Creating Random Sample Points in ArcMap to Export to GPS

Problem:

Your consulting firm was hired to complete a vegetation analysis on an area slated for development.
This area has a sensitive site designation and you will need to complete field sampling on the area. The
City of Brandon has asked that you predefine locations in order to conduct field sampling on the site.

• You are not to sample in the “open water” area

• You need 25 random sample plots across the “land” area divided into approximately 0.5 hectare
areas
• You will need to produce a field map with the sampling areas and points for the sampling crew
• You will need a table with the sampling points and location (UTM or LL)
• You will need to convert sampling points to a gpx file in order to upload to a GPS as well

How are you going to do this?

GIS to GPS: Creating Sampling Locations 1

Steps:
Details ArcMap Tools

You need to remove the open water from the site

area, what tool will you use?
You need to need to calculate the area of land. How
will you do this, is data type important, why?
You need to now divide up the area into roughly 0.5
hectare sampling areas. In ArcMap there are two tools
that will do this:
Tool #1 - you need to know the length of the sides to
create a rectangular or square “Grid” of the required
area
Tool#2 – you need to know the area for each sampling
site
What is the best feature type for this (point, line,
polygon)?
Have a look at the table of the file you have just
generated, what fields have been created? Why is this
important? Depending on the tool used what else
might you have to do, how?
You need to generate a point in the centre (centroid)
of each sampling area. What tool will you use?

Have a look in this point table what fields have been

created? What is noticeable/important?
You will need to restrict the sampling areas, and
sampling points to the “land” only area within the
sensitive site, what tool will you use? On which
features will you do this?
Once you have generated all the sampling points you
will need to randomly select a subsample of 25
locations that you will become your field sampling
locations. What tool will you use for this?
You will need to create the LL or UTM location in your
table of points. How will this be done? Is the data type
important, why?
You will need to create a gpx file that can be loaded
onto any handheld GPS. How will you do this?
Data required? Can be found?

GIS to GPS: Creating Sampling Locations 2

You are to create:
1. An attractive and cartographically sound field map (as a pdf 8 ½ x 11 page size) illustrating:
1.1. The sensitive site & open water
1.2. The sampling area grid (not labelled)
1.3. The random sampling points (labelled)
1.4. Table of Points with only the labels and the LL or UTM coordinates
2. A GPX file with the 25 points including the identifying label as the waypoint name

Up for a BONUS Challenge? #1- Create a MODEL #2- Include the “sensitive area” as an area polygon in
gpx format for the GPS

Is your map going to look like this or even your neighbors? Probably not, you will have different
random sampling points, maybe you used a square grid, different colours, different plot labels. But it
must have all the same elements: good carto design!, a sampling grid of about 0.5 ha, labelled random
sample locations, a table of plots with plot#, and some form of XY coordinates (UTM or LL).

Hand In:
• A zip file (LastName_GPSLocs) containing your cartographically sound map of the sampling plan
(#1 above) as a PDF AND a single gpx file of the sampling locations with the GRID_ID as your
point name. If you have attempted the bonus include those in the zip (model as graphic, area as
a gpx)
GIS to GPS: Creating Sampling Locations 3