Lab 7

In this map, I show how the LA County wildfires affect the population and landmarks of Los Angeles County. Landmarks include schools, parks, building, famous locations, etc. I think this an important issue because, while it is unfortunate that wildfires are burning in the wilderness, it's much worse if they are burning in downtown Los Angeles.

I added the major highways (Los Angeles County Major Highways) of Los Angeles because I think it helps as a reference point to where certain locations are in Los Angeles. From looking at the most major highways (1, 10, 405, 101, etc), it is clear that most of them will not be affected by the fires. This means that there will not be huge traffic problems because of road closures. However, the major road that goes into the national forest will clearly be affected.

The population of Los Angeles County is 9,862,049 (Los Angeles County, California). Los Angeles' population is mostly condensed into the Southern part of the county, however, there are definitely some people who are directly affected by the fires. I added population density (Los Angeles County Census Urbanized Areas) because I think it's important to examine if the fires are burning next to a scarcely population area, or a densely population area. The map shows that the fires are mostly burning around less population areas.

I included landmarks (Los Angeles County Large Area Landmarks) to show how businesses and schools could be affected. If the fires force school closures or amusement park closures, that would adversely affect Los Angeles' economy. If the fires are threatening certain areas that have a lot of landmarks, it may influence where the fire department decides to fight the fire. Similar to population density, the fire threatens some landmarks, but it is burning in an area that does not have a lot of landmarks.

This fire seems to have started in a national park (Los Angeles County Major Parks). This makes sense because there is a lot of fuel for a fire burn in a national park. While it is unfortunate that there is a fire in the first place, this fire is less devastating than other fires that have burned in heavily population areas, like the Oakland Hills Fire in 1992.

Citations:
"Los Angeles County Major Highways". FGDC, ESRI Metadata. May 25, 2010 .

"Los Angeles County, California". Wikipedia. May 25, 2010 .

"Los Angeles County Census Urbanized Areas". ESRI. May 25, 2010 .

"Los Angeles County Large Area Landmarks". ESRI. May 25, 2010 .

"Los Angeles County Major Parks". ESRI. May 25, 2010 .

Lab 6

The area that I selected is the part of the Oakland Hills that is close to my house, along with one of the bridges in the bay area. I think this area is interesting because it shows zero elevation as well as 580 meter elevation. I think the sharp change in elevation creates an interesting map. In decimal degrees, the map extends from 38.0606 to 37.7298 degress North-South, and -121.9992 to -122.4139 degrees East-West. The spatial reference is GCS North American 1983 and the Datum is D North American 1983.

Week 6: Map Projections

Map projections are important because it is the main way that we familiarize ourselves with how the world looks. Most people do not use 3-D projections of the world when referencing distance or area, so it is important to understand how different maps are distorted so one doesn't believe that what they are looking at is exactly how the earth looks.

Conformal projections like the Stereographic or Mercator projection are nice because they map the earth on a grid which makes allows us to make UTM maps and is easier to split into segments. However, they also heavily distort some areas and also can alter the actual distance between two locations.

Equidistant projections are very useful for distance related subjects, which apply to a wide range of people. Governments may use equidistant maps for missile defense or people may use equidistant maps when figuring out how far they want to hike. The downside with equidistant maps is that they are also distorted, especially the area. In the Plate Carree projections, Alaska looks to be the size of Brazil, and in the Sinusoidal projection, Alaska is barely visible. In you grew up only looking at these two projections, you would either think Alaska was much bigger than it was or be unaware of Alaska.

Equal area projections are good for an overall picture about the relative size of objects. The Mollweide and Bonne projection are not projected too oddly (in comparison to some of the other equal area projections). However, these maps are not easy to manipulate to form something like quadrangles or very useful in measuring distance.

Any projection alone is not sufficient for portraying everything that needs to be, however, certain maps can serve certain purposes, and a combination of maps can fulfill all of our needs for accuracy and convenience.

Week 4 Lab

I thought the guide that went along with ArcGIS made using it for the first time very easy. The program seems intimidating at first glance because it's kind of hard to figure out where to start, however, the guide was extremely detailed and didn't leave out any of the nuances for any of the steps. By the end of the process, I felt comfortable doing the basics of ArcGIS, and could get through the more advanced steps without too much difficulty as well.

What really impressed me about this program is how easy it was to create a simple poster that you could show to someone who isn't familiar with the technical jargon of GIS. By the end of the lab, the final product is a simple graph that anyone could understand. I think this is very important because a lot of the people who would be making decisions based on a GIS map could be confused by a more complicated depiction.

I think one of the potential pitfalls of this program could be that it is not as interactive as it could be. Maybe we haven't gotten far enough into the program and you are able to do more interactive stuff, but if you can't, I think programs like Google Maps will always be more useful for some things because of how accurately they can portray the real world. If there was some way to make the maps a little more 3-D, I think that could be an improvement.

Overall, the program is very impressive. Obviously overtime the program will improve because all technology does, but even as it stands, the program is good at creating maps. I think that in going forward and learning how to better utilize the more intricate tools of the programs, I will find ways to do more of the things I want to with this program.