Week 9 Lab 8

For this Final Lab I looked at the relationship between fuel type as classified by the California government fire division and the topography of the Los Angeles Station fire in order to understand the nature of the fires expansion. The fire started in the Angeles National forest and burned between august 26 and October 16th 2009. A total of 206 buildings were destroyed including 89 homes and two firefighters were killed when their car were flipped over and fell off a cliff while they trying to escape a dangerous area. The blaze threatened the nearby communities of La Canada, Flintride, Glendale, Acton and La Crescenta. Many areas faced mandatory evacuation but these orders were removed by the 6th of September, as much of the fire climbed up the slopes of mount Whitney away from the city.

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In order to asses the posibility of fires the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection has create a system for ranking fuel. The fuel ranking methodology assigns ranks based upon the way fire is expected to behave through a combination of topography and vegetation fuels under severe weather conditions including wind speed, humidity, and temperature. Initially fuel rank is culated through a combination of the fuel model plus the slope of the area. The Surface rank is then combine with the Ladder Index and the Crown Index to determine the fuel rank. The fuel rank is categorised in 4 different levels: zero being that the area is unlikely to burn, is an impervious surface or water, one has a moderate chance, two has a high chance, and three has a very high chance of burning.

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There are many types of flora and fauna in the San Gabriel mountains with a combination of conifer and broad leaf forests making the area fall under the timber group for estimating fire behavior, more specifically group ten. This group is comprised of forests with lots of dead dry fuels such as pine needles and fallen branches. It also includes windblown stands and over mature situations with dead fall, both of which are aspects of the Angeles national forest.The fire was difficult to maintain because model ten forest tend to fall within the upper limit of control and direct attack, combined with a dry summer and high winds made containment exponentially more difficult.The conditions along with the lack of road access in the mountains meant that once the fire was no longer a threat to the city it was left to burn itself out and was not fully extinguished until a light rain on the 16th of October. Compared to other large fires throughout Californians History the Los Angele station fire was the worst in the counties history.

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As the fire moved north through the the San Gabriel Mountain it moved quickly along the ridge lines of the hills while the valleys took longer to be consumed. Due to the nature of fire, it moves much faster on sleeper positive inclines as the heat rises and the tips of the flames reach further up the hill. This factor proved very beneficial in the Los Angeles Station fire through a combination of increasing elevation away from the nearby communities as well as the winds coming off the pacific ocean. This pushed the fire northeast up into the mountains and made it difficult for the fire to burn down towards the city. However many citizens complained that the fire could have been subdued within the first 48 hours before it was able to expand rapidly and escape the fire fighters control. This was unable to be accomplished due to the nature of the area. 

The Los Angeles Station fire devastated the natural landscape of the Angeles National forest but luckily due to advantages in topography, predictions based on fuel rank, and climate conditions, the fire spread to the north and northeast, away from the urban centers of Los Angeles and the downtown. However this does not exclude the work of firefighters who did the very important job of initially stopping the fire from spreading south which would have happened, at a slower pace due to wind, poor fuel, and level ground, if their was no intervention. Thank you Lisa, It has been a great class and I have learned a lot.



Sources

Anderson, Hal E. Aids to Determining fuel Models for Estimating Fire Behavior. Ogden, UT: United

States Department of Agriculture, 1982. http://www.fs.fed.us/rm/pubs_int/int_gtr122.pdf (accessed

December 10, 2012). 

Ca.gov. "fuel ranking maps and data." Californian department of forestry and fire protection

http://frap.cdf.ca.gov/data/fire_data/fuel_rank/index.html

Pringle, Paul. "House panel presses for answers on station fire." Los Angeles Times. 

http://articles.latimes.com/2010/oct/13/local/la-me-station-fire-20101013 (accessed December 10, 

2012).

Shagun, Louis. "restoration not taking hold in land burned by station fire." Los Angeles Times. http://articles.latimes.com/2012/apr/07/local/la-me-dead-trees-20120408 (accessed December 10, 2012).

"wilderness and rivers." San Gabriel Mountains Forever.

http://www.sangabrielmountains.org/wilderness_and_rivers (accessed December 10, 2012).

Images
http://eoimages.gsfc.nasa.gov/images/imagerecords/40000/40115/calif_msr_2009242.jpg

Lab 7 Week 8

The first map focuses on the percent of asian in Us counties based on 2000 census data. The concentration of Asians in the Northeast, Northwest, and especially California shows that heavy asian density is on the coast and is relatively heavy in cities, especially gateway cites such as the San Francisco bay area and Los angeles where their are heavy dense quantities of asians, along with cites like New York and seattle to a lesser extend. However the asian population the percent of the asians population in the interior of the united states is very low except in cites such as Denver and Chicago.

