Historical GIS it the practice of combining History with Geography. When combining both studies, it allows researchers to explore the change in maps through a certain time period. Being able to explore the map as time progresses, opens the doors to new research questions. This is shown through Geoff Cunfers article Scaling the Dust Bowl. Where the author used GIS technology to challenge the original cause of the dust bowl. Originally the Dust Bowl was thought to be caused by farmers overusing the land, plowing up the native grasslands which kept the dirt intact.  However, after some research and the aid of Historical GIS software, Geoff Cunfers and his team discover a different narrative as to the cause of the Dust Bowl. Instead what was discovered was that throughout the period the regions which had the worst dust storms were places that suffered major draught. With the aid of new technology, it gives current historians better tools to explore historical questions on a much larger scale.

One feature which gives the Historical GIS some appeal is the ability to visually represent data. After following the lessons plan found on the website called Geospatial Historian the lesson teaches the readers how to represent data of the great plains in the 1930s. The data that is given is a map of the great plains within the United States of America. The interesting feature of this map is the ability to change different aspects of the map. Firstly, if the user wanted to display different layers on the map, they easily can by selecting it on the right side of the screen. On the great plains map, the user can toggle between turning on states, or counties, or if the user wanted to keep both on they could select both. The user can also color the map and arrange map layers to be able to easily determine the difference between counties and the states.

representation of counties or states.

The data given to the reader will be used later in the lesson. The data is extracted from a zip file, which can then be uploaded and selected through GIS software programs such as ArcMap, to visually represent the data. Being able to visually represent data in an easy to read graphical picture really helps aid and support research being done. In the software ArcMap, the data is uploaded through special files called gdb files. This file contains data that can be used within ArcMap. On the ArcMap user interface, the data is represented in a fashion which is similar to Microsoft Excel. This data can be selected and manipulated to show different values of data on the map. For example, if the user wanted to display the number of women between the ages of 18-25 all that would need to be done is selecting which fields in the gdb file that is wanted to be displayed on the overall map.

The One major flaw after using the software is the coloring of data and the presentation of colors. Different shades of red can be hard to distinguish between, and at times can feel like it makes the data that the researcher is trying to show harder to read. A good example of this is representing the number of Norwegians within the Great Plains in the 1930s in the United States of America. It would seem that the use of different colors would greatly help in improving the readability of the maps.

Norwegians located in great plains 1930’s

Esri is a company which specializes in GIS, specifically they created an advanced type of GIS software called ArcGIS Online. Some of the features that can be used with ArcGIS is creating a mapping which has a built-in function called smart mapping. Smart mapping suggests to the user interacting with the software the best colors and models to include into the map. This allows for an easier to read map compared to ArcMap.  Similar to ArcMap, ArcGIS allows users to upload custom data to the mapping service. Esri also contains other mapping software which could prove useful to historians. Historians provide a narrative as to why a certain event happened in history. They work closely with people and achieves to construct reasons as to why events happen. With the technology presented by Esri, story mapping allows historians to present maps in a storytelling method. Story map gives users the tools to incorporate research data and allows the user to construct methods to present the research in a much easier format to follow and understand. It is a form of public history, similar to that of a museum. In a museum, the data is presented through panels and is supported by the object that it is explaining. This allows for people interacting with the museum to gain a much deeper understanding of the object that is being presented. Story map allows the creator to input data and then support that data through images, maps, and other useful media to get their points across.

bibliography

1.  Cunfer, Geoff. “Scaling the Dust Bowl” in Placing History: How Maps, Spatial Data, and GIS Are Changing Historical Scholarship. Anne Kelly Knowles, ed. (Redlands: ESRI Press, 2008), 95-121. http://esripress.esri.com/storage/esripress/images/133/knowles.pdf.
2. Cunfer, Geoff. “ArcGIS Lesson 1: Mapping Great Plains Population.” Geospatial Historian: Open HGIS Lessons and Resources.Accessed March 9th 2019. https://geospatialhistorian.wordpress.com/lessons/arcgis-lesson-1-mapping-great-plains-population/.
3. Esri. “Story Maps”. Accessed March 7th 2019. https://storymaps.arcgis.com/en/.