Lab 7: LA County Station Fire

On August 29th, 2010, as temperature in Los Angeles reached triple digits fires raged across the city. Heavily located in the northern region of Los Angeles, nearby communities such as that of La Canada Flintridge and Glendale were tremendously affected by these raging fires. In our lab this week we were to use the ArcGIS program to depict the county of Los Angeles, along with projected reference maps of the Station Fires which occured during late August and early September. After doing so we were to analyze a specific aspect of the fire and how that affected nearby communities of Los Angeles. After accessing the Mapshare Database off the UCLA website, we were given options to encorporate and embed another layer to our Los Angeles County and Fires projection.

From http://gis.ats.ucla.edu/Mapshare, I chose the layer Important and Major Roads in Los Angeles County in order to observe how the expansion and the location of the fire had affected major transportation in this area. This presented and completed the above layout of Los Angeles County in green, along with the progression and expansion of the station fire in pink, violet and yellow colors, along with all the roads represented by red lines. As we can clearly see from the projection above, the fire was heavely concentrated north of the city of Los Angeles. According to wikipedia.org and CNN, the fire originated near the community of La Canada Flintridge. Assuming that other communities such as Glendale are nearby.

In looking at the expansion of the fire, one can see that from day 1 (Aug. 29th/yellow) to one of the final days of the fire (Sept. 2nd/pink) it had more or so traveled North, away from Downtown Los Angeles. Taking a look at day 1, there is one major road located in that region, which provides a more direct passage from The San Fernando Valley to the northern regions of the County of Los Angeles, over the mountains. According to CNN and the L.A. Times, on August 29th people of La Canada and Glendale were advised to evacuate the premises, and to stay away from major surrounding roads, especially those traveling north.

In this projection we see that there are only 2 major roads which lead directly to that northern part of the County of Los Angeles, which are then eventually blocked off due to the expansion of the fire from day 1 to day 2. This implies a greater deal of traffic on the main roads towards Downtown Los Angeles, freeways and highways such as the 101N and 118W. We also have to remember that this layer was just a depiction of the major roads near the epicenter of the fire, meaning there are also other local streets which were completely closed off. This results in detours in city bus routes. Which entails that more people were closer to the inner city, which ultimately results in an increase in numbers of local transportation used per square mile, which furthermore leads to more crowded buses and difficulty in ease of transportation. The fire without a doubt caused there to be an increase in traffic in Los Angeles roads and highways.

Another interesting point which one can defer from such an image is how the fires affected the Los Angeles' economy through transportation throughout the station fires. On the one hand the fires could have possibly caused an increase in the number of drivers in Los Angeles due to the increase in density of population towards the inner city after the evacuations. Only through numbers and calculations can one figure out if the increase in expense of drivers and their salaries outweighed the number of people who decided to use local transportation during the fires.

Bibliography

"2009 California Wildfires." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 12 May 2010.

"High temperatures, dry conditions fuel wildfires." CNN on the Web. 30 Aug. 2009.

Lin, Rong-Gong. "Los Angeles fire map: Mt. Wilson, Tujunga, Acton, Altadena, Pasadena, Sierra Madre." Los Angeles Times Local. 11 Sept. 2009.

Los Angeles County Enterprise GIS. Powered by WordPress & the Atahualpa Theme by BytesForAll. 2010.

University of California, Los Angeles. Mapshare Database. 2010.

Lab #6

Malibu, California

Malibu, California, only about 10 miles from where I reside today, was my choice. The extent information is at approximately longitude: -76.1 decimal degrees and latitude: 36.85 decimal degress. These projections and images depict the costal lines of Malibu.

Lab 5: Map Projections

Map projection is the process of converting a spherical model onto a planar model, while keeping specific spatial characteristics, such as distance, area, or shape. This process essentially enables the creation of accurate flat maps. We must be aware that not one projection type can accurately depict all of the characteristics displayed originally on a sphere to the plane. Hence we will have different projection types: namely conformal, equidistant, and equal area. Each of these types are used in different situations and provide different benefits when applied to these. Everyone of these types allow the possibility of depicting a spherical 3-D world (globe) on a 2-D projection, creating possibilities such as easier transportation of a peice of paper over a globe.

