Station Fire

                The Station fire occurred in Los Angeles County, California in the 2009.  The Station fire was the largest and deadliest of the 2009 California wildfires, burning over 160,000 acres and killing two firefighters (2009 California Wildfires).  The Station fire burned from August through October 2009, causing huge amounts of damages to property in Los Angeles (2009 California Wildfires).  The Station fire was one of the most devastating fires in recent Los Angeles history (2009 California Wildfires).

                The first map is a reference map of the gradual spread of the Station Fire.  The map includes fire spreads from August-September 2009. The shapefiles for the fires spreads were gathered from http://egis3.lacounty.gov/eGIS/index.php/category/gis-data/fire/. This reference map clearly shows that the Station fire rapidly spread throughout Los Angeles county. The base map for this map was taken from default acrgis basemaps.

                The second map in this post is a thematic map showing how the fire station perimeters relate to the topography.  The thematic map shows that the fire seemed to be confined by the topography.  The fire seems to favor traveling downhill.  In many places the fire reaches a valley floor, but doesn’t proceed to move up the other side of the valley. It appears that the fire begins on the ridges of the mountains and travels downhill into the valleys.  The DEM data for this map was taken from the USGS Seamless site. The same shapefiles from the reference map were used to show fire spread.

                The combination of these two maps is helpful in the study of the Station fire.  The maps show that as the fire progressed, its perimeter spread very rapidly.  The fire tended to start off on the higher elevations of ridges, then travel downhill into valleys.  The maps help show that the fire’s spread patterns are strongly controlled by topography.

                This was a very enlightening project.  The skills we learned this quarter were put to use to create our own maps for the Station fire.  The maps produced are very helpful in illustrating the spatial and temporal data associated with the fire.  This shows just how useful GIS can be.  We were able to take fire spread data and overly it on a topographic map to show how they relate spatially. The maps produced are extremely helpful in studying the fire’s behavior.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

2009 California Wildfires. 2009. Wikipedia

     <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Station_Fire_(2009)#Los_Angeles_County>

Base Map for Los Angeles County. ArcGIS default basemaps.

DEM for Los Angeles County. USGS Seamless Website. 2011 <http://seamless.usgs.gov/>

Station Fire Perimeters. 2009. <http://egis3.lacounty.gov/eGIS/index.php/category/gis-data/fire/>

Week 8 Lab

             

            The first map shows the percentage of the Black population compared to the total population by county.  The map is interesting because it shows that compared to the total population of the county, the highest concentrations of blacks is in the southeast.  This may be expected due to the historical slave trade which tragically brought many Blacks from Africa to the east coast.

            The second map shows percentage of the Asian populations compared to the total population by county.  This map also shows the interesting trend that the Asian population is most concentrated on the east coast.  This may be due to the historical event of the gold rush.  During the gold rush many Asians sought fortune on the west coast in the form of gold.

            The third map shows percentage of some other race alone compared to the total population by county.  This map shows that this race is concentrated in the southwest and southern parts of Texas.  I’m not exactly sure what race this is referring to, so it would be interesting to do some research and find out which race is being plotted on this map.

            Working with census data has been extremely interesting and fun.  It was actually quite easy to produce these maps.  Despite the ease with which they were produced, they are extremely useful.  The maps are much easier to interpret than the excel files which they were downloaded in.  Just by looking at the map, you can very quickly determine where the populations are most concentrated.  This exercise shows just how great of a tool GIS can be.  It can take huge tables of data which would be very difficult to analyze, and turn it into an easily interpretable product. 

Lab 6

Iconic Half-Dome Rock in Yosemite

    I made my map of Yosemite National Park, which is located in California’s western Sierra Nevadas.  Yosemite is home to some of the most beautiful scenery in the country.  I chose to make my map of Yosemite because I am interested in its geology.  Virtually all of the rocks in Yosemite are granitic rocks which were formed by magma which cooled beneath the earth’s surface.  The spectacular forms of the rocks were formed due to glaciers sliding over the rock and sculpting amazing features.  Yosemite is a great place to study if you are interested in geology.  It is also great for rock climbing, sight seeing, and just enjoying the great outdoors.  The extent of my map is N: 37.93918, W: -119.75873, S: 37.56238, E: -119.36309.  The spatial reference was GCS North American 1983. 

