LAB #7

The first map displays the distribution of Asians in the United States. As an Asian, this map matches my impression of ‘Asian groups’.  In my map, there are 6 levels of Asians’ density, indicating the number of Asians in a county with darker colors for higher density and lower colors for lower density. As shown in the map, the Asian people concentrate in east and west coasts, while in many central parts there are few Asian people living. San Francisco is one of the cities with most Asians, so are New York and Los Angeles. Therefore we can see that in the areas mentioned, the population of Asian is in the highest level. In the place with highest rate of Asians the ratio is near half, meaning there is likely one Asian out of every two people.

 The second map displays the distribution of Black people in the United States. Like the Asians, most black people live in coast areas. What is more, there are much more black people in southern part of the U.S than in the north. This may be a result from historical reasons as we know south is the place of many slaveries. Same as the first map, darker colors indicate higher density of black people and lower colors indicate lower density of black people. Some counties in the central north have few blacks while some places have black’s ratio up to 86%.

The third map displays the distribution of some other race in the United States. This may include the Hispanic people. Darker colors indicate higher density of other race and lower colors indicate lower density of other race people.  Most of the other race people emigrated from Central American counties like Mexico. That’s why we see a lot of them in the counties in south, especially near Mexico. Also in Florida, where people speak Spanish as much as English, the color is very dark. However, the rate of other race people does not go very high, as the highest rate in the U.S is less than 40%.

In conclusion, the three maps above tell us how diverse the population of the U.S is. The places with most complicated mixture of races is near borders and coasts, where are homes immigrates most likely to choose as. However, my guess is with the time goes by, people with the particular races will scatter and move to everywhere in this country and therefore, we might not see concentrations as high as today’s. This does mean there will be fewer people in that race but a nation with better mixed population.

In this assignment, we choose the American Lambert Conformal Conic projection in GIS to show us a manifest and friendly map of population. This projection helps to explain the distribution of a particular race in the U.S with different color indicating different levels of rates. The final maps are not only easy for common people to understand, but also very clear and pretty, a feast on eyes. GIS is a powerful tool to analyze complicated geographical data and serve a very good demonstration purpose.