Lab 8 - Station Fire

     The first map is about the spread of the station fire from when it started to when it was controlled. The second map is about populated areas in Los Angeles County. The third map is about hospitals and major highways in Los Angeles County. The fourth map is about the fire threat potential in California. The second to fourth map include the station fire perimeter for reference.

     The fire was caused by arson on August 26, 2009, around 3:30 PM. This was the largest fire ever recorded for the Angeles National Forest, it caused the death of two firefighters and the injury of 22 people. For this lab, I am going to analyze how the fire affected the surrounding areas. Looking at the second map, the fire did not start in a densely populated area and looking at the third map, the fire only spread to about one major highway.

     Due to this station fire, many areas had to be evacuated to ensure the safety of its citizens. These areas include La Canada, Altadena, Glendale, La Crescenta, and the Acton-Palmdale area. Many roads were closed off and evacuation centers were set up both for people and for large or small pets. Some of the road closures include Highway 2, and Highway 39, while roads like Glendora Moutain Road can be accessed with ID. Many of the places affected by the fire are located in the Wildland Urban Interface. The Wildland Urban Interface is the boundary between the homes and the forest. One of the highways were closed off until 2010 because of the damage to the guardrails and signs.

     The Station Fire had a major impact on the wildlife in the area. The rocks and debris could block streams harming the aquatic life. The fire burned through 250 square miles of land destroying several dozen homes along the way. Fire causes changes to the land, for example releasing sediment. The rain could wash the ashes into the watershed, which would affect streams, rivers, and reservoirs. Due to the fire, there are threats of flood, mud, debris flow, along with falling rocks, so only people living near the area are allowed to go near the fire perimeter.

     Looking at the fourth map, the fire threat near Los Angeles County was already at a high level. Fire threat refers to the impact a fire will have on a community. When the fire threat is very high, fires start easily, burn faster and more intensely. It would take a great deal of time and effort to suppress the flames once they start. How quickly the fire spreads depends on the wind speed and the size of the fire that caused it.

References:
Archibold, Randal C. "After a Devastating Fire, an Intense Study of Its Effects." The New York Times. 2 Oct. 2009. Web. 6 Dec. 2012 <http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/03/science/earth/03fire.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0>

"Los Angeles County." GIS at UCLA: Mapshare DB. 2008. Web. 28 Nov. 2012 <http://gis.ats.ucla.edu//Mapshare/Default.cfm>

"Los Angeles County Hospitals." GIS at UCLA: Mapshare DB. 2006. Web. 28 Nov. 2012 <http://gis.ats.ucla.edu//Mapshare/Default.cfm>

"Los Angeles County Major Highways." GIS at UCLA: Mapshare DB. 2006. Web. 28 Nov. 2012 <http://gis.ats.ucla.edu//Mapshare/Default.cfm>

"Fire Threat." California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. Web. 4 Dec. 2012 <http://frap.cdf.ca.gov/data/frapgisdata/download.asp?rec=fthrt>

"Graphical Hazardous Weather Outlook Fire Weather Threat." National Weather Service Weather Forecast Office. 9 Apr. 2012. Web. 4 Dec. 2012 <http://www.srh.noaa.gov/mlb/?n=wildfire_threat>

Greninger, Mark. "All Station Fire Perimeters (as of September 2, 07:02) - Complete set." Los Angeles County Enterprise GIS., 2 Sept. 2009. Web. 28 Nov. 2012 <http://egis3.lacounty.gov/eGIS/2009/09/02/all-station-fire-perimiters-as-of-september-2-0702-complete-ste/>

"Station Fire." InciWeb. 10 Sept. 2009. Web. 28 Nov. 2012. <http://www.inciweb.org/incident/1856/>

"Station Fire evacuations." LA Daily News. 30 Aug. 2009. Web. 28 Nov. 2012 <http://www.dailynews.com/news/ci_13235058>

