Prepare Study Area Map Easily |QGIS

hello everyone this is mudras and today i am going to teach you how to prepare a good looking study area map using qgis or qgis which is an open source free software here you can add coordinates grids legends not arrow and many other stuffs in your map and it will definitely look much much better than the screenshots you take from google maps and google earth so let's begin before we begin i request you to get the latest version of qgis from the download link i have provided below in the description after installing keep everything ready let's begin so after the installation you will be able to find the qgis icon here definitely can open it okay so this is your qgis window and from here you can double click on the new empty project option so in google maps and google earth if you want to choose your study area you can just google also is the name of that study area and find it but in qgis you can't do it like that here we follow a different method so first we have to find a base map on which or from where we can find our study area uh i'm going to choose plugins manage and install plugins and here you can search q map services it's already there and select install plugin so this is going to be our base map uh on which we are going to find our study area it's been installed now and now you can go to web and click map services choose oism or some standard so you can see the world map in on your window imagine my study area is in somewhere in south india i'm zooming into kerala okay i found a place imagine this is my study area okay perpendicular tiger reserve i'm going to choose this as my study area and now i need to crop this study area out of the osm map in order to do so we have to go to select this option new temporary scratch layer and give that layer a name it is going to be a steady area so i'm going to give it the name study area and you can select the geometry type as polygon click ok now i'm going to start selecting this area by choosing add polygon feature and you can see the boundary of my study area so it's easy for me to select you can start selecting by clicking see i'm creating a polygon of my study area in fact if you want to accurately select your study area you can zoom in and select anyway i'm going to do it a little fast so i'm selecting so first click click click go okay now i'm done selecting my study area and if you are done just do the right click and now you can see your study area has been selected and it's in a different color now and we no longer need the background base map so we can uncheck osm and if you want it again you can call it back by clicking on it so this is our study area and some of you might be having some sample size within the study area or some sports where you have made some observations so we also need to add those sample size for that you again go to new temporary scratch layer and you can change the name of that layer i'm going to name it sample size and you can choose the geometry type as a point because we are going to add points representing our sample size and click ok so now we can do we can change the color of this layer for that you choose study area and go to layer styling panel and you can see there are many options available you can choose all symbols see these all are built in shapes for your study area you can choose whatever you want there are different colors textures so since my studio is a wildlife sanctuary i think i will go with the green color map click apply and you can close it the next thing you can do is we have to add our sample size right so click on the sample size layer and choose this add point feature i actually forgot to add it earlier so click there and when you scroll down you can see the coordinates are changing here but you might have noticed that you are not familiar with this with this system of coordinates so you want it in degree minutes second format so to change that go to project properties and here you can find display coordinates using map units so we have to change it into degree minutes seconds click apply and okay so now you can see when i move the cursor the coordinates are getting changed and it's in our familiar format and so for sample size you should be or you might be having the definite coordinates of that particular site so i'm zooming into my study area and when i move the cursor you can see the coordinates are getting changed and when the coordinates that you are having matches with the coordinates that's visible here just click there so that's going to be a sample site so you can find all your sample size like this okay i'm going to add some six all around across the sanctuary and you can change the color of these sample size as well by choosing the layer styling panel i am going to choose this red diamond thing and i am going to reduce the opacity a little bit click apply and done see so now we can start make adding coordinates grades related stuffs so to do that you should keep your study area map right at the center of this window it should not be here it should not be here it should be right at the center and you can keep the magnifier right hundred it's fine and or you can change it into 90 both will be okay i think okay so now i'm going to compose the map this is the option for composing the map you can see new print layout click ok you don't have to type anything there and here you can add your map by clicking and pulling down so your state area map has been added now and the first thing a map requires is a title so i'm going to add a title by clicking this add label option and you have to type the name of your title here you can't type inside the frame so this is going to be coulomb tiger reserve and i can change the font size i also change the for a okay now you can see the title here you can change the size of your text box okay now my map has got a title the next thing you can do is you can add coordinates so in order to do that you can see when you click the title layer it's getting selected when you click the map layer it's getting selected so i'm going to right click on the map layer and go to item properties here you can add grades play grid you have to add grids first then only you will be able to add coordinates so i'm going to add grids first uh modify grid okay you can add your code list even without adding grids i think i never tried that anyway modify grid i'm going to so this xy interval is in map unit you can google one map unit is equal to this much meter so this much kilometer it will be available in google so i'm just going to randomly put 105 105 okay now my study area has been graded i'm scrolling down i'm choosing the grid okay now you can see in the line style of that grid the i'm going to reduce the opacity of those lines so that it will look better okay that will be fine going back now i need to add a frame on my map uh i'm going to choose line border so there will be a frame on my steady area map and the next thing you can do is you can draw coordinates when you just click there the coordinates will get automatically added so and it's in decimal format you can change it to degree format from here degree minutes degree minutes seconds and the um a lot of code rings for my formats for codenames available i'm going to choose degree minute that looks fine okay so you can see the codenames and the grids everything looks good uh the next i think you are done with adding grids and coordinates you can change the color and or you can change the font size thickness if you are having time to spend you can explore all those options the next thing i'm going to add is a scale a map requires a scale right so you can click here and add here okay now the scale has been added similarly i'm going to add an attribute table because we need an attribute table because we have to tell people that are these red diamonds are our sample sites or or the or the place where we made some significant observations but we need only these sample size layer we have to remove steady area and osm standard from the legend table so to do that go to auto update option and uncheck you can click on study area and remove it you can click on autism standard and remove it now you can see only our sample size the legend for our sample size is available i am keeping it there okay now i want to add a north arrow you can add a north arrow by clicking the north arrow icon and let it be here you can change the color of your north arrow and there are different types of symbols available you can use if you want i want to change its color to black okay now i want to add another map showing the largest larger area so we know that our study area is in kerala south india so i would like to add another map of the largest study area which is south india so you can go to the ad image option and you can draw a circle here this is where we are going to add the map of south india you can go to razer image browse and you will be able to find the image here actually i have downloaded this already you can also google and download an image of south india or india and i want to add a frame on this i can add it by okay here you can see the option just click there and now it's inside of frame you can increase its size if you want and the next thing i'm going to do is i want to add an arrow indicating the exact location of my study area so my study area is in cairo somewhere around here and you can left click and right click so now you can see i have added an arrow as well indicating the location of my study area so now we have completed preparing our map and we have to save it now you can go to export as image option or you can save it as vg format or you can save it as a pdf so i'm going to save it as an image you can give it a name and save it and you can change the resolution page width and all it all depends on your work and you can just save it now you can see this is the map we have just created and you can use work directly and it looks much much better than google maps or any other screenshots so thank you very much we will see in another class goodbye

Channel: Madhuraj PK

Views: 38,898

Rating: 4.8872304 out of 5

Keywords: QGIS Map Making, Prepare Study Area Map, QGIS Study Area Map, QGIS Grid Coordinates

Id: x-rNnlAiCFY

Length: 14min 44sec (884 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 20 2020