Week 8 Lab Station Fire

For this weeks lab I chose to display the Los Angeles county parks with their names and a small map on the bottom displaying the County parks buffer zone and target area of the station fire. I outlined the main park burned in the station fire. This map clearly displays the extent of the Angeles National Forest that was burned in the fire. The fire was almost all within the Angeles National Forest perimeters.
This fire was the largest in Los Angeles County history and destroyed 250 square miles. Two firefighters were also killed during the blaze. It was the ninth largest fire in California since 1933. the are was drought dry forst and the fire spread quickly. the burn area covers much of the San Gabriel MOuntains north of Los Angeles, most of which is within the Angeles National Forest.
The fire burned many recreation areas including hiking trails and campsites. Some campsites were spared but the surrounding areas were still burned. Among the burned areas in the Angeles National Forest are Switzer Falls, LAUSD's Clear creek camp spread, Eaton canyon Park, Gould Mesa campground, Cogswell reservior, Magic Mountain Wilderness, Pleasant View, Millard Campgrounds, Horse Flats, Camp Colby, Hidden Springs cafe in a popular hiking area, Devil's Canyon/ San Gabriel Wilderness, and Angeles Crest Ranger station.
So much of the wilderness areas off the Angeles Crest highway in the Angels National forest was burned. This area was covered with amazing hiking trails and campgrounds. These areas have been closed to the public since the Station fire in September 2009. The area of the burn has been considered very dangerous due to possibility of landslides and severe run-off from the vegetation cover being destroyed. The soils were left bare after the fire, increasing the chance of collapse in a rain or even a slight disturbance. the organic oils left in the soils from the vegetation reduces infiltration capabilities of the soil and increases run-off. this can be vert dangerous to down slope communities.
As of May 26. 2010 some of the areas within the burn perimeter have been re-opened to the public. Only areas that weren't actually burned but surrounded ny burn have been re-opened. it is predicted that it could take years for some of the ares to be re-opened to the public because of the amount of instability and environmental degradation in the burn areas.

refernces

1. www.latimes.com/news/local/la me firemap
Lin Gong Rong. Los Angeles Fire map sept. 11, 2009
2. www.gis.lacounty.gov/egis
All station fire perimeters data. sept 2, 2009
3. www.glendalenewspress.com
Wells, Jason. forest area back in service. may 26, 2010
4. Geology.com/new/2009/stationfire burnarea
sept. 10,2009
5. earthobservatory.nasa.gov/naturalhazards
Allen, Jesse. NASA image.2009

WEEK 7 GIS LAB: Silver Lake and Echo Park areas in LA

The area I chose is the Silver Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles including some of Echo Park. I live near here and it's a beautiful area that most students here have never been to. The latitude range goes from 34.15666 degrees North on the top to 34.041666 degrees North latitude on the bottom. The longitude range is from -118.355277 degrees West on the left to -118.1986111 degrees West on the right edge boundary.

Week 6 Lab: Map Projections

Different map projection preserve different aspects of the real world. Every single map projection has some sort of distortion because it is impossible to project a 3-d world perfectly onto a 2-d flat paper or screen.

When measuring the distance between Kabul, Afghanistan and Washington D.C., US on six different map projections, each one was a different distance. Even the two equal distance map projections had different values. I notice that the conformal map projections (Mercator and Miller) had the highest distance at over 10,000miles each. The Equal distance projection (cylindrical) had the lowest value at just over 5,000miles. This is a HUGE difference!

It is very important to choose wisely what map projection to use for what information you are trying to attain. I suppose for measuring distance one should use an equal distance map projection. I would still check for accuracy. Equal area and conformal map projections would be a wrong choice for measuring distance unless it is for a very small area. Most any projection will work well for a small area (ex. Los Angeles), but not for large areas.

Choosing a projection with the least amount of distortion for the area you are concerned with depends on latitude and where the center of the projection is. On the Mercator, the closer to the equator you are, the least distortion, so it would be good for the equatorial regions. A polar projection would be better for the polar regions.

Overall map projections are really cool and useful, especially in the geographic and geospatial world. Maps are the most useful tool for geographers. Learning how to read, create, and manipulate them is the challenge.

Lab #4 GIS MAP

The Arch GIS program is truly amazing yet complicated. There are many sections that I had problems with, especially the file locating part. It seemed that every single layer of data and every section on the left hand side (table of contents) had to be individually saved and transferred to the USB or it would not allow me to edit anything.
I would complete everything step by step and go back and the information would be gone! This was extremely irritating and a waste of time.
I was not able to put in the road even though I fully understood how because the "Arterial_new" layer would not come up on my environmental snapping list or target section. I tried saving it to my F drive tons of times and it would not show up. Every other layer showed up, except for the one I needed to. My friend and I worked on it together from start to finish and we both had the exact same problem.
The tutorial was very direct and detailed but it didn't conceptually explain what was happening. I feel that we should have started with the data itself and gone from there. That way we would understand how the data got where it was and what it means in relation to the maps that we were manipulating. I found myself not even really knowing what I had just done even though the map looked the way it was supposed to. I'm sure some other students had the same issues given no prior experience with the program.
The program itself seems very useful and a wonderful tool for presenting spatial data. I can't wait to be able to understand the software and navigate it somewhat smoothly. The ability to manipulate each aspect of the map and add multiple layers is crucial for representing different data on the same map. I love being able to use color to represent different values spatially. Overall, the program seems usable and highly functional. I just hope that I will be able to grasp it and navigate it successfully in the near future.