"Station Fire News Release." InciWeb. 28 Sept. 2009. Web. 28 Nov. 2012. <http://www.inciweb.org/incident/article/1856/9647/>

Lab 7 - Census 2000

     These are maps created on ArcMap about the population in 2000, the difference in the population between 1990 and 2000, the percent change from 1990 to 2000 of the total population, and the population density in 2000 of the United States. It was interesting to see the maps change color depending on what information is put in. It was easy to see the distribution of everything based on the colors. The colors also change depending on what break value is inputted so more of one color might show up depending on what the values are. The instructions on how to create these maps was fairly easy to follow, so I did not have any problems completing this lab. This function is extremely efficient at displaying data on a map, the data is easy to understand.

     The first map is about the number of people in the United States in the year 2000. It is based on the column labeled APRO1_2000 from tab01. From the map, the United States is less populated in the middle and more populated to the southwest and northeast. For all the maps, the projection was changed to North American Lambert Conformal Conic. The Census 2000 data in tab01 and the Counties shapefile were joined using the column ST_CO_FIPS as the key field.

     The second map is about the difference between the population in 2000 and the population in 1990. There are some areas where the population change has a negative value, which means people are moving away from those areas. The color for the negative values show up mainly in the middle of the United States. The field used for this map is POP_CHANGE. The southwest of the United States has the largest area of a population increase between 1990 to 2000.

     The third map is about the change in percentage of the population between 1990 and 2000. It is similar to the second map, but this one is using percentage instead of the number of people. The break values for this map is different from the second map so the areas with the same color do not match up. The counties in orange had the greatest drop in percentage of their population.

     The final map is about the population density of the United States in 2000 in units of people per square mile. For this map, the data used was under the column labeled POP00_SQMI. I used the field calculator to fill in this field in the Attribute Table with the expression [Tab01.APRO1_1990] / [Counties.AREA]. The northeast of the United States along part of the east coast has a large area where it is densely populated. There are also parts where the population density is extremely small.

Lab 6 - DEMs

The area that is shown here is in Colorado. It includes a part of the Arapaho National Forest, Mt Evans, and cities like Evergreen, Lakewood, and Idaho Springs. I used itouchmap.com/latlong.html to find where this area was located using the extent information from the original DEM.

Extent information (in decimal degrees):
top: 39.829
left: -105.788
right: -104.969
bottom: 39.383

Geographic coordinate system: GCS_North_American_1983
Datum: D_North_American_1983
Angular Unit: Degree (0.0174)

Lab 5 - Projections

     In this lab, I had to find three different kinds of projections: equal area, equidistant, and conformal. There are two maps for each type of projection. I think this lab showed how important map projections are because depending on what needs to be done, one projection would be better than another. There are so many different types of projections because it is so difficult to represent a sphere on a piece of paper, changing from 3-D to 2-D. That means there is going to be distortion somewhere on the map no matter which kind of projection is used.

     But because there are so many different maps and projections, it is confusing trying to remember which type of map would be good for looking at for something and which is not. I do not think it is easy to remember what map is what kind of projection just by looking at it so it would be hard to figure out what is distorted. But with ArcMap, it is easier to manage all the different kinds of projections so it would be much more organized.

     So one of the good things about ArcMap is that it helps keep all the different kinds of projections organized and easy to access. It would be easy to pull up the projection that is needed and compare it to another projection. But in ArcMap, the projections are not necessarily labeled equal area, equidistant, or conformal so a little bit of research still needs to be done to figure out what kind of projection you are really looking at.

     Because there are so many types of projection, even if ArcMap can keep them organized, I think there are going to be a lot of confusion if someone did not really understand what they are doing. I did not even know maps had different features depending on how they are drawn. I realized from this lab that there are more to maps than meets the eye.

