Lab 8: Mapping LA County Fires of Aug/Sept 2009

Wildfires are a force of Mother Nature, but my no means are the effects always desirable. They create much debris, leading to potential of debris flows and landslides, as well as bringing possibilities of flooding, deforestation, and more. The spread of the fire creates many dangers as days may go on, especially for wildlife and the surrounding communities. The first map shows the spread of the fire just within the county. The highways help show exactly where the fire is and the proximity of the fire's spread to the nearby highways. The closer the fire gets to the highways, the worse it is as it will bring the debris closer to society and to the people on the highways, which would lead them to try to drive away from the debris flow as fast as they can.

In the second map, the borders of communities are drawn out. If the area of the community appears big, it has a small population of a community within a large area. So as we shift towards the northeast of the county, the areas of the communities get quite big, therefore those areas have a smaller population density in comparison to the smaller areas of communities.

The Station Fire that started on August 29, 2009 is said to be one of the largest recorded fires in California. The fire occurred in the Angeles National Forest, and with the great amount of vegetation, this allowed the fire to spread and create greater amounts of debris. This debris and the fire itself can affect surrounding communities. In the case of this fire, it was necessary to evacuate nearby communities, including those by Mt. Wilson and Tujunga Canyon. It ended up spreading far enough to claim 18 homes. As seen in the first and second map, the spread of the fire gets greater in the northern aspect. In the second map, it can be seen that the fire spreads more north, but also west into more communities that are mapped out in smaller area, meaning there is likely to be more urbanization, so more homes and roads. The loss of these homes, as well as the lives of two firefighters makes it more apparent that the fire moved closer to the areas of society.

The firemen were killed after driving off the road into terrain from the debris that was flowing. The debris leaves the roads "treacherous" and it would not be considered unexpected to see at least a small accident happening. The deaths of the firemen were still tragic, nonetheless, leaving this fire to have homicide cases after seen to be caused by arson.

Beyond just the direct debris as a reason to evacuate, landslides and flooding can result. And with the very steep terrain, the area remained dangerous. Since the fire's heat ends up sealing the soil, it is more difficult for water to penetrate it. Therefore if there is a mix of water and the debris, the soil won't soak any of the water up, giving great potential for flooding and landslides. After all that is said and done, it calls for rehabilitation of the area. The soil will not be the same, roads will need to be rebuilt, and the ecosystem will be affected. It becomes more likely to find more skunks, raccoons, and other animals in neighborhoods as they migrate away from their natural habitats. They will naturally return as the area cools and rehabilitates.

Sources

Garrison, Jessica. "Station Fire Claims 18 Homes and Two Firefighters." Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles Times, 31 Aug. 2009. Web. 14 June 2012. <http://articles.latimes.com/2009/aug/31/local/me-fire31>.

"InciWeb - Incident Information System." InciWeb the Incident Information System: Station Fire News Release. N.p., 26 Sept. 2009. Web. 16 June 2012. <http://www.inciweb.org/incident/article/9512/>.

"InciWeb - Incident Information System." InciWeb the Incident Information System: Station Fire. N.p., 20 Nov. 2009. Web. 16 June 2012. <http://www.inciweb.org/incident/1856/>.

"L.A. NOW." L.A. County Fire Doubles in Size; More Homes Destroyed; Mt. Wilson Threatened [Updated]. LA Times Blogs, 31 Aug. 2009. Web. 15 June 2012. <http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2009/08/la-county-fire-doubles-in-size-more-homes-list-mt-wilson-threatened.html>.

"Los Angeles County Enterprise GIS." Los Angeles County Enterprise GIS. N.p., n.d. Web. 15 June 2012. <http://egis3.lacounty.gov/eGIS/>.

Lab 7: Census 2000/2010

In this map, I was able to map out areas of high population to low population of Blacks within each county in the continental U.S. It appears that probably the largest Black population in the country resides in Southern California, with a high amount in what appears to be L.A. County. There is also a large population in the Bay Area of California. The population seems to be more evenly distributed in the South, especially in the Carolinas, Georgia, and Florida. To be even broader, there is more of the population evenly distributed around the East Coast than there is in the West Coast. There is also a greater population in areas that appear to be more metropolitan, like what appears to be New York City and Washington D.C.

This map of the distribution of Asian population within a county in the U.S. shows that most a large population of Asians reside in areas I know to have a more prosperous Asian community with little towns or villages. These areas include the L.A. County, Orange County, Santa Clara County (with a high Asian population in San Jose), and San Francisco County (all in California), and the Houston area in Texas. There is also a great population in metropolitan areas, including the Seattle metropolitan area, L.A. County, and San Diego County. Due to immigration of Asians, it is most common to see them residing along the West Coast and not migrating far, which is why it is evident that there is a smaller Asian population away from the West Coast of the U.S.

