Lab1

california counties



















This map of California's counties was taken from the California State Association of Counties (CSAC) website (www.csac.counties.org). CSAC's purpose is to represent county government before CA's legislature, administrative agencies, and the federal government. This map is of interest to me because it displays the size and location of California's counties. My current research aims include studying the association between residential/occupational pesticide exposure and the risk of developing Parkinson's disease in three largely agricultural counties: Kern, Fresno, and Tulare. As you can see in the map, they are located in the Central Valley of California.



Gecode maps






















This Google Earth map was taken from the blog of a company advertising geocoding services (http://blog.expertgps.com/blog/2008/10/how-do-i-map-a-list-of-addresses/). This map shows the GPS location of Walmart in the City of Industry in CA. For my research, we collected the addresses of residences and occupational locations and geocoded them using geocoding software provided by our colleagues at USC, powered by Google Maps. People often could not remember their addresses so we manually geocoded certain residences and occupational locations by finding key landmarks, cross-streets, or other location clues using Google Earth.


Parcel maps
















This map was taken from the website of a real estate company based in Modesto, CA (http://www.modesto-commercial.com/retail-for-lease.htm). This map details the spatial location and size of each parcel, or lot of land. We were able to obtain pesticide use information from the California's Department of Agriculture but to more precisely determine how much pesticide was used per farm we need to obtain farm boundaries. Maps of parcels such as this one may be one way to determine the boundaries of farms.