Final Project

Final Project- Fire Spread Patterns and Population Centers

Fire is the rapid oxidation, usually with the evolution of heat and light; heat fuel, oxygen and interaction of the three.
This fire is located in Los Angeles County, about 25 miles Northeast of the Santa Monica Area. It was about 15 miles in diameter at its largest extent. The fire first spread in the North and Northwest direction, then spread in the Northeast direction.
Los Angeles contains the second largest population in the United States, only behind New York City. The fire is extraordinary because of its proximity to a large population center. The theme of the map is how the fire affects the population of Los Angeles County. It was fortunate that the wind did not blow in the Southwest direction, toward millions of people.

Hypothesis: The Los Angeles area is not properly prepared for disasters. The densely populated areas are indicated by the color purple. If the wind had been blowing in a different direction, the northern population areas would have been in serious danger. You can see on the map that a major highway (Highway 2) runs directly through the heart of the fire. There is also an airport just a few miles Southwest of the fire. Traffic is already a serious problem and it becomes much worse when fires occur. Los Angeles receives about 14.43 of rain per year, which leaves the landscape very dry most years. More preparation must be taken if the area is to avert potential disaster.

Works Cited
1."Glossary of Wildfire Terminology". National Wildfire Coordinating Group. May 2011. http://www.nwcg.gov/pms/pubs/glossary/pms205.pdf
2. "L.A. annual rainfall from 1878 to 2008". Los Angeles Times, February 2009. http://articles.latimes.com/2009/feb/02/local/me-annual-rain-graphic2
3. Los Angeles County Enterprise GIS. http://egis3.lacounty.gov/eGIS/index.php/2009/09/02/all-station-fire-perimiters-as-of-september-2-0702-complete-ste/
4. "U.S. Census Bureau Releases Data on Population Distribution and Change in the U.S. Based on Analysis of 2010 Census Results". United States Census Bureau, March 2010. http://2010.census.gov/news/releases/operations/cb11-cn124.html.
5. University of California Los Angeles. GIS ATS. http://gis.ats.ucla.edu//Mapshare/Default.cfm.

Week 8 Assignment

1. Black Population

This map shows the distribution of population of black people in the United States as a percentage. The more heavily populations of black people are located in the southern and southeastern United States. There are also some medium sized populations in southern California. However, there are hardly any large populations located in any other area.





2. Asian Population

This map shows the population distribution of Asian people in the United States as a total number. The percentages were very hard to get, so I reworked the map to get the total number of Asian people in each county. The data shows almost the exact same results. The highest concentrations of Asian people are in large cities, mostly in southern California, Seattle, Chicago, Houston, Miami, Boston, and New York City.





3. Some Other Population

This map shows the population of non-white, black, or Asian people in the United States as a percentage. The map is referring mainly to hispanic Americans. While this is not explicitly listed, it can be inferred due to the locations of the highly populated areas. The most populated areas are near the Mexican border in areas that are known to have high percentages of hispanic people. These areas include Las Vegas, Los Angeles, San Diego, Phoenix, and parts of New Mexico and Texas.

This census map series was a wonderful exercise in learning how to create population maps using ArcGis. While it was very difficult at the start of the project, the tutorial proved to be instructive and helpful in making the maps shown above. The census map series is especially nice because it gives us a way to visualize populations of anything, anywhere.

ArcGIS, as a whole, is a frustrating, yet magical tool. It is something that is applied to nearly every discipline, but requires the proper training to navigate the software. I know that it will eventually become more user friendly in the future, but it is still quite difficult to learn. However, once mastered, is so incredibly rewarding and helpful. Maps as simple as the ones in this project can be of magnificent help when trying to show someone else data. Raw data is useless; however, when given a way to portray it, it can be portrayed in a wonderful fashion.

Week 4 Assignment: My First Real Map

The assignment was to create a map using the ArcGIS tutorial. During this assignment, I discovered the incredible potential of ArcGIS: the potential to create wonderful, instructive maps and manipulate data in ways never possible before and the potential to frustrate beyond belief. The assignment sounded easy enough, but turned out to be the most difficult lab of the quarter.
There many problems with this lab, which made the lab very time consuming and stressful. The biggest problem was definitely that the tutorial was not made for the same version of ArcGIS as the version that we were using in our lab. In our labs, we have the most recent version of ArcGIS: 10. However, the tutorial was written for the use of a later version. While the versions have many similarities, there are enough differences to get a new user lost time after time.
Another pitfall of ArcGIS is that it is very time consuming and not very user friendly. While ESRI is working towards making their products more user friendly with products like ArcExplorer, the software is still extremely difficult to maneuver. Each step of the map creating process requires extensive knowledge of the program and computers in general. Even getting the data into a format that ArcGIS will accept is so incredibly difficult. This is perhaps ESRI's biggest pitfall. If they want to become more widely used and known, they will need to make it much easier to use their products.
Despite the pitfalls just mentioned, ArcGIS has such brilliant potential. The moment when I saw my first real map that I created, I was overwhelmed with joy and felt so accomplished. With ArcGIS, users can manipulate data in ways that have never been so widely offered before. The program allows users to create beautiful maps and show data in ways that can and will affect every area of business, government, and life in general. It has become the standard to have magnificent maps in office presentations. As the program becomes easier to use, its user base will grow and so will its reach and influence.