This map shows that the areas that are more racially diverse are towards the coasts of the country and in metropolitan areas. This explains the  racial diversity in California, south of Florida, the Chicago area, south of Texas, south of Arizona, and the East Coast, stretching from probably Massachusetts to D.C. Like the Asian population, other races immigrated to migrate towards the coastal areas and border areas, so it is less common to find other races in Middle America.

These maps really show me more of how the migration of races are now and with my prior knowledge of what areas have what and which ones are more urban or more metropolitan, it tells me more of why it make sense that more of one race or more may be in a particular county. It makes a lot of sense to see that California remains the most diverse state due to the location of California on a coast, the metropolitan areas, and the communities in California, like China Town, Little Tokyo, Little India, etc. 

GIS remains very helpful with providing so much data like this on something as simple as a colorful picture. One can learn a lot on the migration of other races in the U.S. with a map like this, as well as another larger sort of things about the population. Thematic maps can easily created through GIS with many different sets of data. Other maps, like elevation maps, can help someone learn where there may be areas of hills or mountains in a region, again through simple colors. GIS can take a lot of time and can be a long process but the result can remain simple.

Lab 6: DEMs in ArcGIS

 

For this lab, I created 4 different maps to display a region extending from Long Beach, CA to what I believe is around Downtown LA. I created a map of the original DEM with a hillshade layer, a slope map, an aspect map, and a map of the region through 3D rendering. The biggest reason I chose this area was to see how the elevation of the LA area varied from the beach to more inland. Through the hillshade and 3D rendering, the elevation appears to vary a bit towards the coast, but further inland, the elevation increases a lot, with a total variation from -5.23761 to 2861.88 decimal degrees.

The area is defined by the following decimal degrees according to GCS North American 1983 datum:

   Top:  34.3794
   Bottom:  33.6231
   Left:  -118.3906
   Right:  -117.7419

Lab 5: Map Projections

Map projections are used to project the three-dimensional world on a two-dimensional scale with distortion. There are three types of the distortion to use depending on desired projection and use - equal area, equidistant, and conformal projections. Each projection will have pros and cons, but depending on the use, each brings a good amount of significance to GIS.

The equal area projections are used to preserve area but can distort distance. I used Behrmann and Bonne projections for equal area and I can see that the sizes of the countries in terms of area seem about right between the two maps. But just within the projections themselves, I can notice distortion on the lines on latitude. In the Behrmann projection, as I move away from the equator and towards one of the poles, there is noticeable difference of distance between each line of latitude. They distance is decreasing. A setback from the distortion of angles is quite obvious in the Bonne projection where as I move away from the Prime Meridian, the angles get more distorted more than the last time.

The equidistant projections are used to preserve distance, particularly between reference points. It must be noted though that the preserved distance only per projection. Each equidistant projection will vary with its distances between the reference points since there is a different distortion to each. So when measuring the distance between Washington D.C. and Kabul for the 2 projections I used, Equidistant Conic and Azimuthal Equidistant, the distances are different still since they are referenced elsewhere since there is over a 1000 mile-difference. Area can also be greatly distorted, like how in the Equidistant Conic projection, Antarctica looks greatly distorted by being very large.

The conformal map projections are used to preserve angles. Therefore, the projections can cause great distortion of areas. For example, when looking at the Stereographic projection, Australia looks incredibly large compared to the rest of the continents and countries which is mainly because of the distortion of the angles since the areas got so much larger as I would move away from the Prime Meridian. The distortion, at least when comparing the two projections I chose, did not make an enormous difference between the two distances.

After looking at my choice of map projections, it is hard to tell which projections would be best when measuring distance since of all the distortions. They do allow me to see the world in different spatial ways. It is safe to say that depending on what task must be done, there will be probably a different projection type needed.

Lab 4 - ArcGIS and ArcMap

My first experience using ArcGIS was simple enough, yet a bit tedious, but it allowed me to see the potential and the pitfalls that ArcGIS offers. Given that it helps portray all the maps in certain views, it allows me to see all sorts of geographic information laid out differently by sorting the different kinds of data. The two different views - layout and data - let me add and alter what data I'd like to see at certain moments, as well as help me alter what I need to alter per map of data. It makes it easy to switch off between the two. I can target certain purposes by displaying just the certain maps I want and the certain layers I want. The options of colors, labels, and outlines make it all the much easier for a user to read the maps.

Points, lines, arcs, and areas can be quite accurately drawn on GIS, adding another potential to GIS. This is especially useful when wanting to draw maps accurately of an area with an already laid out area or for making proposals. Like with this assignment, the use of creating the lines, adding points, etc, add benefits to the proposal of the airport expansion due the accuracy of where those points and lines are added. This also helps those who will look at the proposal visualize the proposal. Being able to display the population density on the layout will allow someone to see where within the county is busy and what to do with roads.

