Final Lab: Lab #8: Peggy Law

Two to three years ago, the Los Angeles county experienced it's largest record of wildfires during the months of August and September. The wildfires spread over an estimated 160,000 acres through these months and for the entire US, these months had an average of 5,535 fires and burnt about 378,523 acres (1). "Los Angeles' Station fire, which began on August 26^th, burned an estimated 160,577 acres, making it the tenth largest fire in California history since 1933. The fire was also among the most destructive of 2009 — destroying 209 structures, including 89 homes, and claiming the lives of two fire fighters."(1) To have personally seen these fires first hand before hitting the news was an forgettable experience.

With this massive and rapid spread of wildfires, firefighters in the city of Los Angeles were immediately called out to help sedate and control the madness. For this project, I wanted to present some different elements that would be affected by the extreme amounts of debris exposed into the atmosphere. With all the ash in the atmosphere, the nature winds carry out the debris. The map above, I illustrated the debris distribution in the area of Los Angeles. This information was obtained in a government website cite as reference (2). To even get the proper map to showcase in the map above, the data had to be collected at the USGS Seamless site to show the correct elevations and county outline of the map (4).

From then on, I collected information from varies sites to show the different elements that are affected by the debris distribution. These elements include river and waterways, and popular areas. First off, I thought the river and waterways would be extremely contaminated if there are long amounts of debris in the atmosphere. From this, I thought it would be a good idea to display in my map the river and waterways in the Los Angeles county. From this information, it seems like these areas were really affected based on the amount of river and waterways in Los Angeles as soon on the map. The river and waterways information was collect at the UCLA GIS website(3).

Besides the river and waterways, I also thought that popular areas in the Los Angeles county should be illustrated in the map as well. According to the data collected in the US census and world population count, the city of Los Angeles in the top 15 heavily populated cities in the world (6). Knowing this, I wanted to collect information of the different popular spots there are in LA. As it is illustrated on the map, a lot of popular areas in LA is close to the areas close to the fire and debris flow(2).

In conclusion, there are important aspects and precautions to take when there is a wildfire outbreak because many people in the city will be affected. Also, rivers and waterways can be heavily affected in city also if a wildfire were to happen again. Precautions needs to be taken by the government and city officials and individuals themselves to help be protected from wildfires because wildfires are natural to these kinds of areas and you never know what kind of brush fire will start.

References:

(1)NCDC: * National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) *. Web. 07 June 2011. .

(2)"Los Angeles County GIS Data Portal." Http://egis3.lacounty.gov. 2006. Web. 26 May 2011. .

(3) http://gis.ats.ucla.edu//Mapshare/Default.cfm

(4) http://seamless.usgs.gov/website/seamless/viewer.htm

(5)"Los Angeles County Enterprise GIS." Http://egis3.lacounty.gov. Web. 26 May 2011.

(6)"City Populations 2013 World City Population, Biggest Largest Cities in the World - Worldatlas.com." World Atlas including Geography Facts, Maps, Flags - Worldatlas.com. Web. 09 June 2011. .

(I am not able to cite sources 3 and 4 correctly because they are private cites and I can't access them. But I used them at the lab)

Lab #7 Week 8 Peggy Law

Lab #6 Week 7: Peggy Law

In class, we were not able to download an image from the website given because it wasn't able to load. Because of this, I do not know where the area projection is. But if what I see in the projections made, this area is on a very uneven terrain. Very mountainous and steep. At the bottom of the projections is probably where water flows to because it goes from high to low elevation and the angles of which the mountains end can only indicate that the water spills there.

When I hit "source" of the original DEM for the Aspect values, I read 359.961 High and 0.00525974 Low. For the 3-D values, I read 522.335 High and 63.4397 Low. For the Slope values, I read 52.6518 High and 0.0468149 Low. For the Hillside values, I read 254 High and 0 Low.

Lab #5 Peggy Law

For the Conformal Projections, it really distorts the map and the way the globe actually looks. Both the Mercator Projection and the Gall Stereograph Projections make Africa look smaller than it actually is. In reality, Africa is a lot bigger than Greenland, but in these projections, Africa looks almost the same size. These maps are convenient if you are trying to figure out the exact Longitude and Latitude of lines because in other projections, lines are curved. Conformal Projections preserves angles locally.

