Lab #7 Station Fire

Los Angeles County Station Fire

August-September 2009

 

 

                The Los Angeles County Station Fire of August and September 2009 was the largest and most threatening forest fire California has ever seen. It burned roughly 160,600 acres and cost nearly 94 million dollars to fight and contain. All firefighters worked around the clock and risked their lives for the safety of others. Because of climate and elevation, the Station fire posed a major threat to the nearby communities and caused the shutdown of roads within the fires extent.  

                As seen in the Station Fire Extent reference map, the fire that started on August 26, 2009, had burned a total of 1,174 in just one day. By September 2, it had burned 144,121 acres of land in just one week (File:StationFire4Sept.jpg 2009).  Although it was revealed that the fire was started by arson, a major reason the fire burned so quickly was because of California’s chapparal vegetation cover along with “bone dry conditions.” (CNN). Chaparral vegetation cover is a combination of plants that are very dry and bush-like in nature and make for really good fire fuel. California is covered with it (“Fire & Nature”). Because of the dry vegetation, the fire was able to spread so quickly. Furthermore, the weather conditions reported on August 29, 2009 were “bone-dry conditions” and did not get better for the next five days. Furthermore, this fire was unpredictable because “the fire [had] sent plumes of thick smoke spiraling as much as 20,000 feet into the air [and created] its own wind patterns” (CNN). A major reason the extent of the fire was so severe was due to in part the conditions and vegetation cover of Southern California

                Another reason the fire was so severe was elevation. Because the fire burned in the Mountains, there were many slopes the fire could jump to. Looking at the elevation map, it is noticeable that the elevation ranges from about sea level to approximately 3,000 feet. Area near where the fire started (August 26, 2009) is at a lower elevation. The direction of which the fire spread is up the slopes of the mountain and towards the highest elevation. Areas near Mount Wilson experienced severe damage (InciWeb). This is because fires burn a lot easier going uphill, because gravity helps lift the fire up. Therefore, the fire burned so quickly because it easily worked its way up hill. Furthermore, the fire also burned so quickly and to a large extent because the mountainous terrain made it even harder for the firefighters to help contain it. Two weeks into the fire, it was only 62% contained (L.A. Now) because of climate and elevation factors working in favor of the fire.

                Because this fire was so large and burned acres so quickly, it posed a threat to the nearby communities and caused roads to be closed. The areas that were threatened were La Canada Flintridge, Glendale, Acton, La Crescenta, Littlerock, and Altadena, as well as Sunland  and Tujunga neighborhoods of the City of Los Angeles (2009 California wildfires). Within these areas, thousands of structures were threatened. About 209 residences, commercial property, and outbuildings were destroyed (Inciweb). A major problem for people driving, was that many roads were closed. Mapped above are the major roads of the area near the fire. Of the roads closed were the Angeles Crest Highway (Highway 2) and Azusa Canyon (Highway 39). These roads act as passageways through the mountains, therefore people wanting to drive through had to go around. Other roads closed were Normanton Drive, Earnslow Drive, Fairhurst Drive, Rock Castle Drive, Canalda Drive and Ocean View Boulelvard north of Canalda Drive, in La Canada Flintridge and people living on those roads were evacuated (“Listown.com”). These areas were closed as a result of the largest fire Los Angeles has ever seen many people were endangered because of its severity.

                The Station Fire took nearly seven weeks to completely stop burning because of the dry climate and elevation factors. During this time, many people, homes, communities, and wildlife were put at risk due to the flames raging across their familiar land. As a result of the fire, some homes were permanently damaged and destroyed and many roads were impaired. This made a huge impact on the communities surrounding the Station Fire for many months after.

Works Cited 

"2009 California wildfires ." Wikipedia. Web. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_California_wildfires#Los_Angeles_County>

CNN. "'Angry Fire' roars across 100,000 California acres." Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. (2009): n. pag. Web. 22 Nov 2010. <http://articles.cnn.com/2009-08-31/us/california.wildfires_1_mike-dietrich-firefighters-safety-incident-commander/2?_s=PM:US>.

"File:StationFire4Sept.jpg." Wikipedia. Web. 22 Nov 2010. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:StationFire4Sept.jpg>.

"Fire and Nature ." Wild Fire in the Chaparral . California Chaparral Institute, 2010. Web. 22 Nov 2010. <http://www.californiachaparral.com/firenature.html>.

Inciweb. "Station Fire News Release." InciWeb the Incident Information System (2009): n. pag. Web. 22 Nov 2010. <http://www.inciwed.org/incident/article/9549>

L.A. Now, . "Crews try to construct line around Station fire." Los Angeles Times. (2009): n. pag. Web. 22 Nov 2010. <http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2009/09/station-fire-1.html>.

"LA Station Fire 2009." Listown.com. listown.com Inc. , 2009. Web. 22 Nov 2010. <http://www.listown.com/group/la-station-fire-2009-6336>.

Lab#6 Digital Elevation Models

3D Model

 

The area of which I chose to do my digital elevation models was Shasta County in Northern California, right around 42 degrees north of the equator and 124 degrees west of the Prime Meridian. I chose this area because it is very mountainous and would be a good example in showing digital elevation models. In the shaded relief model, the high elevation areas (the mountains) are represented by reds, orange, and yellows and the lower elevations (the valleys and gorges) are represented by light to dark purples. The slope model shows that in the entire map, the slope is more than 88.9, therefore throughout the map there is a steep slope. The aspect model shows all the areas that face a certain way. For example all areas in the map that are facing north are shaded red. The 3D model, my favorite, draws a 3-dimensional picture of the mountains as if we were looking down at it from an angle.  The extent of the map in decimal degrees is starting at the top: 42.0016666667; left: -124.001666667; right: -122.998333333; and bottom: 40.99833333. The information downloaded for this map was from the North American Geographic Coordinate System 1983 and the datum is the 1983 North American Datum.