Lab 4 - ArcMap

     For this lab, I had to follow a tutorial on how to create an ArcMap. The tutorial was easy to follow, each step was very detailed so it was not too difficult to complete this assignment. Also, it was a long tutorial so it was hard to complete the whole tutorial all at once. Since I am new to this, I was afraid of making a mistake and having to complete the tutorial all over again from the beginning after already spending a lot of time on it. It was a bit hard to locate all the tools that were necessary for this lab, since the lab computers had a newer version of the program, some of the tools were a bit different than described on the tutorial.
     Even though the tutorial for the ArcMap was easy to follow, it does not mean that it would be easy to understand all the materials covered. To be honest, I just followed the steps, but I had no clue what each step was about until I read it over again after I finished the tutorial. I do not think I would be able to remember all these steps if I had to redo this map without the tutorial. The beginning of the tutorial was still understandable, but as I got farther and farther through the tutorial I was kind of lost about what I was doing to the map.
     About half way through I encountered a problem with my map, I was having trouble with adding data to one of the attribute tables. The tutorial wanted to join the data of two different attribute tables and also create a new column within the joined attribute table and input an equation into the field calculator to fill in the column. I did exactly what the tutorial said, but the data did not show up for the population density field. This then messed up my map for the following steps because it required the data that was supposed to be inputted from the previous step, which would not show up on my attribute table.
     Since this lab took a lot more time, it was difficult finding the software to complete this with. Luckily, there was remote access available to students during after hours. But it was a pain trying to work using the remote access. It was really slow and it would not seem to load anything that was on my flash drive. So I had to move my folders into one of the folders on that computer, which took more time, and that got it to work but it was still slow.

Lab 3 - Google Maps

View Road Trip in a larger map
     I think one of the pitfalls of neogeography is that the information may not be accurate. Since anybody is allowed to create a map, the information that is provided may be wrong. The information may also be edited by anyone else, so it is hard to figure out how credible the information is going to get. Two people can make the same map, but have different information associated with their map. This way, it is going to be difficult to find the map that has the correct information versus the one that does not, or maybe even both maps may be incorrect too.
     On the other hand, I think neogeography also helps to promote new places. Some people like to try new things so they would go somewhere new and put it up on the internet that way other people can get an idea of what that place is like. When neogeography is used like this, a lot more information gets shared. But if the information is inaccurate then it will affect a lot of people, depending on how many people see the information. If people professionally went out and record new places then I think that neogeography is going to be really useful. If professionals or someone really interested in this particular topic created the information then there would be a smaller chance of providing the wrong information, so people can trust it more.

Lab 2 - Beverly Hills Quadrangle

1. The name of the quadrangle is Beverly Hills.

2. The names of the adjacent quadrangles are Canoga Park, Van Nuys, Burbank, Topanga, Hollywood, Venice, and Inglewood.

3. The quadrangle was created in 2012.

4. The datum used were North American Datum of 1983, and World Geodetic System of 1984.

5. The scale of the map is 1:24,000.

6. a) 5 centimeters on the map is equal to 1,200 meters on the ground
     b) 5 inches on the map is equal to about 2 miles on the ground
     c) one mile on the ground is equal to about 2.64 inches on the map
     d) 3 kilometers on the ground is equal to 12.5 centimeters on the map

7. The contour interval on the map is 20 feet.

8. a) 118°28'42" (118.4783°) longitude, 34°04'23" (34.0731°) latitude
     b) 118°30'00" (118.5°) longitude, 34°00'45" (34.0125°) latitude
     c) 118°25'11" (118.4197°) longitude, 34°06'15" (34.1042°) latitude

9. a) 560 feet; 171 meters
     b) 140 feet; 43 meters
     c) 700 feet; 213 meters

10. The UTM zone of the map is zone 11.

11. The UTM coordinates for the lower left corner of the map is about 362500E 3763200N.

12. The area contained within each cell is 1,000,000 square meters.

13.

      

14. The magnetic declination of the map is 12°35'.

15. The water is flowing north.

16.