for and what types of locations do they define?
6. What are GIS-T and ITS?
7. How does the PLSS system define location?
8. Longitude ranges from -180 to 180.  Explain what these numbers mean.
9. What is an ellipsoid?
10. What is flattening as it pertains to ellipsoids?
11. What is the purpose of WGS84 and how does it relate to NAD83?
12. Latitude ranges from -90 to 90.  Explain what these numbers mean.
13. 1 degree latitude = 111km; 1 minute latitude = 1.86km = 1 nautical mile; 1 second latitude = 30m.  What lengths are 1 degree, minute, and second of longitude and why is it more complicated than latitude?  How far is 1 degree longitude at the North Pole?
14. What is a great circle?
15. Explain a Cartesian coordinate system.
16. What are easting and northing?
17. One way to think of a map projection is a transformation of latitude-longitude to a Cartesian coordinate system.  Explain this statement.
18. When you are combining GIS layers do you need to consider projection, datum, or both? Why?
19. What is the unprojected or geographic projection?
20. Portland is in UTM Zone 10N.  Explain the zonal system of UTM.
21. Explain the following UTM values.  500,000; 5,000,000.
22. What it the UPS?
23. What is the SPC and how is it different than UTM?
24. What are gazetteers and what are their limitations as opposed to similar information that can be extracted using a GIS?