Lab #5 Projections in ArcGIS

 

 

     Map projections are used to represent the three-dimensional earth on a two-dimensional picture. Just by hearing that statement alone would suggest that there are many implications when making map projections and many maps are distorted. This is because it is so difficult to create a flat projection of an object that is a sphere. Therefore, when you look at different map projections and compare it to an image of the earht, the size and shape of a continent of country on the projection will look different than the continents or countries on the earth. There are many different map projections and each of them have their own unique way of representing the earth. There are three types of map projections: equal area, equidistant, and conformal. 

     Equal area map projections try to preserve area. This means that the area on the map is proportional to that of the area on the globe. The two examples I have are the Sinusoidal Projection and the Bonne Projection. When comparing the distances between Wathington D.C. and Kabul, Afghanistan the Sinusoidal map distance is 7,800 miles and the Bonne map distance is 6,500 miles. This is obviously because if you look at the projections, the Bonne map is more compact in the north than the sinusoidal. The advantages of using these maps is that it preserves the total area of the country, however the problem is that it does not preserve the shape. Therefore the map is generally distorted because some countries that are far from the prime meridian are not the same thing. It is therefore difficult to generate a true distance between two points because one point is not really in the same place relative to the other.

     Equidistant map projections preserves distance from some standard point or line. My two examples are conic and cylindrical. In the conic equidistant map, you can see that that the shortest distance between D.C. and Kabul is over the Arctic in stead of an arch. Therefore the distance in miles is only 6,750 because the path that is taken is different than on other maps. However, the distance between D.C. and Kabul in the cylindrical equidistant map is only 4,900 miles and that is because when the parallels and meridians are proportional, it squishes the lateral distance of the map and makes the map look taller. Therefore, the problems with using there maps is that the farther away you go from the prime meridian and the equator the more distorted the map gets (exception: conic). I believe that the conic example however is pretty accurate because it shows the shortest distance between the two points. However I believe the cylindrical is not accurate in this case because it is completely distorted. If you look at Antarctica, it is not that huge on the globe.

     Conformal maps preserve the angles of the intersections of parallels and meridians. My two examples are the Mercator and the Gall Stereographic map. The Mercator map projection distance from D.C. to Kabul is 6,700 miles and the Gall Stereographic is 6,900 miles. These two maps have the closest distance related to one another in my map projection categories. Although they may seem accurate, they may not be. This is because looking at both you will notice that the Mercator is very long but thin and Antarctica is HUGE and take up the entire bottom of the map. The same is for the Gall Stereographic map. Greenland is also not that same size and Australia looks tiny. Therefore, the areas and shapes of objects and distances between them become more distorted the further away from the Equator and prime meridian you go. 

     From doing this assignment I've learned that map projections can be very deceiving because it is so difficult to get a 3-D figure on a 2-D plane. Most of the projections can only focus on preserving on thing and at that expense, it will distort another. But what projection should we use if they all don't see very accurate. Luckily today we have satellites for GPS and have ways to figure out the true distance from one place to another. However, from looking at all the different map projections, what is the true distance from Washington D.C. to Kabul, Afghanistan?

Lab #4 ArcGIS

The first time I opened the ArcGIS application I was a little bit rushed because the only thing I could think about was a midterm I had to take the next day. Because my learning ability was not up to par, I wasn’t paying very much attention. I also did not have a USB drive so I just went through some of the steps without saving. I thought the program was intimidating because I was stressed and barely understood what exactly I was doing. The tutorial also seemed way too long for me to focus and retain any information so I went through one of the exercises and went to go study another subject. Later the next week, I also had midterms to study for and therefore did not put a lot of thought into the assignment.

However, once my midterms had ended and I was free to do as I wished, I looked into the ArcMap assignment. First, I read through the tutorial without the program. This really helped because when I got to the lab to follow the steps it was a lot easier because I already had a sense of what to do. It was also a lot easier because it seemed a lot shorter than it originally seemed. It was like my second time going through the process.The next day I did the tutorial one more time and it was even easier. Although I had some problems finding some files (because I was getting ahead of myself and forgot the steps I took the day before) I was able to successfully finish the tutorial. I had also gotten a USB drive to save my work this time because I knew I would have to put it on my blog later. This made working with the ArcGIS even easier because I knew that I wasn’t going to lose my maps. By reading over the entire tutorial and then going through the steps twice, I believe that that really helped in making me more familiar to the program. Although I’m not an expert, there is still plenty of room for improvement. 

ArcMap can be of significant use to everyone. It certainly comes in handy when discussing future plans like predicting environmentaal impact. In the case of the airport noise contour map in the tutorial, we can see all the areas that will be affected by the airplane noise. From looking at this map, urban planners will be able to tell what buildings will need sound proof windows. Also, it is of great use when looking at environmental impact. People can map out things like carbon dioxide emissions, logging, or animal habitats and calculate where and to what extent an impact has on the environment. The map maker has the ability to upload information to the map in order to explain what the map is trying to portray. By doing this, he allows many people to understand the concepts the map is representing.

However, although ArcMap has a lot of potential because it can hold, display and organize a lot of information, it can be very difficult to understand. Although the tutorial was very straight forward, some of the directions were difficult to understand and I made a lot of mistakes. It can be very frustrating to learn. It took me two tries to get what the map was actually displaying and when I did get it, it was still not completely clear. Also, when you have the power of making the maps, you have authority over what goes into it. A lot of information could be left out by this and therefore make some concepts to readers unclear. For example if I had left out the airport, many people would be confused as to what they were looking at. So it is very important to include the important information and only leave out what it unnecessary.