Lab Final: Affects of the fire on surrounding communities

For my report I am observing the affects that the Fires had on the community in the area. More specifically the schools and the health risks that is presented from the smoke from the fires.

Wild Fires are one of the many major disasters that occur on earth. Wild fires even though may be dangerous and cause massive amounts of damage, in some cases it is just balancing out the ecosystems. Fires that rip through dried out vegetation helps replenish and sometimes help seeds grow (Cunningham 138-140). After these fires the soil left by the fires is now fertile where new plants can grow and thrive.

On average about 5 million acres get burned by fires each year by fires causing massive amounts of damage and expenses. These fires can spread at the rate of 14.29 mile per hour (HowStuffWorks). Some of these fires may occur naturally by the heat from the sun or a lightning strike, but many times these fires are created by man. The common fires that are created by humans are due to: Arsons, Campfires, Discarding lit cigarettes, improperly burning debris, playing with matches or fireworks or prescribed fires (HowStuffWorks). Everything has a temperature were it will burst into a flame. This is also known as a flash point. For example woods flash point is about 572 degrees Fahrenheit. At this temperature it releases hydrocarbon gases that mix with oxygen in the air, combust and creates fire. There are three things that fires need to start a fire, fuel, oxygen and heat, without one of these the flame will not last (HowStuffWorks).

In 2009, bright and sunny Southern California Los Angeles over 100,000 acres had been burned in a major fire (CNN). The Station fire, was burning through the Angeles National Forest just north of Los Angeles, this fire forced thousands to evacuate from their homes and endangered thousands of people homes, and major communication installation on Mount Wilson. At the time the fire started the humidity was rather low and there was high temperatures, conditions which are perfect to help keep up a fire. Also to add to the perfect weather conditions for the fire Southern California had been facing a drought for that current year. The Fire original started on Wednesday August 26, 2009 around 3:30pm (Inciweb). This fire was one of the latest fire recorded in the history of the Angeles National Forest and the 10^th largest fire in California since 1933 (Inciweb). The Station Fire was caused by Arson. At the time of the fire the wind was blowing north so most of the smoke did not hit the city. I believe if the wind had blown south then entire possibly entire summer practices might have been canceled. This would result in delayed seasons for all the fall high school sports.

The Fire not only burned thousands  of acres of forests but caused many roads to close and also forced schools to be closed which included the; Acton-Agua Dulce Unified District; Glendale Unified; La Canada Unified School Districts. Also schools in the Pasadena Unified School District had all their summer practices to be canceled because of all the bad air quality. So sports such as Cross-Country, Football, Tennis; practices had to be canceled. The schools who were already in school had to have all their lunch sessions inside and had to avoid opening the windows so no unhealthy would be located in the class rooms (Saugus Union School District).

 These schools that canceled summer practices was due to the unhealthy quality of the air that was created by the smoke of the fire. The determination of how healthy the air quality is determined by the Air Quality Management District also known as the AQMD. The AQMD everyday has a monitor that tells how clean the air is and determines wether it is safe or not to have physical activity outdoors. Doing physical activates in these bad air quality areas are not recommended because if inhaling of too much it may lead to Heart Disease. The carbon monoxide displaces the oxygen in your red blood cells thus meaning that less oxygen can reach into your body. This mostly affects the heart and lungs (Current Incidents). Of course it has to be a large amount of carbon monoxide to do huge affects to a person but it is still better to be safe than sorry. Also with a lot of smoke and carbon monoxide there may be a lead of increase chance of Chronic Respiratory Dieses. Meters which the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) created which measure the PSI in the air. A PSI ration of up to 100 is healthy, from 100-200 it is unhealthy, 200-300 very unhealthy, and can affect elderly and people with weak lungs and a measurement above 300 is considered Hazardous (Current Incidents).

 

Creating these maps allowed me to look deeper on what ArchGis could do. I learned that ArchGis makes what seem ridiculous hard tasks into manageable work. Also creating these maps I also learned how extensive the fire was and how good of a job that fire fighters did on contain the fire. Even though it looks like the fire did great amounts of damage, without the expertise and courage of the fire fighters, the fire could have been much worse. In fact that if the fire went out of control and the wind pushing the fire east instead of north the fire might have actually had the chance to reach my home.

Cited

"'Angry Fire' Roars across 100,000 California Acres - Page 2 - CNN." Featured Articles from CNN. 31 Aug. 2009. Web. 07 June 2011. <http://articles.cnn.com/2009-08-31/us/california.wildfires_1_mike-dietrich-firefighters-safety-incident-commander/2?_s=PM:US>.

Cunningham, William P. Principles of Environmental Science: Inquiry and Applications. Dubuque, IA: McGraw Hill, 2010. Print.

Current Incidents. Web. 07 June 2011. <http://www.inciweb.org/incident/1856/>.

"Bad Air Day?" Health And Energy Company. Web. 07 June 2011. <http://healthandenergy.com/bad_air_day.htm>.

