Station Fire

      
      The Station Fire has been noted to be the largest fire in recorded history of the Angeles Nation Forest and one of the largest in California. The fire occurred in Los Angeles County just north of several communities such as La Canada Flintridge, Glendale, and Acton. Beginning the afternoon of august 26, 2009 and full containment occurring on October 16, 2009, the fire quickly grew to uncontrollable levels and results in major damages to the national forest and surrounding communities. Approximately 200 residential and commercial properties were destroyed with a total cost of damages and services estimated to be about $90,000,000. A total of 160,577 acres of land were reportedly burned, but the damages extend far beyond this mere size. 
      For the purposes of this project I have created a reference map using Digital Elevation Model data from the USGS seemless site that stands as the foreground of both my reference and theme map. Above the DEM layer is the Los Angeles county polygon that was downloaded from the UCLA mapshare site, the polygon was set to hollow in order to just use the outline of the county and added the major highway layer to demonstrate the transit routes affected by the fire and highways allowing access to the massive perimeter of this fire. The DEM is set to a color ramp that illustrates elevation in natural colors that have good contrast in order to show the steep grade in the area of the Station Fire, demonstrating that the fire travelled up slope naturally and directed the rapid growth of the blaze.






Bloomekatz, Ari B. “Station fire is largest in L.A. County’s modern history.”  LA Times. N.p., 2 Sept. 2009. Web. 22 Nov. 2010. <http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2009/09/station-fire-is-largest-in-la-county-history.html>.




"Station Fire." InciWeb the Incident Information System: Current Incidents. 10 Nov. 2009. Web. 04 June 2011. <http://inciweb.org/incident/1856/>.




"More Than 60 Homes Destroyed in L.A. Station Fire | KPBS.org." KPBS San Diego: Public Radio, TV and Web. 2 Sept. 2009. Web. 09 June 2011. <http://www.kpbs.org/news/2009/sep/02/more-60-homes-destroyed-la-station-fire/>.

Census Data

Same Area, Same Data.... Infinite Applications

      The area I selected contains steep high rising slopes and a deep valley to the East. I chose this area because I felt it would best demonstrate a contrast in height in the landscape. In the images you can see the Southern Sierra Nevadas and to the East is Owens Valley. The extent of all the figures from top to bottom is from 36.709 N and 34.995 S and from left to right it runs from -117.316 W to   -116.393 W. The gegraphic coordinate system used for these projections is North American Datum of 1983.

Projection Detection

      Map projections seem pretty benign and harmless at first glance, but that is because most people dont realize that behind every projection there is a human intention. A map projection appears very objective and straightforward, being derived from mathematical calculations, but nothing is that simple and unbiased when creating a representation of our real world. Just like any representation of the world we live in, such as film, photography, literature and arts, there is some political or cultural bias and influence. This same principle is true for the creation of map projections and the employment of map projections.
      No two map projections are the same and there is not a single map projection that represents Earth exactly as it appears. The reason so many map projections exist is because it is impossible to represent a 3-dimensional obbject onto a 2-dimensional surface. Some elements will become distorted in the projection process. Some projections such as the Mercator Projection are conformal and preserve the shape of the land masses. Other maps preserve the area of objects and some preserve the distances that exist between two points.
      Depending on the projection, a map can be used for several different purposes. With the Mercator projection for example, it was the first projection that if a navigator followed a compass bearing in a straight line he would reach the exact desired destination. The Mercator Projection is a relatively old projection and was incredibly useful during the Age of Discovery, but it can still be found in classrooms and textbooks to this day. The fact is that the Mercator Projection is so distorted in the high latitudes that the entire projection is rarely shown, most of Antarctica is cut off because it takes up most of the area on the map.
      For most of the last century the Mercator Projection was used for political reasons and to keep Americans fearful of the USSR, as if the threat of nuclear war wasn't stressful enough. The Mercator Projection has remained popular because most of the global powers that exist today are located in the mid-latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere and the projection distorts the size of land masses to be much larger in higher latititudes and much smaller close to the equator. Due to this distortion, the USSR and the US appeared large and the entire continent of Africa appeared much smaller than its actual size, further perpetuating the the fact that global powers ingnore Africa politically and rather draw attention away from any issues going on in Africa. People relate size with power and influential political powers wouldn't want people to become confused by reality.

