Station Fire

 

     The Los Angeles station fire started on august 26, 2009 and raged on for about 2 months before finally being able to be put out.  Once the fire was contained it had burned such a large amount of acreage that it was determined to be the tenth largest fire in California history  It was so named for the fact it burned very closely to Mount Wilson, on top of which were approximately 20 radio station towers.  Unlike most fires that occur that simply burn brush and grassland fuel, this turned into a true crown fire, burning fully grown trees, an occurrence that is rather rare for the amount of heat and power of a fire that is needed to do so is tremendous.  This is because trees are far wetter than the simple dry brush that most fires consist of.

      The reason this was such a disastrous fire was because it was a crown fire and not simply a brush fire.  This comes about from simply misunderstanding and misinforming people about fire ecology.  From a young age we are taught that all forest fires are bad fires, being brought up on the teaching of Smokey the Bear.  We have to do whatever we can to avoid starting forest fires, and while this may be true on a certain level, it is incorrect on another more important level.  By attempting to stop all forest fires, dry brush and fuel accumulate, meaning that should a fire ever start, there is much more fuel and it is much more likely to start a true crown fire.  This method of prevention would only ever be possible if we were able to completely stop all fires from ever happening, which would be impossible, as natural not just man-made fires do exist.  In this sense then, a reeducation process is needed to inform people of how fire ecology truly works in hopes that we can stop future large scale fires.  

     The first map shows simply the extent of the fire during the first four days of the fire.  It shows just how quickly it spread in just four days, covering over 200 square miles by September 3.  This shows just how powerful of a fire this was, and how much damage it could have caused.

     The second thematic map shows a number of different pieces of infrastructure that could have been affected by the fire.  Fortunately, the fire seems to have been rather contained to the forest, not spreading too much into the more populated areas.  That being said, by August 31 10,000 homes were evacuated.  By September 3, 64 residences had been destroyed, along with 7 other commercial or other buildings.  This is an incredible amount of destruction, but it could have been much worse.  As detailed by the thematic map, the fire affected very few institutions, hospitals, and airports, but came very close to spreading into areas that contained a number of these.

     The main problem that was faced in fighting this fire was the lack of access that firefighters had to the area.  I included the highways in the area in the second map as well, showing that there are very few roads that access the area.  This lack of accessibility caused serious problems in fighting this fire and is why it took almost two months to put the fire out.  At one point two firefighters died from driving off of a 700 foot cliff because of the poor visibility, but more because the road systems were so difficulty to navigate. 

http://gis.ats.ucla.edu//Mapshare/Default.cfm
http://seamless.usgs.gov/website/seamless/viewer.htm
http://gis.lacounty.gov/eGIS/
http://www.lasdblog.org/Pressrelease/PR_Folder/SFUpdateTH-00.pdf
http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/08/31/california.wildfires/index.html
http://www.smokeybear.com/

DEMs

DEM of South Lake Tahoe

     I chose to do the southern most point of Lake Tahoe.  I chose this because it is a diverse landscape allowing for a good display of elevation.  It is also interesting to see that the lake actually is not the lowest point on the map, rather a valley to the east.  The main reason i chose this specific landscape however is because this is Tahoe is one of my favorite places in the world.  I was raised as a skier, and my father was actually in the Sierra ski patrol.  He passed on his love for skiing to my brother and me, so it is really interesting to see a map of a place i have been going to my entire life that I actually created.  The latitudes and longitudes of this map are 39.043⁰N at top,  38.761⁰ N at bottom, -120.394⁰ W at left, -119.815.  The geographic coordinate system used is WGS 1984 (World Geodetic System 1984). This is a geocentric ellipsoid.

Map Projections

     Map projections are a way of viewing our three-dimensional world in a more simplistic two dimensions.  This allows us to view them in a way that allows us to analyze them in the way that we often think of the world.  In doing so however, it can often lead to the warping of many aspects of the world, making two maps of the same image or projection drastically different, causing serious problems, especially in navigation.  This is made very evident in the differences in miles of the six map projections I have placed below.  The fact that these maps are even remotely close in the distance to Washington D.C and Kabul, Afghanistan is rather surprising.  Map projections come in three different types: conformal, equidistant, and equal area projections. All three are represented below, each have different purposes, but also different pitfalls.

     Conformal maps preserve angular relationships, and in the case of distance make them rather accurate, and thus better for navigation.  They allow for distance to be preserved between areas, but in doing so can drastically distort the area of places.  This is not a horrible thing, but can cause problems when we consider the fact that these are often the most common form of map projection because they are the easiest to understand without a background in GIS, and are also the simplest to understand spatially.  When it comes to politics however, the distortion of area means that certain area or countries are perceived to be more powerful, or taking up more space than others, leading to misunderstandings on a public but also a governmental level.  This is especially evident in the two conformal maps I have represented below, specifically the Mercator projection, which displays countries such as Russia to be far larger than they actually are.

     Equidistant maps preserve distance from a specific point of origin.  In this case I have two maps which preserve both latitudinal and longitudinal distance.  The conic is useful in preserving distance longitudinally, but only in the northern hemisphere, which in this case is not helpful, but still coincidentally gives us a fairly accurate estimated distance.  The cylindrical one would be more useful for measuring the distance between our two points because they are about the same latitude, but this would not be a good map when wanting to measure distance from north to south.  These maps are only useful across clear lines of latitude and longitude, and are not good for diagonal measurements or in maintaining the true shape and area of the world.

     The final set of maps deals with maintaining equal area, but not necessarily distance.  The Bonne projection even is only useful in maintaining the area of a few places on the map, such as Africa, while the North pole Equal area map is really only useful for the northern hemisphere, and even then is really only accurate close to the north pole.  These maps give us a better sense of the way that the world truely is on a more three dimensional platform, but really only in certain areas, and does not deal with distance between places.

Conformal

 Mercator Projection: 7,000 miles

 Gall Projection: 7,000 miles

Equal Area

Bonne Projection: 6,600 miles

North Pole Equal Area: 6,850 miles

Equidistant

 World Equidistant Conic: 6,800 miles

World Equidistant Cylinder: 5,800 miles