GIS Joins Lab
This lab will teach:
Download, Do early | Data Layer | File name and location on your hard drive |
Yes (should be simple) | Download Tiger Census Blocks shapefile | |
Subset Blocks shapefile to just your county (filter with county FIPS codes) and save | ||
Yes (should be simple) | Download Tiger Census Block groups shapefile | |
Subset Block groups shapefile to just your county and save | ||
Yes (should be simple) | Download Tiger Census Tracts shapefile | |
Subset tracts shapefile to just your county and save | ||
Yes (big but simple) | Download National coverage Census Bureau SF1 shapefile by tracts (it has a metadata file with it) | |
Subset SF1 shapefile to just your county (filter with county and state FIPS codes, which are the first 5 characters of the GEOID field, so use GEOID='24003*') and save. Because of the size of this file, the subset is critical (or you will sit around a lot). | ||
Rename fields in subset SF1 | ||
Yes; will be complicated | Download American Community Survey Data for your county, by tracts | |
Modify CSV file from American Community survey (rename a few fields, and delete the rest) | ||
Import American Community survey as DBF file. If you have a
coastal region, there are often tracts with 0 population. These
will skew your color coding by field, and it will probably improve your
map if you filter them out and perhaps save the shapefile without them. Add leading zeros to repair Zip or FIPS codes. |
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Last revision 9/13/2018