Final Lab

Final Lab

This week got to create our own census map from the U.S. Census Bureau using the 2000 Census. Maybe it wasn't completely from scratch because we had all information in front of us. We just had to put all the information together. We had chance to practice making census maps in the Mapping Census 2000 with ArcGIS on population density, percent change in population, and different change in population. Then we had to create another three maps on different race.

Black Population Map

When I was creating black population map it was kinda confusing because you suppose to use the tutorial step, but swap out few things which were where the problem occurred. I think it because you were trying follow the tutorial and then when one thing was not the same or pre-done for you it confused what you had to do next. What was interested to see the finish product once the map was done. Once finish creating the map it showed there were higher percent of black population counties in southern eastern part of the United States compared to West. This is most likely caused by slavery times in south during early 1800’s.

Asian Population Map

After creating the black population map it was more smooth sailing creating Asian population map. I know from my family history that majority of Vietnamese people after the Vietnam war were placed in California, Vancouver, and Texas that could explain their distribution on the map. Also I think Asian countries are geographically closer to west coast of the United States than the east. The west coast was easier to get to by boat or plane than any other region. Soon after next generation head toward the U.S. they look for family member that already lived in U.S., which was located mostly along the coast.

Some Other Race map

It is hard to define some other race. This depend on the people and their belief how they saw themselves as. It like now on the census form there is check box for some other race because certain people didn’t believe they just belong to one race only. This was widely debate because some people only believe they where half-black, half-white, half-Asian, etc. and they didn’t know where to put themselves in what category. This is why in this map you see wider distribution population than other two maps.

Conclusion

Census map lab was quite frustrating in the beginning. What confused me was that you were doing half of the census tutorial and then you are suppose to join some other direction together, but it didn't work seamlessly as you would hope. I was glad I was not the only one who had gotten stuck doing this lab. I think doing these lab you always need to work with a partner because one or the other will understand it and be able teach the other.

This GIS course was completely different what I thought it would be. It was quite complex and complicated. For the future GIS in my life I am not sure if I would continue. I am not sure if I have the patient creating maps. There are just so much little things you can mess up on and take you so long to figure out you messed up 5 steps ago. It was definitely interesting course. I am glad I learn something new and now have the choice if I want to continue. Since these lab were continuously getting complicated.

Lab #7

When people think about fire they only think about the harm and bad things occur with fire. They think of fire destroy property, killing people, and endangering animals and trees. Fire does help us in many ways like keeping us warm at night, or enabling us to cook our food. Fire does do the environment and nature good, but under certain circumstances. Fires are fine in forest as long they are in controlled area. In California, we use fire to regenerate trees and to remove unneeded shrubs. Its true that some people want fire to burn forest or homes to hurt people, which bring us to 2009 Station Fire in Angeles National Forest.

The Station Fire was considered biggest fire in Los Angeles County. This was consider deadly because of how many days it burned for, which is about 51 days a fire ripped through 160,577 acres of land. The fire had destroyed 89 homes and 209 structures. What makes this fire worst is that it was arson, so someone had intentional set this fire. People have estimated the cost to contain this fire cost the government $93 million that not including the home owners suing for the mudslides that fire debris had come down from Station Fires.

The map that I chosen to build from scratch is a representation of the Station Fire affect on the local forest/park communities and recreational areas. I thought it will be interesting see how much of an area the fire had destroy compared to actual size of the Angeles National forest. Since I didn’t know too much about the northern LA county I thought it be good to add major interstate freeways to give better sense of direction and location of the fire. I added the multiple layers of fire progression to show where the fire has started and ended.

The result of the fire you can see that it destroy large part of the Angeles National Forest. It was really interesting that in ArcGIS you can lay map layer over one another to get a real idea of how much the forest in retrospect of the whole area too. There were at least seven recreational areas that were in close contact to the fire. As you can see the fire had destroy half of the forest area at station area. Technology is so great now that you can compile so much information together to support your theory.

Recently the Station Fire area has received $1.5 million dollar donation to be reforestation in the area. It will include 500,000 trees replanted. The Board of Air Quality management District hopes this effort will reduce the carbon dioxide emission. Usually forest areas are able to re-grow back but with so much damage it has little potential to do so. Human interaction must help and restore balance in nature.

Work Cited

Barney, Judith. "DelMarTimes.net | Fires Are Not All Bad." Del Mar, California - Del Mar Times Newspaper - Local News, Events, Restaurants, Homes, Hotels, Travel, School, Club, Highlands, Race and Fair Information. A Division of San Diego Suburban News. 7 Aug. 2008. Web. 25 May 2010. .

Behrens, Zach. "1st Reforestation Project in Station Fire Burn Area OK'd - LAist." LAist: Los Angeles News, Food, Arts & Events. 2 Apr. 2010. Web. 25 May 2010. .

Inciweb.org. "InciWeb the Incident Information System: Station Fire." InciWeb the Incident Information System: Current Incidents. 10 Nov. 2009. Web. 24 May 2010. .

