Creating Maps and Assessing Spatial Autocorrelation

Displaying Data on Maps and Assessing Autocorrelation

Map Making: Visualizing maps and using them to display information

Detecting Autocorrelation: Are observations close to each other more likely to have similar values than those farther apart?

Why I chose this skill?

• Powerful alternative to ESRI
• Useful to people who work at macro-scales
• Daunting initially

How you can use it:

• Identify trends/patterns
• Make prettier maps
• QAQC big databases
• Properly analyze your data

Challenges:

• Importing .shp so readable to ggplot
• Unique identifiers have to be perfect
• Takes some time to learn how to control ggplot