Week 7 Assignment

1.Southern Nevada Digital Elevation Map

This area is located in mostly Southern Nevada. The area is almost entirely desert. The area is categorized by many rocky mountains with flat desert terrain in between. The city of Las Vegas is in the area, which has a population of about 2 million. The are also has Lake Mead, which is one of the largest reservoirs in the world.

Extent Information:
The Digital Elevation Model covers the range from 35.5180555547 to 36.6197222215 degrees Latitude and -115.155555555 to -116.166666666 degrees Longitude.










2. Hillshade Model of Southern Nevada

3. Slope Model of Southern Nevada

4. Aspect Model of Southern Nevada

5. 3D Image of Southern Nevada

Week 6 Submission

Equal Area Map Projections

Distance from Washington D.C. to Kabul: 12,103.63649 Kilometers

Distance from Washington D.C. to Kabul: 12,915.856858 Kilometers













Equidistant Map Projections

Distance from Washington D.C. to Kabul: 11,373.808411 Kilometers

Distance from Washington D.C. to Kabul: 8,145.837389 Kilometers













Conformal Map Projections

Distance from Washington D.C. to Kabul: 16,273.910536 Kilometers

Distance from Washington D.C. to Kabul: 15,897.194586 Kilometers







Map projections are very useful tools for displaying the whole world on paper. The truth is that there is no perfect map projection. Each projection is distorted in some way, which makes choosing the right map projection hard. The way to choose the right map projection is to identify what you are trying to accomplish with your map and to choose the one that best fits your purpose. Map projections are significant because by looking at the map projection that someone chooses, you can identify their biases and potential goals. For example, if someone uses a Mercator projection, they are probably not located near the Equator because this particular projection makes the higher latitudes seem much larger than they actually are.

During this week’s lab, we needed to create two maps from three different map categories: equal area, equidistant, and conformal map projections. For the equal area map projections, I used the World Eckert V and World Eckert VI. These maps are nearly identical. They are wonderful because they keep the correct area of all the land masses. These maps are especially important in geography because the sizes of continents are very important in this field. When studying climate or populations, it is vitally important to have the correct size for each land mass.

The second map projection type I looked at was equidistant map projections. For this projection, I chose World Equidistant Conic and Word Equidistant Cylindrical map projections. These projections have uniform distances from the center of the projection to any other place on the map. These projections are important because sometimes your main objective in a map might be preserving the distance between two points. However, this projection does not keep all area equal, just the few parts of the map that you are trying to preserve.

The third map projection type I looked at was conformal map projections. For this projection type, I chose Mercator and Stereographic map projections. The Mercator map is the projection that is used mostly in American schools. They are used so often because they make the United States look much bigger than it should be compared to countries closer to the equator. They are also useful because all conformal map projections preserve the correct angles. However, they greatly distort the sizes of the land masses. These maps are easy to use because all the meridians and parallels are connected at right angles.

Week 3 Lab, My Summer Travels Mashup Map

View Summer Travels in a larger map

Neography is an incredibly powerful tool that is being used more all the time. Even the most technically unsavvy people are realizing that they too can participate in neography, mostly through the portal of mashups. This is wonderful because now everyone is a geographer and is motivated to learn more about maps and geography. The potential of neography is endless; while the platform is a software, usually by a big company like Google, it is completely user-driven. Without the users, there is no neography. As more people become interested in the current neography platforms, the demand for new platforms will arise, thus growing even larger.
The problem with neography is that it creates a very large potential for false information. A similar comparison could be drawn with Wikipedia, which lets users create and edit pages about any topic. However, Wikipedia has a very large staff of people closely monitoring user edits, so it is not a very good comparison. With neography, there are simply too many mashups and other websites that it is impossible to monitor everything. When a person is trying to look up something online, there is a very high possibility that they will run into misinformation. This can be very discouraging and frustrating to people, which could drive them away from the concept of neography.

Geo 7 Lab 2

1. Beverly Hills Quadrangle
2. Canoga Park, Van Nuys, Burbank, Topanga, Hollywood, Venice, Inglewood
3. 1966
4. Horizontal: 1927, Vertical 1929
5. 1:24,000
6. A. 1,200 meters

    B. 1.89393939 miles

    C. 2.64 inches

     D. 12.5 centimeters

 7. 20 feet
8. A. 34° 4' 28.75" N (34.074477), -118° 26' 20.86" W (-118.439146)

     B. 34°, 0', 38" N (34.007524) , 118°, 29', 58" W (-118.49986)

     C. 34° 5' 50.96" N (34.102272), -118° 24' 46.36" W (-118.41291)
9. A. 580 feet, 178.784 meters

     B. 140 feet, 42.672 meters

     C. 700 feet, 213.36 meters
10. Zone 11
11. 3763 Northing, 36
12. 1 square kilometer 

13. (See image)
14. 14 degrees
15. North to South
16.  (See images)