"HowStuffWorks "How Wildfires Work"" HowStuffWorks "Science" Web. 07 June 2011. <http://science.howstuffworks.com/nature/natural-disasters/wildfire.htm>.

"InciWeb the Incident Information System: Station Fire." InciWeb the Incident Information System:

"Station Fire Update for Tuesday, September 1, 2009." Saugus Union School District. Web. 07 June 2011. <http://www.saugususd.org/station-fire-update-tuesday-september-1-2009>.

"Lab #3: Energy: Ozone Detection Strips." Chemistry Land Intro. Web. 09 June 2011. <http://www.chemistryland.com/CHM107Lab/Exp03_DetectOzone/OzoneLab/OzoneLab.htm>.

Lab #7 Census

In this map shows the population of Asians in the United States, sorted out by each county that they live in. Looking at the Asian Population Percentage Map you notice that most of the Asian populations in the United States are located in California, Washington and New York areas.  Everywhere else the Asian population is scattered around many with less than 4 percent in the county area. The reason why the Asian population is very high in California is because of one of the Gold Rush era. 1848-1855 was the time of the California Gold Rush. Many people from China moved to California to find work to work in mines or hopefully to strike it rich. Also many people from China worked on the new railway system that was being built during this time. This resulted in an about 40 to 48 percent Asian population in the Northern California area. For Southern California the Asian is also dense because of Japanese population that was migrating during the late 1800s and early 1900s to run away from war. Even though these population percentages are high in these areas it is 

still nothing to the population percentage of Blacks in the US.

The just below the Asian population map is the Black population map in the United States also being separated by counties. As you can see most of the Black population is located in the Southern parts of the United States with the densest population of blacks in Alabama and South Carolina areas, which reach as high as 86 percent. Probably the biggest reason for so dense populations is because these sights are the original sites of where slavery was the biggest during the late 1800s. After slavery had ended most of Black people stayed in these areas because they had nowhere else to go. There are still small amounts of population of blacks all around the United States stretching from 1 percent to about 12 percent. This map shows that the population of blacks as a whole is much greater than Asian.

In the last map shows the population percentage of other pure races in the United States. It shows that the highest density of population is located in the south west parts of the United States. These high density populations maybe because of high population of Mexican people. Southern California and south Texas are popular areas for Mexican immigrants to go when they move from Mexico. There is also a high population of other race in Washington but I am not sure what that race can be. There also a reasonable amount of other locations where there is high population of other races in areas such as New York and Florida. For Florida it could be high population of Cuban immigrants and New York it could be European immigrants.

All these maps tougher show how diverse the united States are. Different areas in the USA may have high density of certain races but they do not 100 percent dominate the areas. The information that was given from these maps is from the United States Census, which can be found at www.census.gov. The maps are a version of the 2000 census and a new census is taken every 10 years, so the new census is currently being calculated. The census allows us to see how many people are residents of the United States, which places are populated areas and what races they are. GIS allows us to visually see this and helps us to sort out all the information.

Lab #6 DEM

3-D Image

Shown above are a 3-D image, Aspect map, Shaded Relief Model Map and a Slope Map of a Southern California area (Los Angeles area). This map was chosen by my TA due to the slow speeds of the USGS sever. By the looks of the maps it shows that it contains several valleys. Also shows how steep many of the surrounding hills given by the slope map.

Extent:

Top  34.3397222213

Bottom  34.2741666658

Left  -119.233888889

Right -119.171388889

Spatial Reference: GCS_North_American_1983

Datum: D_North_American_1983  

Lab #5

Map Projections

Map projection is one of the key components in representing the Earth, (that and coordinate systems). Map projections; project a 3-D image to a 2-D image. This means that if you have a globe it becomes projected and the entire surface area of the globe becomes placed onto a flat surface (map). The one way of doing this is getting the globe project a light on to it, doing this would put an image on to that flat surface. No map projections can be perfect. That is why there are 3 different types of map projections.  The three different map projections are conformal, equidistant and equal area. Each one of these have specific characteristics that makes them special which gives advantages and disadvantages over the other projections. The real definition of map projection is “a process of mathematical conversion”.  There are only 3 known ways to get map projections from a plane, cone and cylinder.

Conformal map projection has the parallels and meridians intersecting perfectly at the right angles. The greatest strength to this map projection is that it basically preserves the shapes of the continents on the map. Meaning that continents like North America or Asia will be stretched making one look abnormally long or short. Shown above shows a Gull Stereographic and a WGS 1984 PDC Mercator map projection each showing that most of the continents shapes are preserved. The part of the map that is not preserved is Antarctica which is stretched.  Conformal maps are bested used for navigation or meteorological charts.

Another category of map projection is equal area map projection. Equal area map projection has the area of the map are the same in relationship to the areas on earth. Basically what this means is that the area’s on this map is preserved. Shown above are Bonne and Molloweide equal area map projections. Even though the shapes of the map may not be on the perfect right angles like the conformal map projection, it maintains the area meaning that Antarctica is no longer stretched or the largest shape one the map.

Finally is the equidistant map projection. An equidistant map projection is when the distance from the center of projection to any other point is equal in all distances. This means that the distends from one standard point is preserved. Equidistant map projections are used for radio, seismic mapping and navigational purposes. In the maps shown above the equidistant cylindrical and equidistant conic maps display that the distance between two different points are preserved in an x axis area. 

Lab #4

 What is GIS? Originally the first GIS software that was used was by developers in Ottawa Canada by the federal Department of Forestry and Rural Development. Throughout the years GIS has advanced now there are several software companies that have different versions of GIS software. GIS is a system that captures, stores, analyzes, manages and presents data with reference to geographic location data. Also known as Geographical Information Systems, GIS creates a digital map or spatial map by imputing data into the system. GIS can be used for many of today’s jobs, for example, military planning, criminology, marketing, urban planning and environmental impact-assessment.

GIS has much more potential than it has now. GIS is becoming very important to today’s jobs. It makes it easier for jobs to get their jobs done faster. Since environmental issues are becoming big in today’s society we use this GIS system to help plan and make our decision environmental friendly. As our technology increases GIS can expand from where it is at now and can be even more helpful towards governments and companies in the near future. With so much construction being built with the human population increasing at an exponential rate GIS use will only rise. At this point GIS usage is endless.

Even though GIS has so much positive influences it does still have some downfalls like any other electronically controlled software. There are two reasons why GIS can have its downfalls. One is because of Human error. Much of GIS relies on data that is put in by information that is recorded by humans. Because of this there is a possibility that information that is put into the system or software maybe mistakenly typed wrong. Also there is a possibility that information that is put in is just wrong information. A person may have mistakenly taken bad measurements or may have miscalculated his numbers.

Another problem about GIS is of course it is software that is run by a computer. Not that we shouldn’t trust computers but, computers are created by humans so mistakes are still possible. One possible mistake that GIS can encounter is that since GIS is run on a computer the computer can fail. Meaning that a power shortage will interrupt the GIS software. Another problem of GIS is that data can be corrupted if it is not taken care of properly. A days’ worth of work can be lost if the information is not saved properly. Finally GIS if not done carefully information may be not put into the right storage area. Even though GIS may have these problems it still very important in today’s society of urban planning and many other jobs.

Lab 3 Assignment

View Routes to get to UCLA from Home in a larger map

What is Neogeography? Neogeography is about sharing location information with friends and visitors, helping shape context, and conveying understanding through knowledge of place. It literally means "new geography". Map shown above is an example of Neogeography. The increase of popularity of neogeography has spread all over the web. Companies make these neogeographical maps for their websites displaying where their local stores are located or directions on how customers can reach to their stores. Not only companies are making these maps but also everyday people are able to make these maps on anything that they want. One may map out the route that they run and show it to all their friends. Also one may list all their favorite places to eat and show it to all the followers on their blog sight.

So with all these positive results that Neogeography is presenting us then what its downfall? Well Neogeography is all based on a computer system. Meaning that most of the people that use Neogeography use it on a computer. So once the computer goes dead then the user can not use it anymore. Neogeography also is not the most reliable source of information. You are basically going off information on what someone suggests or puts up on the internet and nothing else. Finally probably the worst thing about Neogeography is that possibly it may cause a hidden spot that you love become overpopulated. Meaning if i had a secret beach spot and someone mentions it on a map that they made it becomes open to the public and possibly it could be over runed by random people.

Eigher way Neogeography is still very useful for anyone or any company.

Lab 2 Assignment

1. Beverly Hills, CA 1995
2. Canoga Park, Van Nuys, Burbank, Hollywood, Venice, Inglewood
3. 1966
4. NAD 1927 (Horizontal); NAD 1929 (Vertical)
5. 1/24000
6. a) 24000/20= 1200m
    b) 120000/63360inch= 1.89miles
    c) (1/24000mil)(63360inch/1mile)= 2.6inch
    d) (3/24000) (100194.62cm/1k)= 12.5cm
7. 20 feet
8. a) Longitude 118 27' 30" W    Decimal Degrees: 118 .4583degrees
        Latitude -34 0' 37"                                  34 .0107 degrees
    b) Longitude 118 30' 2"W       Decimal Degrees: 118 .5005 degrees
        Latitude -34 0' 15"                                  34 .00416 degrees
    c) Longitude 118 25' 0"W        Decimal Degrees: 118 .416 degrees
        Latitude- 34 7' 8"                                     34. 118 degrees
9. a) 575 feet
    b) 140 feet
    c) 640 feet
10. UTM zone 11
11. 361.5 Easting
12. 1 square kilometer
13.

14. +14 degrees
15.Southward
16.