Along with potential comes the pitfalls of ArcGIS. The program itself is not very user-friendly. It is helpful to have a tutorial, but I had trouble still since the version of ArcGIS was too new for the tutorial, therefore some of the images and options given in the tutorial were hard to find when I was actually trying to use the program. Without the tutorial, I'd be completely lost. It didn't help either that some of the names of certain tabs and options given to me in the tutorial changed so when I used the program, I was not able to readily find them as I hoped. If someone were to be more familiar to such software, like AutoCAD, it'd be a lot easier for them to use it. I was lucky to know how the layers worked due to my experience with Adobe Photoshop, but not everyone, especially students taking Geography 7 as a G.E. course, would know many of the functions of the software.

ArcGIS also made it difficult to just start on the project since I had to continuously make sure all my data was within the same folder and even when that was done, I still had problems. My layers wouldn't display and I ended up repeatedly trying to open my main map file. This made it even harder to try to work on the assignment via Remote Access since the information I had on my computer wasn't coming onto the other computer I was using through remote access. It ended up making me have to make sure to use one of the lab computers that have the software to make it less problematic.

All in all, this software takes time to get the hang of, but once an assignment is done, there is overall success to be noted with the maps.

Lab 3

View Orange County Beach Area in a larger map


In my take of neogeography, I took the area I mainly grew up in down in Orange County and focused on the beach area of the north-end of the coast in Orange County. I incorporated what I know is great along the Pacific Coast Highway; incorporating what I know ends up being a pitfall of neogeography, though. Using my knowledge to map adds limitations, along with the fact I'm not a geography expert (yet). To be exact, for example, I mapped the fire pit paths on the three main beaches I would go to if I ever went or had a bonfire. I could have gone along the rest of the Orange County Coast, marked each specific pit area, and other things. I only mapped what I really knew and wanted to map. Another pitfall can be from misrepresentation of an area, like the polygons I created for Crystal Cove and Downtown Huntington Beach. I made the polygons around what I believe the areas are, given what Google Maps provide, but from the map, I have no definite way to know where the actual boundaries are.


I added descriptions for points I marked which adds potential for neogeography. It provides more information on the map to be used for more than just geographical purposes, but as a guide, too. Someone potentially visiting the area could look up my map for a little more insight on where to go, what each place mainly has to offer, but again, this is from my opinion and view. Adding images and videos is also a benefit to neogeography by providing an actual view of what the area looks like beyond the map. The video of the Huntington Dog Beach that I added provides image and ideas of the experience there.


I think obvious potential from using neogeography with Google Maps is that it elaborates on what is already mapped out. But the elaboration could possibly be on inaccurately marked things, which is one pitfall of this style of mapping. GIS only goes so far with it's accuracy until a non-expert (like myself) plays with map-making and puts his or her own take.

With the pitfalls and potentials of neogeography, the consequences include limitations of what Google Maps can offer to be added to the map in the tools, but still they all add to a better, deeper, and more detailed view of a mapped area.

Lab 2

7.5 Minute Map - on the Beverly Hills Quadrangle

1. The name of the quadrangle is the Beverly Hills Quadrangle
2. The names of the adjacent quadrangles are Canoga Park, Van Nuys, Topanga, Burbank, Hollywood, Inglewood, and Venice.
3. The quadrangle was first created in 1966.
4. The North American Datum of 1927 was used for the horizontal lines as the North American datum of 1983 was used for the vertical lines.
5. The scale of the map is 1: 24,000.
6. a) 5 cm on the map = 1,200 m on the ground
    b) 5 in. on the map = 1.89 mi on the ground
    c) 1 mi on the ground = 2.64 in. on the map
    d) 3 km on the ground = 12.5 cm on the map
7. The contour interval on the map is 20 feet.
8. Coordinates of:
    a) Public Affairs Building:
        34.07441°, -118.43931°
        34° 4' 27.876", -118° 26' 21.516"
    b) Tip of Santa Monica Pier:
        34.00749°, -118.49982°
        34° 0' 26.9634", -118° 29' 59.3514"
    c) Upper Franklin Canyon Reservoir:
        34.09801°, -118.41201°
        34° 5' 52.836", -118° 24' 43.2354"
9. Elevations of:
    a) Greystone Mansion:
        550 feet or 167.68 meters
    b) Woodlawn Cemetery:
        140 feet or 42.6 meters
    c) Crestwood Hills Park:
        800 feet or 243.90 meters
10. The UTM zone of the map is zone 11.
11. The UTM coordinates for the lower level of the map are Easting 3615000, Northing 3763000
12. 1000000 sq meters per cell
13. UTM grid intersections:

14. The magnetic declination is 14 degrees east.

15. The water flows down from North to South.

16. UCLA on Beverly Hills Quadrangle Map: