Cartography in ArcGIS and QGIS

She also has an innate ability to work with GIS, and pick up new things: one day she has never programmed in Python, and the next day, she has a couple of hundred line Python script created and running in ArcGIS!  So, I was so happy when Meghan said she wanted to take a special course in Open Source GIS that I was offering this semester.  We covered QGIS, Postgres/PostGIS, GDAL, and Geoserver.  For her final project, Meghan decided she wanted to compare the cartography capabilities of ArcGIS and QGIS, and make a video about it (maybe she was inspired by my videos, or maybe she just figured after watching Lembo’s videos, how could I do worse!).

Whatever her reason, like everything else she does, this turned out great, especially since she had never done a live tutorial like this.  So, I encourage you to watch the side-by-side comparisons for creating a basic cartographic product in both ArcGIS and QGIS.  It’s about 40 minutes long, but worth every minute: I found that I learned some things I hadn’t known regarding some cartographic tools.  And, on that note, I’ll have more videos from my undergraduates shortly (some built web maps, others built an enterprise GIS with Postgres.

If you want to learn more about open source GIS, Python programming, Spatial SQL, or Spatial Statistics, check out my online courses at www.gisadvisor.com.