The second map covers the percent of african americans in us counties based on the 2000 census data. There is heavy population percent concentration in southeastern and southern states excluding florida. Their is also a pocket of African Americans in southern California surrounding Los Angeles and in and around the cities of Chicago and Detroit. The Highest percentage of african americans in America appear to be in the areas to the east of the appalachian mountains and around the lower Mississippi river.

The final map is of the percent of the Other race according to the 2000 census data. The Label of other is a lose definition of the hispanic population in the us. The heaviest percentages of Hispanic population in the US in along the mexican american boarder running from southern texas along the rio grand to Los Angeles and up the central valley in California. This indicates the heavy amount of hispanic immigrants coming from central america and south america, traveling to parts of the us close to the boarder. Their is also a small pocket of hispanics in florida showing the large cuban population there.

These Census maps do a great job of illustrating the distribution and concentration of different minority groups in America county by county and their majority representation in a few select areas. while creating the maps it can be easy to alter the appearance just by changing the percent scales to highlight or disguise the percent of the group population across the county. ArcGis has been tedious to learn and can be frustrating but overall produces interesting and practical results.

Lab 6 week 7

When retrieving data online I found that if I took data from the 200,000 to 400,000 range it resulted in two data sets so I took one data set from the 1 to 100,000 thousand range so I only had to work with one data set. The area I focused on were the rocky mountains on the western side of the city of Denver in Colorado. This area has a rise in elevation which is interesting because Denver sits right next to the planes so there is a dramatic change elevation. The extent of this map goes from 38.9983333 to 40.001666 bottom to top and -106.0016666 to -104.9983333 left to right.  The data comes from the GCS North America 1983.

3D rendering of western Denver

Lab 5 ( week 6)

Mercador Confomal

Distance: 10,112 miles

Stereographic Conformal

Distance: 9,878 miles

Bonne Equal Area

Distance 6,731 miles

Mollweide Equal Area

Distance: 7,926 miles

Azimuthal Equidistant

Distance: 8,341 miles

Sinusoidal Equidistant

Distance: 8,098 miles

 In this lab we used Arc Gis to create different projections that represented the world. The three different projection types are Conformal, equal area, and equidistant  the conformal map projections preserve the shape of all land masses as the should apear on earth, equal area preserves the actual area that all landmasses should have on earth, and equidistant focuses on preserving all of the distances on the map in relation to the actual distance on the planet. This exercise illustrates how different projections can radically change the distance between two points on the planet. 

The two conformal maps, the Mercador and Stereographic, preserved the shape of  land and water bodies. Conformal maps preserve  oriented angles between curves with respect to there orientation, allowing the maps to preserve the angles and shapes of figures, without preserving the size. This type o map is not effective for making quantitative measurements due to the nature of the map however it can be beneficial when identifying land masses and other objects through their appearance.

The two equal area maps, Bonne and Mollweide, preserve the actual area of continents and water bodies  This leads to the distortion of some of the images and can be inaccurate for makeing measurements across large areas. These maps can be used when the area of an object takes precedent over the distances between objects or the shape of the land masses. It is used effectively when looking at small maps that depict global distribution. 

The final two map, Azimuthal and Sinusoidal, are equidistant maps that the focus on representing the distance between objects while sacrificing their shape and area.This type of map would be most effective for measuring the distance between Washington DC United States and Kabul Afganistan even though the the shape of the countries they are located on and their area's are incorrect  This exercise helps to identify the strengths and weaknesses of different map projections and underlines the importance of understanding the differences between them, otherwise measurements and images can be drastically inaccurate. 

Airport Expansion Lab 4

I used a tutorial for ArcGIS to create the following maps. The tutorial and software was complex and had somewhat of a learning curve that was a bit frustrating to overcome at times but overall was very helpful in learning how to utilize the system. The first graph I creating focused on schools and how they were oriented in relationship to the airport expansion. The tutorial walked me through some of the basic steps in importing data to ArcGIS along with labeling the different data sets and individual schools on the map. It explained how to change the orientation of the map along with expanding and resizing it. The tutorial also showed me how to import a legend for the map along with a distance bar and compass star. It was difficult to utilize the many different tools bars at first mainly due to the depth of the soft wear. There was always a large amount of options when it came to settings and adjustments so it was helpful to have the tutorial, to guide me through the finer details.

The second map that I created in the tutorial focused on land use and how to select and focus on different zones that would be possibly affected by the airport expansion. This part of the tutorial walked my through selecting different zones that where influenced by the future noise ring that would surround the airport expansion. IT then walked me through how to identify these zones by there use, whether it be agricultural, industrial, residential, and then color code then. The graph creation process was a bit difficult, once again due to the vast amount of options available, however by following the tutorial precisely, I was able to create a bar graph of the different land uses affected by the airport expansion.

The bottom map was created by mapping the population densities surrounding the airport and in the county overall. This required the use of the filed calculator which allowed me to calculate population density by going into the data and creating a new category. The tutorial also walked me through how to draw exact lines and curves while drawing a new feeder road for the airport. After completing this map one of the finale steps was to create a small scale map for the first map I created, that focused on schools near the airport, in order to  show its' location in relation to the county as a whole.

