Week 9 Reading Reflection

This weeks reading was on a student project conducted in Kentucky on the walkability and bikeability of a local neighborhood. The article begins speaking about how the newer generations have a bend towards seeing automobile transportation as the norm. Where as previous generations were geared towards walking and biking. The older streets in the study were narrower and the side walks wider and on both sides of the street. While conversely the newer parts of development have wider streets and diminishing sidewalks. Additionally the article discusses how this automobile trend has lead to an increase in childhood obesity, this study was a way to propose a solution to the childhood obesity issue.

The result of the subject neighborhood was three solutions increasing the walkability and bikeability of the area by 12, 40, and 50%. While they were unable to get to a 100% increase do to modifying the land surface in the current neighborhoods, new developments can be catered to the walking and biking crowd. Providing easier and safer access to schools for children in the area. The cost of these changes was relatively negligible, the changes are more related to proper planning and thought about the placement of the pathways and trails in the neighborhoods. This study was good, it would be a benefit to neighborhoods to plan better pathways and trails for transportation through their extent.

The Station Fire of 2009 that occurred in the Western United States was started by an arsonist in the Angeles National Forest of California just north of LA county. The map below shows the county parks that stretch through the map extent overlain with the extent of the fire. As one can see from the map a majority of the spreading of the fire did occur in LA county parks surrounding the city. The Station Fire is considered the largest fire in LA County history, burning a total extent of 161,189 acres or 252 square miles. While the fire was mainly contained within the national forest this is still a major blow to the diversity and ecology of the national forest surrounding LA. The fire did eventually destroy several structure and encroach on communities but its massive impact was in the national forest land. 

 

The map also shows the encroachment of the fire on the highways system supporting the LA County area. The Angeles Crest Highway was right in the path of the fire and provided a confusing setting in which to fight the fire for the hotshot teams. The highway's pavement wasn't much effected but many of the guard rails and signage was severely damaged during the course of the fire and rendered the highway unusable until the DOT could get in to repair the damages. In the south west corner of the fires extent you can see where the highway has been included in the red amoeba of the fires extent.

The map above is the second one completed for the discussion of the Station Fire, as you can immediately tell the red area is the extent of the fire and I have included in white the areas that are highly populated in LA County with additional city tags to accompany the areas. The total structural damage from the fire totaled 209 buildings, 89 of which were homes. From the looking at the map it becomes evident that the populated county perimeter overlaps slightly with the area the fire inhabited. Towards the beginning of the fire approximately 12-15 homes were destroyed and the potential of harm to 12,000 more was predicted. Luckily the firefighters were able to somewhat control and minimize the loss of structure from the fire.

As having mentioned before the fire was believed to have been started by someone, there was evidence of a substance later found at the source that would have helped accelerate the flames. Unfortunately for all there were two fireman on duty at the station where the fire was set and were tragically killed when trying to escape the blaze. Their truck drove off a cliff due to limited visibility and both the men lost their lives. As such there was a homicide investigation into who started the fire.

Overall this fire is one of the worst LA county has ever seen, the total burned area is unthinkable, the habitats and ecosystems that will have to repair themselves and try to flourish again is unimaginable. Despite having lost several lives and an number of structures the damage caused by the fire could have been much worse, had the fire spread more rapidly any further it would have started encroaching on heavily populated areas and wrecked havoc through many a community. Luckily through the effort of the state and the fire department the fire was relatively directed and contained.






Bibliography:

Garrison, Jessica, "Station fire claims 18 homes and two firefighters", Los Angeles Times, August 31, 2009, Accessed March 4, 2014.

Molina, Genaro, "LA County fire doubles in size; more homes destroyed; Mt. Wilson threatened", Los Angeles Times, August 31, 2009, Accessed March 4, 2014.


Angeles National Forest, "Station Fire Recovery", United States Department of Agriculture, July 1, 2011. Accessed March 4, 2014.

Wikipedia, "2009 California Wildfires", Wikipedia, Sept. 21, 2013. Accessed March 4, 2014.

Report of the Review Panel, "Station Fire Initial Attack Review", Fire and Aviation Management, November 13, 2009, p. 1-72.

Claifornia Condor in the Desert

For the ArcGIS online project we received for this class I began to do research into the several endangered and threatened species of animals located in the US. As the research progressed I began to think about how easy it would be to choose a case where there has been no recovery of the species and discuss the declining situation of the animal in question. Instead I began to think about trying to find a specific case where there has been some success in rehabilitating either the environment in which the animal lives or the animal itself on the way to recovering a healthy population. As such I stumbled upon the California Condor, while not the most glamorous of animal species it does still represent a small victory in the recognition of humans as to their effects and the subsequent mitigation of those effects.

