Creating contours from a Digital Elevation Model (DEM)

Use one of the layers available from the N drive - choose one based on results desired (elevation in feet or meters, ground units in feet, meters, or decimal degrees)

Add the Spatial Analyst toolbar (View > Toolbars)

From the Spatial Analyst toolbar pulldown menu, select Options and fill in the following info for the three tabs:

• Set a working directory (ex: E:/work/username/)
• Extent (set to same as the DEM)
• Cell size (set to same as the DEM)

Select Surface Analysis > Contour

Set the parameters based on your desired output

Make sure to set the output location for the file

Click on OK

Further options:

If you would like to have smoother contour lines than the those extracted from the raw DEM, then you can use a Focal Neighborhood - this should not be used for analysis that requires raw DEM data. Perform the Focal Neighborhood on the DEM, afterwards follow the steps above for creating contours from the smoothed DEM

From ArcToolbox, opent the Focal Point tool (ArcToolbox > Spatial Analysis Tools > Neighborhood > Focal Point)

Fill in the following parameters (this is only suggested, feel free to play with the settings)

• Radius: 2
• Units: Cell
• Statistics Type: Mean