ArcGIS is an amazing software that allows users to manipulate and construct maps in infinitely many ways all from geographic data. It was frustrating to learn at some points but the Tutorial is very detailed and takes the user through all of the steps, leaving you with the basic information necessary to complete stunning, informative, and professional looking maps. ArcGIS, though sometimes complicated, makes GIS as a study much more intricate, and precise.

Lab 3 Grand Tetons Trip

View Fun Trip in Grand Teton's in a larger map

Neogeography can be beneficial because it allows a broad range of individuals to contribute to mapping especially in areas that they are interested in. Google earth supports public contributions such as 3 demential designed buildings, and customized rout and activities maps because it would be impossible for google to create all of that information on there own. One of the greatest successes and pitfalls of Neogeography is that it gives everyone the tools to create a map based on their own sources of information.

Unfortunately, Neogeography also allows individuals to create maps that are constructed in a way so that they focus on a few individual ideas and actions that the map maker is interested in but may unintentional end up skewing the general content of the map. With the internet constantly expanding and more and more people creating these personalized maps, the flood of the market leads to lots of quickly created, construed and unintentionally biased maps. All of this makes it difficult to access unaltered supposedly unbiased information from these maps.

Lab 2

1. Beverly Hills Quadrangle
2.Canoga park, Van Nuys, Burbank, Topanga, Hollywood,(ocean),Venice, Inglewood
3. Compiled in 1966
4. North American Datum of 1927 (NAD 27) and North America Datum 1983  (NAD 83)

5 1: 24000
6. A. 5 cm is equivalent to 1200 meters
    B. 5 inches is equivalent to 1.89394 feet
    C. One mile on the ground 2.64 inches
    D. Three kilometers on the ground is equivalent to 12.5 cm on the map

7. 20 feet is the contour interval
8. A. Latitude 34.073937 (34° 4' 26.1732 N" ) Longitude -118.439097 (-118° 26' 20.7492 W" )
    B. Latitude 34.007598 (34° 0' 27.3528 N" ) Longitude -118.499737 (-118° 29' 59.0526 W")
    C. Latitude 34.120152 (34° 7' 12.5466 N") Longitude -118.410286 (-118° 24' 37.029 W")
9. A. 163.5 Meters 536.5 Feet
    B. 106 feet 32 meters
    C. 600 feet 182 meters
10. Zone 11
11. 3763,000 North / 362000 meters east
12. 1,000,000 square meters
13.UTM 3771000

14. 14°
15. South
16.

Where I come from...

I am a new UCLA undergraduate student who has little to no clue of what he is trying to do with his life. I am a native to Washington Dc and am disappointed that now that I have left, all of our sports teams have actually improved. Below are some interesting maps that I connect with from my own home town and others I find interesting.

Link:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/metro/images/metromap_021605.gif
Creator: Washington Dc Metro Transit System

This map is a representation of the Washington area metro region and with the different metro lines that run under the city. The map come from  and serves the purpose of informing the public on the connections between the different metro lines in DC and was created by the Washington Dc Metro Board. Although the map includes some natural features such as the Potomac River it does not accurately represent the geographic direction of routes and distances between stations. The map simplifies the other transportation options in the area such as the beltway and only includes a few county and state lines making it easily usable by tourists and other groups that are new to the Washington Dc region. Memorials and other points of interest that are associated with DC give people who are unfamiliar with the area focal points.

Link: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/25/Washington_DC_Metro_Map_%28To_Scale%29.svg
Creator: Washington Dc Metro Transit System/For use in education

This next map is similar to the map above as it depicts the Washington DC metro transit system but to scale. In comparison to the earlier map, this one has all of the different metro lines and the locations where the lines run on the same track. It lacks, however, all of the geographic and monumental land marks that are present in and around the DC area. For an outsider arriving in Washington, it would be difficult to get his or her bearings. The strength of this map is in its representation of relative distances between stations. One can easily see that a few station on the orange line (left side) are grouped together, showing proximity, where as the last few stations are spread out farther west into the Virgina country side. On the previous map, all orange line stations are equally spaced and it is impossible to discern how long a trip, between seemingly close stations, will take.

 Link:http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5e/Chicago_violent_crime_map.png
Origin: 2005 Chicago Police Department

This map breaks up the Chicago metropolitan region into neighborhoods and then identifies the amount of reported violent crimes that have been committed. The map is useful for identifying high risk areas in the city where individuals need to be cautious of there surroundings. Although not specific in the exact location of the events, by grouping areas together the user can identify dangerous areas, and hopefully avoid them. The pattern of yellow and red that makes a line near the top of the map stands out because usually lake shore property is the most affluent but for some reason that area and westward has many crimes. The intensity of crimes is centered around the inner part of the city and generally gets safer further away from downtown.