In 1987 the United States government put into action a conservation plan that lead to the capture of the remaining 22 California Condors and the introduction of a program to start reducing the risk to the bird. The California Condor is one of the world’s rarest bird species so steps were taken to breed the birds back to a healthy population total, this was accomplished at Los Angeles Zoo and San Diego Safari park. The leading cause of the decline of the California Condor has been due to poaching, lead poisoning and habitat destruction. There have been several initiatives to help reduce the risk from each of these areas of potential danger.

The Condor lives in the terrestrial desert biome  of Earth, mainly a scavenger it relies on the death of small to large mammals to feed on. As such one of the leading factors in the decline of the population was lead poising from gun shot left in the carcasses of animals and then eaten by the condors. The condors think the pellets are bone and eat them, then they become exposed to increasing amounts of lead and become poisoned, the leading prevention and mitigation of this issue was the introduction of copper pellets to be used when hunting. These are cheaper to manufacture and don’t have the same effect on the birds as the lead pellets do. In addition the poising habitat destruction has been a major factor in the decline of the bird species. As we push our populations out into more developable areas we begin to encroach on the natural habitat of many species.

The thing about the Condor story is that is has been a relative success, the map below shows the population density of California cities, the red to brown polygons, overlaid on the area extent of the Condor habitat, that area shown in purple. Despite inhabiting areas that are relatively close to the major city centers the Condor has been able to thrive and bring itself back from the brink of extinction through conservation plans instituted and conscious decisions being made to help the bird thrive. The most recent count of the condor put the population total of known condors around 435 birds, 237 living in the wild and 198 in captivity. For having a birth rate of one egg every two years per adult couple this is pretty good for the Condor. The come back of the bird shows that through the recognition of the problems caused by humans the decision to try and change those problems it is possible to rehabilitate a species into a thriving and healthy population conserving the animal for generations to come.

 

 The map below is a quick look at the total extent of the biome of the California Condor, a good 1/4 of the US on the West coast is denoted as viable territory for the bird species to thrive.

Humanitarianism and GIS

The article picked this week to read is a report on how GIS has been able to assist in a variety of ways concerning humanitarian issues surrounding war zones. The article specifically sites Kosovo as an example of how a readily accessible data base can help to assess damage, place refugees, evaluate resources available and keep everyone informed. The ease of modification of this global database allows people on the ground to upload real time data and it can be processed and analyzed by those around the world so different actions can be allocated to assist.

One of the more interesting pieces of the article talks about how the goal after the war in Kosovo was to locate land mines and unexploded ordnances. The global database was able to allow the keepers of the data base to use military intel to place known locations of land mines and explosives in the areas where people are trying to move back into. This helps to locate and disarm these harmful explosives keeping the people safe and moving the area back into development. 

Week 7 Reading Reflection

The article I chose to read this week is concerning the census and how there are going to be changes to way in which data is collected for the count. The article talks about how traditionally the census has two parts, the short form which gives total household occupancy and several other things and the long for which allows for more in depth collection of information such as education, citizenship and marital status.

The most interesting part of the article to me was the way in which the new ACS census system will allow for the counting of seasonal residency. In the previous count you needed to maintain your residence for a year to be considered as occupying it, in the newest version of the count you need only be in one place for 2 months, which in and of itself can pose issues if someone is moving several times a year as to where there residency is.

Mysterious Diseases

The reading that I chose for this weeks assignment is about mysterious diseases that do not have an explainable source for the diseases. The article discusses how there are groups forming world wide that are formally based on discovering the source of the unidentifiable diseases. Additionally there are groups that are forming for people effected by these diseases, essentially support groups for persons with the unknown diseases.

The second part of the article gives 7 different diseases that the causes have not been able to be identified, prior to listing all these disease the article author gives some speculation on the reason for these diseases. They speculate that the exposure to the things we have in our everyday life could be a feasible source for the causes of diseases. Most radically they say that governments are releasing chemicals into the environment that are effecting populations.

Mt. St. Helens

I chose the area surrounding the peak of Mt. St. Helen's, I see this as an environmental issue in that it could possible replicate the events of the mid 1980's which destroyed acres of timber and took several lives in the direct blast. The hazard of lahar flows from another eruption could devastate the population near the mountain as it did in its most recent blowout. As you can see from the 3-D model the blue area indicates the growing crown of the volcano again as it refills and begins to build up again. As the mountain top begins to grow and reach its max capacity again the danger of another eruption also grows. The map coordinates are under the geographic coordinate system 1983. The extent info in decimal degrees can be found below.

Top: 47.0016
Left: -123.0016
Right: -121.998
Bottom: 45.998