Mail Foreign Service. "Visible from Space: The Massive Californian Wildfires Encircling Los Angeles Read More: Http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1210417/California-burning-Angry-Station-Fire-inches-closer-Los-Angeles-firefighters-die.html#ixzz0ouzm4Ido." California Burning: 'Angry' Station Fire Inches Closer to Los Angeles as Two Firefighters Die | Mail Online. 2 Sept. 2009. Web. 25 May 2010. .

Los Angeles County. "GIS Data." Los Angeles County Enterprise GIS. WordPress. 22 November 2009. .

Lab #6

Digital Elevation Model

I wanted to pick a location that showed large different level of elevation, so I picked Los Padres National Forest. The Los Padres National Forest is located between Santa Cruz and San Luis Obispo near Big Sur. I remember Los Padres National Forest from a trip after high school when we took a summer road trip to visit San Francisco. We stop by Big Sur along the way toward San Fran for some swimming and surfing. I notice how long the Los Padres National Forest extended when we were driving by.

The North America Datum 1983.

Top: 40.6047222217

Left: -124.447222222

Right: -123.751944444

Bottom: 40.1577777773

Lab #5

Map projections are important when you are looking for places or calculating your route for a trip. Since there is not one perfect universal map for all occasion. Also all maps have some sort of distortion, which makes you have to think and pick a map projection that's best fits for your circumstance. When deciding on a map projection you want to consider the aspect and the properties. The aspect is the basic layout you want either cylindrical, conic, or azimuthal. Then you can classify the map projection into properties area, which are different kinds of distortion to the area. These areas can have conformal, or equal-area or equidistant. When deciding on map projection you have to consider what part (distant, shapes, areas) doesn’t matter or does matter during distortion.

Conformal is known for preserving map locally. Meridians (lines of longitude) and parallels (lines of latitude) intersect at right angles. Conformal map preserve shape. The Mercator Map is widely used as world map. Mercator does hold distortion when you look at the map. For example, when you are looking at Greenland and Africa you notice that they are both about the same size, but you know Greenland is not big as Africa. In the Gall Stereographic map you notice at the standard parallels that there is no distortion, but as you increase away from the parallels its slowly distort more and more.

Equal-Area preserves an area on a map. This mean every area on the world is equal area to each other. Bonne's projection map has the least distortion near standard parallel at the equator and standard meridian, but as you move away it distorts. Equal-Area Cylindrical projection has straight lines. All meridian are equally spaced while the parallel are not equally spaced between each other. The higher the degree location you move away from the standard parallel the more distortion occurs.

Equidistant maps show you the true distances from center of the projection. Equidistant map do have flaws too and can be misleading. For example, the Azimuthal Equidistant projection map shows us Washington D.C. as the center, so every time you find the distant from Washington D.C. to any other location it is true distant. But lets say you want to find the distant from Los Angeles to New York, it will provide you misleading distances. This is cause by Los Angeles not being centered on the map. Equidistant Cylindrical projection map are called simple map form. Most people like the Equidistant Cylindrical map because all coordinate lines are straight and parallel lines cross meridians at right angles. Also the scale is consistent throughout the map.

As you can see that each map type are distorted in different ways. There will not be perfect map projection for all situations. Each map with have advantages and disadvantage on shape, distance, area, and direction.

Lab 4

Lab 4

ArcGIS is a geographic information system modeling and mapping program design by ESRI. ArcGIS lets you see so many new aspects of maps. ArcGIS offer so many different features to edit, combine, deletion of attributes. ArcGIS is a little overwhelming at first. It is like any new program you used for the first time. Maybe ArcGIS is more complicated than average Microsoft Office program. Following the ArcGIS tutorial is quite simple if everything is exactly the same, but one those directions asking you extract file from here and there is where the complication occurs.

The first map we had to create was fairly straight forward, but as you continue farther it got complex and intensified. For me and few fellow students had difficult because we did not save it in correct place or continue save in the same folder. We would finish second map only to find that one of the files were missing inside the map, which cause the delays. It was hard to figure out where you had gone wrong because there so many factors you can jumble up in wrong area. I must say there were few frustrated moments where you could not get the program to do what you wanted, but having classmate and TA around really did help a lot going through the tutorial.

One of the disadvantage of ArcGIS is you need to be attention to detail oriented. Biggest problem is that you have read all the direction carefully and do not skip a step in tutorial. Skipping one page can mess up the whole map easily. Now I can really see why you do need to do the lab three times to be familiar with basic tool of ArcGIS. It is definitely not a program you can go quickly in you must take the time and be patient.

ArcGIS can be prevailing and influential to the world without most people even knowing it. There are so many possibilities with incorporating with everyday information. I would like to learn more about how to combine ArcGIS to the business world. One thing I did notice when I look at how much it cost to buy ArcGIS license it was about $1500 for one license. So owning ArcGIS for the average student is a little outrageously pricey. The only way for a student to use the program is taking GIS class or working for company that uses ArcGIS. This program is more for education institution and private firm that specialize in Geographic information systems.