lab week 7

This week we had to create a fire demographics map for the Station Fire which occurred a few years ago. This map was not too difficult to make, the main challenge was finding the information. At first, I had no idea where to look for the DEM, as it seemed that most of the websites that had DEM's made you pay for them. I am assuming these are probably very high quality, and therefore you have to pay to be able to use them. However, I finally found some information on the USGS Seamless viewer, which was very helpful. I also found some information on California's FRAP website, which is the forestry department for the entire state of California. With their information on the entire state, I was able to find just enough information on the Station Fire area, and pare it down.
When working on the tutorial part of the map, I found that what I learned came in handy when creating my own map. Of course, the tutorial was much more detailed than my own map, seeing as I did not have as much detailed information on what the specific plants and vegetation types were in the area. Although, being very familiar with the area where the Station Fire occurred, it makes sense that the area burned, as there is a lot of extremely dry vegetation there most of the time. I think though, that it would have been helpful for me to have had information over time on the fuel load of the vegetation. I think that it could also be an interesting map to do, the way the fire fuel load changes over time, during the year and even year to year.
The map that I created, I wish that I had more time to add more detail to the map that they included in the tutorial, such as the historic fires, and other information that can help a fire fighter plan where new fires might occur, and what they can do to help this. I think that the biggest challenge that I had in creating this map was what little knowledge I have, when looking at the vegetation maps, what means some sort of vegetation will be a large hazard, and what types will not. Some of this information was included in the vegetation grids that I was able to find online from the FRAP website, but I was not one hundred percent sure that it was correct.

lab week 6

Landfill suitability analysis. Click to see image larger.

week 5: QUIZ

Brief

Based on the high rate of marijuana dispensaries that have opened recently, I believe that the new ordinance by the LA city council is a good measure to protect children. It is not the fact that the dispensaries are necessarily bad for children to be near, but it often is the case that there are some less than desirable people that tend to congregate near these places. Therefore, this map shows areas where children frequently go to school, play, or hang out at, per the city council's orders. There is to be a buffer of 1,000 feet from these areas, which I have also included on the map.

The second map shows the Hollywood area specifically, where there happen to be a lot of dispensaries which overlap with schools, some right next to each other in fact. Under the new ordinance, this would no longer be able to occur. This I view as a good measure, as the areas where there are a lot of young people should probably not be directly next to marijuana clubs and dispensaries.

week 4 lab

Digitized map of Iraq. Click on image to see larger.

week 3 lab

This week I decided to do my map on the best vegetarian-friendly neighborhoods to live in West LA. What I found was, that without a doubt, it is Santa Monica. And not just anywhere in Santa Monica, but the area between Santa Monica blvd and Broadway, west of Bundy ave. As a vegetarian, I was not really surprised to find out this information, as some of my favorite restaurants, grocery stores, and farmer's markets are in this area.

I got my data for the map by looking up all the farmers markets in West LA first. I thought that these were usually a good indication of vegetarian friendly neighborhoods. Next, I plotted stores like Whole Foods and Co-Opportunity, which are different foods that make it easy to be a vegetarian, as well as sell fresh, organic produce. Then I added in restaurants that are specifically vegetarian or vegan, although more and more today there are a great many vegetarian options available at most restaurants. After putting these on an excel sheet, I added the information to the map. However, I first had to make an address locator. I did this by downloading a TIGER file of all the streets in LA, from the CALTRANS website. Then I told ArcGIS to use this layer as the base for the address locator, which it was able to. Then, I just used the geocoding option on ArcGIS to upload and find all my addresses. Then, I was able to label each of my places based on the name of the place, which I had added to the Excel file in a field called "type".

I will say that there is a very large benefit to using ArcGIS to geocode addresses, as it makes it so simple to upload them once you have made an address locator. Then, it is also very easy to label them and everything. There is a learning curve in getting to know how to work with the program, especially in making the address locator, but it wasn't impossible to figure out.

lab week 2

click on image to see full size

lab week 1

ArcMap Tutorial: Lab 1
click on image to expand