The first type, conformal map projections, keep the shape shape and local angles, depicting a system of longitude and latitude lines. Conformal maps distort area, which is made obvious by the disproportionate size of Antarctica in both Mercator and Gall stereographic examples. Equidistant map projections, such as cylindrical and conic above, represent accurate distances along designated lines and outward from the center. The disadvantage is that this type of projection distorts area sizes, and does not necessarily show true distances of the points along the center, as we can see in the inaccurate distance between the Americas and Australia in the equidistant conic example. Equal area map projections preserve areas but fail to accurately represent latitude-longitude grid angles. Cylindrical, also known as a Gall-Peters projection, only represent true distances along the 45th parallels north and south. On the other hand, sinusoidal represents the area of the Earth as the area between two symmetrically rotated cosine curves. We can clearly see in both cylindrical and sinusoidal equal area examples that these gridlines are distorted, simply by comparing both to the conformal Mercator example.

In this lab we were to measure the distance between Washington, D.C. and Kabul. Here we can see the differences between the types of map projections. To determine bearing we can look at both Mercator and Gall Stereographic conformal map projections. We see that the linearity in all directions dictates that traveling southeast in a straight line will conveniently get me from D.C. to Kabul. To determine true distance we can look at both cylindrical and conic equidistant map projections. We see that the even mapping of longitudes and latitudes dictates that the true distance between D.C. and Kabul is around 5,065 to 6,941 miles. And as obvious as its name says, we can accurately assess the areas of the United States and Afghanistan by referring to both cylindrical and sinusoidal equal area projections. I am certain that interchanging any of these projection types with the data we are seeking, will only result in false measurements.

In all of these map projection types we have have pros and cons when depicting the world on a 2-D scale. Since it is obviously impossible to accurately translate all spatial data from a sphere to a plane, each projection will preserve some characteristics while significantly distorting the rest. As mentioned before each map projection has its proper use, which is why any spatial analysis can be rendered erroneous if the wrong type of projection is chosen. It is important to know through what means each map was created because then you will accurately know the features that it most accurately represents while at the same time lacks.

Lab 4

This experience with ArcGIS was pretty smooth and self-explanatory. Before this class I had no recollection or idea about the existence of ArcGIS; although I did know there was some sort of program that was used by cartographers to compile and customize maps. ArcGIS is definitely a program which is benficial and effectives in using when creating and/or editing all sorts of maps.
In going through the tutorial, the steps were clear and the program made it easy to follow.

In our lab we were to see if the expansion of an airport in regards to applying various sets of spatial data onto a visual model that anyone can easily understand. For example, the most significant drawback of the project, the increase in the noise level in the area, is represented by a noise contour on the county map. Then pacing additional layers containing schools in the area, land use, and population density, in order to determine if the expansion significantly affects any schools, residential zones, or large groups of the county population.

A fellow program to ArcGIS, ArcMap, allowed us to have the necessary scales and various legends to further depict the information in our images. Many colors are used to depict different categories within the information, also within the noise contour there is one school and a significant residential population. Then it would be up to local government officials to compare this GIS data with local laws and regulations to make a decision. The strength of ArcMap comes in its ability to analyze and organize a lot of spatial data onto a map, while still easily being able to add and edit the information provided. ArcMap and ArcGIS work well together to provide substantial amount of information on a single map.

Although ArcMap's many features and functions are also it's pitfall. The menu interface is actually a bit complicated for your everyday user. The amount of layers one has to keep track of can get confusing. And the saving system and file extensions are additional details that a user has to keep in mind. A casual user simply cannot pick up the program and start using it as a neogeography tool for their daily lives. This makes it necessary for a professional user to take an in-depth tutorial or class in order to take advantage of all its quirks and features, which limits the widespread use of the program to only within the GIS field and related industries.