Lab 4

Using ArcMap was extremely confusing and difficult in my opinion. I thought there was a lot of little tiny steps in order to get a small thing edited in a map. Perhaps this is because it was my first time using this program is the reason why I thought it was really confusing. There is a lot of manually typing in file names which does not seem to be user friendly. In lab, we learned that this program is extremely user friendly and that is not the vibe I got as a first time user. I think as we get to use this program more and more in this class, it will become easier

I think this has good potential to be very useful in the field of GIS. It easily helps create legends and keys with a click of a button. This program seems to be an efficient way to get map contents fast and neatly.

I think some of the pitfalls of this program is the way you go about doing things. You have to understand a lot of concepts. These maps work with layers on top on layers of many different maps. Each layer is different in which you can decide to show and not show some components to each layer.

Lab 3

View Tour around Torrance in a larger map

Making a neogeographic map obviously has it's ups and downs. It is definitely a good way for people to be able to plan trips and organize travel destinations. But I think this program is really difficult to use. Even though I had a video tutorial on how to use it, I still feel like the program is somewhat hard to use. Also, I think you have to have a fast computer and fast internet for the program to run smoothly. I think it takes a really long time to load because of all the information it has to load.

I think this program has good potential and it definitely is a very good step in technology. Technology like this was not accessible to the public. Also, I think that this technology isn't that necessary for the general public. It's a cool thing to have, but this development isn't really necessary to have for everyone unless you travel a lot, or if you work in the tour guide industry

Lab 2

1.What is the name of the quadrangle?

- Beverly Hill, CA

2. What are the names of the adjacent quadrangles?- Canoga Park, Van Nuys, Burbank, Topanga, Hollywood, Venice, Inglewood

3. When was the quadrangle first created?
- 1966

4. What datum was used to create your map?
- North American Datum of 1927
- National Geodetic Vertical Datum of 1929

5. What is the scale of the map?- 1 :24,000

6. At the above scale, answer the following:
a) 5 centimeters on the map is equivalent to how many meters on the ground?
- 120000 cm-> 1,200 meters
b) 5 inches on the map is equivalent to how many miles on the ground?
- 120000in-> 120000in/63360miles =1.894 miles
c) one mile on the ground is equivalent to how many inches on the map?
- 2.64 inchesd) three kilometers on the ground is equivalent to how many centimeters on the map?
- 12.5 cm

7. What is the contour interval on your map?
- 20 feet

8. What are the approximate geographic coordinates in both degrees/minutes/seconds and decimal degrees of:a) the Public Affairs Building;
- 34/ 4' 30"(34.0750), 118/26'18'' ( 118.438)
b) the tip of Santa Monica pier;

-34/1'15"(34.021), 118/29'30" (118.492)
c) the Upper Franklin Canyon Reservoir;
- 34/5'30"(34.092), 118/25' (118.417)

9. What is the approximate elevation in both feet and meters of:
a) Greystone Mansion (in Greystone Park);
- 570 feet, 173.73 meters
b) Woodlawn Cemetery;
- 140 feet, 42.67 meters

c) Crestwood Hills Park;
- 480 feet, 146.30 meters

10. What is the UTM zone of the map?
- zone 11

11. What are the UTM coordinates for the lower left corner of your map?

- 361.5 northing, 3763 easting

12. How many square meters are contained within each cell (square) of the UTM gridlines?
- 3 spkm

13. Obtain elevation measurements, from west to east along the UTM northing 3771000, where the eastings of the UTM grid intersect the northing. Create an elevation profile using these measurements in Excel (hint: create a line chart). Figure out how to label the elevation values to the two measurements on campus. Insert your elevation profile as a graphic in your blog.

14. What is the magnetic declination of the map?
- +14 degrees

15. In which direction does water flow in the intermittent stream between the 405 freeway and Stone Canyon Reservoir?
- River flow south

16. Crop out (i.e., cut and paste) UCLA from the map and include it as a graphic on your blog.