ArcPro Animation of 1923 Canoe Trip in Algonquin Park

By Sarah Medland

Geovis Course Project @RyersonGeo, SA8905, Fall 2018

Context

While searching the web for historic maps to inspire this project I came across the personal website of Bob and Diane McElroy. Their website includes an extensive personal collection of present and historic records of the natural environment within Ottawa Valley and Algonquin Park. The collection of thoughts and logs on their site consist of those of their ancestors – dating back many decades from now. The following map is a section of the one which was chosen for the purpose of this assignment. It dates back to 1921:

In July of 1923, a group of 4 men led by a guide embarked on a 12-day canoe-trip, creating a log of their route as they traveled. The map log included handwritten details by W. H. McConnell about wildlife, weather, and their experience in the Park.

Purpose:

 to animate an artistic rendering of a historic canoeing route which…

 – brings to life a historic map by integrating it with modern GIS technology

– reveals information from approx. a hundred years prior about an ever-popular canoeing area

Methods

To begin, the map was download as a JPEG and brought into ArcMap. A DMTI Spatial minor water bodies Shapefile was added. Using this present-day layer, labelled by lake name, it was fairly easy to align this with the lakes from the historic map. Some challenges arose as the map is from 1921 therefore its accuracy is questionable, however, I was able to geo-reference the map fairly well.

Historic Map in ArcMap where it was georeferenced to a present-day water bodies layer

Next, DEM tiles were downloaded from Scholar’s Geoportal. These were converted into a TIN using the raster to TIN tool in ArcMap, and then into TIN nodes using the TIN node tool. This allowed the tiles to be combined into one continuous TIN using the Create TIN tool which could be clipped to the extent of the map surface. Once the elevation surface was made, the map could be given height.

The map surface after it was draped over an elevated TIN surface and atmospheric effects were applied

To visualize the canoe route, a line Shapefile was created over the route drawn on the map. Campsites were also added as a point Shapefile which included a ‘Date’ field in the attribute table. In the ArcGIS Pro Global setting the map was draped over the TIN surface and campsites symbolized in 3D with the dates labelled.

An example of some of the original annotations on the map

Lastly, a animation following the canoe route was created in ArcGIS Pro. The animation was created to guide the viewer along the route of the 1923 trip and included annotations such as those above and historic pictures from the time period.

Results: The following video is the final product: