lab #7

The quickly spreading Station Fire of La Cañada in Los Angeles County posed major structural threats to local hospitals and roads. Mapping data from the area overlaid on the map above indicates the magnitude and scope of the fire. This area of California is especially prone to fires because it is a mountainous region. Warm Santa Ana winds gust through the sloping hills and create a perfect fan for a fire in the drought-ridden brush of the foothills of Los Angeles County.

The multiple, transparent colors on the map detail the vast expansion of the Station Fire in a matter of days. The map shows the spread in just the days from August 29th to September 2nd, 2009. It paints an all too real picture of the dangers of wildfires. For houses up in the outskirts, the speed of the wildfire causes harsh threats as the map indicates only few major roads in and out of the fire zone.

GIS has allowed for the analysis of roads in the area. Although the fire poses danger to the homes up in the mountain regions, the blaze comes disturbingly close to the clusters of road that indicate a more populated area. For example, the south and southeastern edges of the fire boundary come into contact with areas of Flintridge and La Cañada, these are regions of Los Angeles near the populated area of Pasadena. The major roads indicate that structural damage was inevitable.

A denser population means more important structures reside in the area. Hospitals are a major concern because evacuations are complicated and risky, not to mention the threat of injured people looking for an emergency room. The map indicates the hospitals close to the fire boundaries that had to shut down and evacuate. The Verdugo Hills hospital was closed during the fire and many others were on high alert. Hospitals are indicated on the map as the universal red cross symbol.

The Station Fire in Los Angeles County came very close to densly populated regions within the city. The fire spead quickly through the drought laden brush of the mountainous foothills and was fueled by hot orographic winds. Roads are a good indication of housing density of the area and the fire boundary came very close to the major city of Pasadena. Hospitals are among the most important structures effected in fires because evacuation is tricky and injured civilians and firefighters must have a close emergency room to go to. The fire has been over for months now and California has seen more rains this year than in the last five years, and that poses more naturalthreats in the form of mud and debris flows as this region struggles to resprout its previous vegetation.

GIS at UCLA: Mapshare Los Angeles County http://gis.ats.ucla.edu//Mapshare/Default.cfm

GIS data of Los Angeles http://gis.lacounty.gov/eGIS/?cat=15&paged=2

California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection http://www.fire.ca.gov

Homes Lost in Big Tujunga, 3 People Injured. August 30. 2009. http://cbs2.com/firewatch/Fire.Watch.Angeles.2.1152024.html

Verdugo Hills Hospital (La Cañada Flintridge). Wikimapia. 2010. http://wikimapia.org/100123/Verdugo-Hills-Hospital

Lab #6

The area selected in this map is a mountainous region of the central coast of Santa Barbara. Due to plate tectonics, this region lies on an active plate boundary which causes these coastal mountain ranges. The North American Plate converges with the Pacific plate causing mass uplift and sometimes earthquakes. Since it is close to the ocean, the tributaries are quite easy to recognize. They flow off the mountains all the way to the ocean. The location of these images in coordinates is (34.5244,-119.7908).

Image courtesy of James Aber at Emboria State University http://academic.emporia.edu/aberjame/wetland/mississippi.miss_delta.htm

This is a map of the Mississippi River delta in the Gulf of Mexico. I first saw a photo of the delta in Geography 101 with Professor Orme in Spring 2009, and was blown away with the image. The red and orange colors represent vegetation on the land and the light blue is suspended sediment. this is the image that got me interested in GIS and Remote Sensing.

Lab #5

Map projections are an underestimated field in cartography. Their importance is seen when trying to get certain aspects on to your map. Whether it is area, distance or angles (conformal), map projections allow for the researcher to be as accurate as possible when assessing locations relative to others. This project taught me that preserving one attribute on a map projection might distort others.

The equidistant maps look particularly interesting. I love their shapes. But beyond aesthetics, they preserve distance. However you can see in the Equidistant conic map projection that it is not representative of how the earth actually looks. The Sinusoidal map looks like the earth, but it made the equator bulge out.

Equal area map projections, like Bonne and Mollweide, preserve the area of the landmasses. Although the Bonne is heart-shaped, all of the continents look like they normally do. Mollweide looks like a regular map found in a school book. That would be the map I would use if i needed to present a the most normal map in a report or any type of presentation.

Conformal map projections preserve the right angles. In both the Stereographic and Mercater projections, Antarctica is very stretched and distorted and the rest of the world looks about normal. The Mercater map shows the observer how the lines of latitude cease to be above a certain longitude which accounts for the elongating distortion.

lab #4

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  The ArcGIS tutorial was very long yet very rewarding. I was very happy to have been able to learn it, but I wish I had enough time to finish it during lab hours. The maps created are very pretty and informational. Hopefully, this is just the beginning to my knowledge of GIS. The only problem I had was with the arterials_new. For some reason, I couldn't get it to show up on the target drop-down menu. I had to make a note to myself and leave it alone. After 24 hours I was able to come back to the lab and successfully fix the problem. (I had to make sure the arterials_new in the table of contents was working properly).
  This mini victory gave me more confidence in the ArcGIS program. I want to learn more, but there is so much. I feel as though I need to go through the tutorial, and other tutorials more than three times in order to fully understand it. I guess the best thing to do is to move forward and I will figure it out along the way.
  The maps on display are of an airport noise contour, the schools around it, the population density and the land use in the area. It made it very clear to me that GIS is very important in how we legislate development going forward, and calculate the effect of new plans that could potentially hurt a community.