Week 7- Fire Hazard Mapping

Going through the fire hazard mapping tutorial, things were okay. But when I began mapping the Station Fire hazards on my own, I started to run into some challenges. First off, finding some of the data was not easy. The fire perimeters and vegetation data were particularly hard to find. After I found all the data I needed, I began to do work on the mapping. For some reason, the computer was not allowing me to make a slope map from the DEM data, and an error would come up every time I tried. Soon, my computer froze and ArcMap stopped responding entirely. I opened up another ArcMap window on the same computer and began remaking my map.

After it wasn't allowing me to create a slope map again, I tried using other Los Angeles County DEM data, but ArcMap placed the layer far north of the rest of the Los Angeles layers, roughly in the area of Yosemite National Park. I thought that it may have something to do with the coordinate systems being off, so I tried to open ArcCatalog to fix it. ArcCatalog wouldn't open, as a message came up saying I don't have the licensing to run the software. I switched computers to try and get it to work. This time, neither ArcMap or ArcCatalog would open. I switched computers, then switched labs, and then switched computers again, and the programs would not open anywhere. I talked to someone at the front desk and he told me they were doing maintenance on the software and it should be back up shortly.

After a few minutes, it was up and running again, and this time I was able to create the slope map with the original DEM data. In the vegetation data I acquired, there was a field called fuel ranking, indicating the proneness a particular type of vegetation has to catching on fire. The vegetation hazard map is symbolized accordingly. When I began formatting my map, I added one legend per data frame, but I was frustrated that I was adding a lot of the same information over and over, as the fire perimeters, urban area, and highways are symbolized the same on each map. The only things that are different are the different types of hazards and gradients. I then had the idea to activate all of the layers in one data frame, in order to create one large, encompassing legend.

Week 6- Suitability Analysis

There is an issue in Kettleman City, California, a small city in the heart of the state's agricultural Central Valley, in which babies are being born with birth defects. Many believe that this is due to the higher-than-normal amounts of arsenic in the drinking water in the area, caused by a nearby landfill. The fact that the landfill received over 400,000 tons of hazardous waste, including PCBs, in 2009, could easily lead someone to make the assumption that the landfill is a contributor to the birth defects. However, this is also in the middle of one of the largest agricultural regions in the country and pesticides may play a role in the birth defects. Either way, because of these concerns, Senator Diane Feinstein decided to suspend the expansion of the landfill until a thorough investigation had taken place.

In this weeks lab, we performed a suitability analysis regarding the placement of a new landfill in the fictitious Gallin County, Montana. We analyzed five aspects of the land- soil drainage, distance to water sources, landcover types, distance to other landfills, and the slope- and combined the factors to find the ideal spot for a new landfill. The analysis can be done in such a way which weights all factors equally, or more weight can be placed on factors that are more important, such as slope and soil drainage in this case. It ultimately shows the best place for something to go considering all the inputted factors.

In Kettleman city, although the landfill is already built, a suitability analysis would be beneficial to see whether or not the proposed expansion should take place. If the landfill is contributing to the birth defects, which is being investigated, certainly an expansion of the site would not improve the circumstances. If a suitability analysis is performed with factors such as distance from residential areas and distance from water sources, among others- and a better, more suitable landfill location is found, then perhaps a new one in the location may open up and gradually begin to replace the existing one.

A reverse suitability analysis of sorts may also be helpful in seeking out the cause(s) of the pollution and birth defects. We can look at the site of where the landfill is currently located and examine the land features surrounding it. We can, for instance, see how far the plant is from streams and what the soil drainage quality of the area is in which it is located, and calculate the likelihood of some of the pollutants from the landfill getting into public drinking water sources.

As a waste company that was fined $2.1 million for operating unauthorized landfills and waste ponds, and as a landfill itself that was in 2003 considered to be an emitter of excessively high radiation, it would not be too hard to believe that the plant was now contributing to local birth defects. However, in these types of investigations one must remain relatively unbiased to collect the necessary facts. Suitability analysis is a useful tool in this regard, but like in the application of all GIS tools, we mustn't be too reliant on it. There is always the possibility for the data to be off, or a human or software error to be made. An on site field investigation should be made in addition to a GIS suitability analysis in order to holistically research the issue at hand.

Challenge Quiz 1

This map shows how much space would be taken up in Los Angeles County if the new buffer zones were to go into effect, which would put out a lot of the population. As we can see with the 1000 foot buffers of the parks, schools, and libraries in LA, they take up a lot of area, and the most area also coincides with the places with the highest population density. If the buffer zones go into effect many will lose their access to medication and other dispensaries would become overcrowded. Certainly a compromise can be drawn between the safety of children and accessibility of medication for marijuana users, by perhaps proposing a 500 foot buffer as opposed to 1000. This would cut the buffer area in half while still providing safe environments for the children.

Week 4- Digitizing