Lab 5

                Map projections are an extremely important aspect of GIS.  In order to represent the earth, which is a sphere, in a two-dimensional matter map projections must be used.  When trying to display the earth on a two-dimensional plane, deformation is inevitable.  Depending on which projection you use, different aspects of the earth will be deformed.  Depending on what you want your map to portray there will be a certain projection that will preserve the dimension which will best suit your map.  The three projections we used in this lab were equal area, equidistant, and conformal.

                Equal area map projections preserve the areas of the earth.  This type of projection can be useful when you want to show the actual sizes of landmasses relative to each other.  For example, if you were to look at a Mercator map, you would think that Greenland is a very large country relative to other landmasses, when in reality its size is much smaller.  When you use an equal area map projection such as sinusoidal or bonne projections  you can really see the continents’ actual sizes relative to each.

                Equidistant map projections preserve distance from a defined point or line.  The Plate Carree map projection preserves distance from the equator.  This map projection is appealing because it portrays the earth as a very simple rectangular map.  The two point equidistant projection sets two points and the distance to these points from any point on the map is preserved.

                Conformal map projections preserve local shapes and angles.  These maps are most accurate at a local scale.  The stereographic map preserves the shapes of circles.  The hotine projection is another conformal projection.  These projections would be useful for navigation in a localized sense.

                As you can see by looking at the distances measured between Washington D.C. and Kabul they change.  Obviously in reality the distance will always be the same, however the fact that these distances were measured on different projections caused them to be different.

Lab 4

     In this assignment we got our first exposure to using GIS software. The particular program we were working with was called ArcMap. As always, it takes a while to become familiar with a new program. We started off by using a tutorial to learn the basic functions of the ArcMap program. The tutorial was very well put together and it was easy to follow the directions to reproduce our own map.

     The potentials of GIS are extremely great. Products of GIS software can be used in many different fields. The ability to represent data spatially can be a very powerful and useful tool. Being able to present data in a graphic illustration corresponding to geographic locations can make the data much easier to understand. For example, in this lab we produced several different maps. One of them showed the population density for different areas in the county. We represented population density on the map by assigning different ranges different color. With this map, we can very quickly see what parts of the county are the most densely populated. If we just had a table with the population densities it would be much more difficult to interpret the data and get an idea of the geographic picture.

     Despite its many benefits, GIS may have some pitfalls. GIS software can be very complicated, and it is very easy to make mistakes when producing a map. If the user is inexperienced they can have a very difficult time producing a useful map. Inexperience can also lead to the use producing products that represent the data inaccurately. Another potential pitfall of GIS is that the readers of the map may not interpret the product in the way that the creator intended. The product may have been meant to portray one thing, but the reader may interpret it in a totally different way. That is why when you are producing your map you must be extremely careful to make it as easy to interpret as possible. It is also always a good idea to ask someone else to look at your map and tell you what they think it is saying, just so you know that you are on the right track.

     Overall, my first experience with ArcMap was very good. The tutorial provided good instruction that was not overly complicated. The finished product does a good job of spatially representing the data given and portraying it in an easy to read format. After completing this assignment it is easy to see why GIS is so widely used and how it can be beneficial in so many fields of study.

Lab #3

Lab 2

1.  Beverly Hills Quadrangle
2. The adjacent quadrangles are Canoga Park, Van Nuys, Burbank, Topanga, Hollywood, Venice, Inglewood.
3.  Topography: 1966, Planimetery 1978, Last Revision 1995
4.  Multiple datums were listed on the map; National Vertical Datum of 1929, North American Datum of 1927 (NAD72), and North American Datum of 1983 (NAD83).
5. 1:24,000
6.  
1. a) 1200 meters
2. b) 1.89 miles
3. c) 2.64 inches
4. d) 12.5 centimeters
7.  20 feet
8. 
   
1. a) Latitude: 34 degrees 4'20" (34.07 degrees), Longitude: 118 degrees 26'15" (118.44 degrees)
2. b) Latitude: 34 degrees 0'30" (34.01 degrees), Longitude: 118 degrees 30'0" (118.5 degrees)
3. c) Latitude: 34 degrees 7'50" (34.13 degrees), Longitude: 118 degrees 25'45" (118.43 degrees)
9. 
   
1. a) 560 feet, 171 meters
2. b) 140 feet, 43 meters
3. c) 740 feet, 226 meters
10. UTM Zone 11
11. 361,000 Easting, 3,763,000 Northing
12. 1,000,000 square meters
13. See Image
14. 14 degrees
15. South
16. See Image

Solution to Problem 13

Solution to Problem 16