A review of Tripp Corbin’s new Learning ArcGIS Pro 2 book

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10-12-2020 12:16 PM
JosephKerski
Esri Notable Contributor
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Tripp Corbin’s new book Learning ArcGIS Pro 2, Second Edition, from Packt Publishing, is a resource that I will be using long into the future and I know many in the GIS professional community will be doing the same.  As ArcGIS Pro replaces ArcMap in government, nonprofit, academic, and private industry, and as ArcGIS Pro continues to evolve, this book is an extremely useful resource either to follow along in its entirety, or to tap into specific chapters to hone specific skills.  University and college professors and students will also find this book very useful. 

I have long been an admirer of the instructional style of Tripp’s books, and wrote a review of his ArcGIS Pro Cookbook here in our data blogLearning ArcGIS Pro 2 follows Tripp’s excellent balancing of theory and application and enables anyone regardless of how much background they have in GIS to be using this powerful set of geospatial tools quickly.  Tripp’s deep and rich background with the GIS community over many decades is manifest in the book’s careful attention to the things he knows will cause users the most difficulty. 

Tripp covers the spectrum from technical requirements, installing the software, managing licenses, starting projects, editing, performing analysis, creating maps, 3D scenes, and layouts, automating processes with ModelBuilder and Python, using Arcade scripts, and, appropriate to today’s cloud-based workflows, how to share results with others via layers and maps in ArcGIS Online.  Germane to this blog, Tripp also touches on data issues. Plus, the data for the hands-on activities in the book is easily accessed and interesting to use, covering parcels, floodplains, and much more, at a variety of scales.  

As a GIS instructor, I appreciate the graphics the author has included—they’re not in color, but they are large and legible, and that’s I think even more important.  He also has the right number of screen shots—not too many, but just enough to keep the learner moving forward.  In short, you won’t get “tripped up”—you will be able to keep making progress.  Packt does a very nice job with their digital editions, which for GIS professionals might be the most useful format, though the printed version is nicely laid out as well.   I salute Tripp Corbin and Packt Publishing for this excellent resource for the community.

Corbin

A few pages from Tripp Corbin's new Learning ArcGIS Pro 2, Second Edition, book.

About the Author
I believe that spatial thinking can transform education and society through the application of Geographic Information Systems for instruction, research, administration, and policy. I hold 3 degrees in Geography, have served at NOAA, the US Census Bureau, and USGS as a cartographer and geographer, and teach a variety of F2F (Face to Face) (including T3G) and online courses. I have authored a variety of books and textbooks about the environment, STEM, GIS, and education. These include "Interpreting Our World", "Essentials of the Environment", "Tribal GIS", "The GIS Guide to Public Domain Data", "International Perspectives on Teaching and Learning with GIS In Secondary Education", "Spatial Mathematics" and others. I write for 2 blogs, 2 monthly podcasts, and a variety of journals, and have created over 5,000 videos on the Our Earth YouTube channel. Yet, as time passes, the more I realize my own limitations and that this is a lifelong learning endeavor and thus I actively seek mentors and collaborators.