GIS: Not for the Faint of Heart

       I think the beauty of Geographic Information System software is that you can manipulate data in so many different ways that rarely are two maps alike. GIS opens itself up to an immense number of possibilities and creative input. It is a multifaceted tool that allows geographers to manipulate and represent their world any way they see fit. During this tutorial I was following instructions line by line to produce a similar product as everyone else, but still, none of our maps are exactly the same. Everyone has different aesthetic input and when you are creating a map on ArcGIS the options seem limitless and entirely dependent on your purpose and personal taste. The maps can be as colorful or as plain as you want, with the entire spectrum at your fingertips, it is hard not to make a map look the way you want.
       Throughout the tutorial I was tempted to change and manipulate so many layers and options on the map just to see what the program was capable of, but as my first time handling this relatively complicated software I felt it would create too many problems I wouldnt be able to solve on my own. The tutorial was a bit repetitive and mundane, but thats exactly the way it needed to be. It walks you through the program one baby step at a time and then it asks you to repeat steps, which is perfect for committing anything to memory. If somone working with this software can't even remember the most basic manipulations from this tutorial then they should not be using this software ever.
       I guess the biggest downfall to this software is that it is daunting to any newcomer. The interface is not very user friendly and for someone to become completely familiar with every option and toolbar available would take countless hours of banging your head against a keyboard just to get the program to do what you want. That is probably the biggest issue, you know what you want your map to be and how to look, but the process of translating that idea through the softare into a product is a gruelling ordeal of trial and error. I guess the best thing for any newcomer to GIS software is to just take a deep breath and tell themsleves that it will get easier with time and practice. It's just like learning anything new and people are incredibly maleable and can learn almost anything if they put the right amount of effort into it.
       GIS is truly a marvelous tool. It offers itself to so many functions and is incredibly useful in almost any field, which just goes to demonstrate what a spatially centered world we live in. Its most appealing aspect is the fact that it lets you visualize any number of parameters all at once and best of all it is entirely open to manipulation and alterations. This ability to manipulate existing data sets is unbelievably useful, given that we live in an everchanging world that never stays constant. In order to solve dynamic real world problems, we need to use dynamic software that can bend to those problems in the best effort to come up with a solution. I know GIS cant help solve all our problems, but Im gald it's a tool that is available to us.  

UC Santa Cruz: A Place in Space

http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?msid=208451600285121150972.0004be0c65aeee9955e5d&msa=0&ll=36.995287,-122.05596&spn=0.029374,0.055747

     The purpose of this map is to help outsiders view the places that UC Sanata Cruz students explore everyday and to get a taste for this unique campus and colorful town. The problem that I immediately came across was that this map is unique and tailored to my experiences. Not EVERY student that attends UCSC visits all these places or tries all these foods. There are so many gaps and discrepancies that another student would recognize and neogeographers rarely recognize this and just share what they know. I don't claim to know everything about Santa Cruz, but just laid out a list of locations and activities that were popular when I was there. I'm probably not the first to map this campus and probably wont be the last, and this opens up enormous potential for layering multiple experiences that portrays a broader picture of what this campus is all about. For the purposes of the map I produced, Google maps worked like a charm and the satellite view made it simple to recognize unique landmarks.
     Although neogeography offers unique benefits it also carries negative implications. Probably the most outstanding is that ANYONE can create a map with this toolkit. And as a geography major I am baffled at how terrible most people are with directions or identifying specific places on a map. Someone with very little knowledge can place markers and routes all over a map that could be completely wrong and claim it to be entirely accurate. It is up to the viewer to use discretion since there is no review process or screening. Another pitfall is the matter of opinion. I know maps convey countless opinions and are biased in many ways, but most maps that are produced are created by institutions or professionals with reputations. The faceless creation of any kind of map online can lead to very hateful or slanderous cartography from those who feel like labeling or redlining entire areas negatively. The important lesson to take away from neogeography is that it has enormous potential if used responsibly and viewed with discretion.

LAB 2

1.      Name of quadrangle: Beverly Hills Quadrangle

2.      Adjacent quadrangles: Canoga Park, Van Nuys, Burbank, Topanga, Hollywood, Venice, Inglewood

3.      Quadrangle first created: 1927

4.      North American Datum of 1927, North American Datum 0f 1983, Hydrographic data from NOS/NOAA, National Geodetic Vertical Datum of 1929

5.      Scale 1:24,000

6.      Scale:

a)      5 x 240= 1200 meters

b)      10000/5280= 1.89 miles

c)      2.64 inches= 1 mile

d)     12.5 cm on map

7.      Contour Interval is 20 feet

8.      Geographic Coordinates:

a)      Public Affairs Building: 34̊ 4’ 10” N, 118̊ 26’ 30” W

b)      Tip of Santa Monica Pier: 34̊ 00’ 37” N, 118̊ 30’ 01” W

c)      Upper Franklin Canyon Reservoir: 34̊ 07’ 10” N, 118̊ 24’ 20” W

9.      Elevation in feet and meters:

a)      Greystone Mansion: 560 feet, 170.688 meters

b)      Woodlawn Cemetery: 140 feet, 42.672 meters

c)      Crestwood Hills Park: 700 feet, 213.360 meters

10.  UTM Zone 11

11.  UTM coordinates for lower left corner of map: 3763000m N, 362000m E

12.  1000m x 1000m= 100,000,000 m²

13.

14.   Magnetic Declination of map: 14̊ / 249 MILS

15.   The water flows South

16.