Lab 7: Mapping the Station Fire in ArcGIS

Station Fire Report

For this week, we were asked to look at the Station Fire that raged through Los Angeles County from August to October 2009.  The fire became the 10^th largest fire in California history dating back to 1933.  The Station Fire was the largest in LA County history burning approximately 250 square miles in the San Gabriel Mountains and destroying 209 structures, including 89 homes.  While this fire was the most destructive fire of 2009, it wasn’t as deadly as it could have been with only two deaths reported.  The main reason that this fire wasn’t as deadly as it could have been is that fire occurred in the Angeles National Forest, which is sparsely populated, especially in comparison with the rest of the county.  This may not be so for future fires as human settlement continues to extend into wilderness territory.  Lives will be at risk as areas on the edge of a forest will not have a buffer to protect from wildfires.

The initial blaze broke out near a ranger station in the Angeles National Forest close to the Angeles Crest Highway on August 26, 2009.  The blaze then spread quickly over the next two days, growing from around 1,000 acres to approximately 36,000 acres.  By the third day the fire now burned over 100,000 acres total.  There is some controversy over the Forest Service’s response, as critics ask why the blaze wasn’t contained in the first 48 hours when it was more manageable.  Nevertheless, the fire spread over the Angeles National Forest eventually pushing toward human settlements in Glendale, Action, Altadena, Littlerock, etc, and eventually threatening neighborhoods in Los Angeles.  The fire would be 90 percent contain by the fourth week of September and on October 16^th the fire would be 100 percent contained.  By that time the fire had burned over 150,000 acres in Los Angeles County.  Luckily the area was a wildland area and thus not heavily populated.  However, as the metropolitan area continues to spread out from Los Angeles, settlements will begin to encroach on wildland areas.

The danger of wildfires to homes increases as settlement move toward more rural and wildlife areas.  The settlements located on the edge of wildland areas are known as the wildland-urban interface (WUI), where the nature environment and human activity meet.  Many homes around the country are located in WUI and aren’t automatically prone to fire danger.  It is the unique environment and climate of southern California that make these areas fire-prone.  Southern California typically has low rainfall over the course of the year and most years the area is in the middle of the drought.  This means the vegetation is very dry and highly susceptible to fire.  At the same time the dry vegetation builds up as brush as the vegetation dies and lays scattered.  The brush serves as a fast burning fuel for any wildfire that starts in the area.  The metropolitan population expanding into the wildland area will be vulnerable to the seasonal wildfires that occur in Southern California.

The dilemma between the expansion of human settlement into wildfire prone areas is a difficult problem to resolve.  As the population of Los Angeles continues to increase more land area will be needed to accommodate the growing population.  The residents who would want to be furthest from the city will move into WUI areas.  However, these areas have a high risk of fire emergencies and a low number of emergency responders per area.  At the same time, areas that were previously WUI will become full-fledged suburban areas, at the same time they are still a part of the fire zone where wildfires could expand.  The greater number of people in these areas will require increased monitoring of forests for wildfires as well as quick and efficient emergency response.  The LA County government officials will be responsible for implementing these changes to prevent large fire disasters in populated areas.

The Station Fire of LA County in 2009 is an important lesson for state, county, and local officials.  While being one of the largest fires in state history, it had low property damage and only two fatalities.   It can be seen as preparation for the next big fire in LA County where more people will be at risk as development continues.  Understanding the risk posed to settlements in WUI areas, the officials can create plans now to protect the most vulnerable in the next fire emergency and have a faster response.  This way when the next wildfire hits LA County, heavily populated areas will not be vulnerable to evacuation and destruction.

Station Fire References

·         Bloomekatz, Ari B. “Station fire is largest in L.A. County’s modern history” Los Angeles Times, 11/02/2009
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2009/09/station-fire-is-largest-in-la-county-history.html

·         Cortner, Hanna J., Philip D. Gardner, and Jonathan G. Taylor. “Fire Hazards at the Urban-Wildland Interface: What the Public Expects.” Environmental Management, Vol. 14, pp. 57-62.
http://www.springerlink.com/content/m044577557l323g3/fulltext.pdf

·         Hammer, R.B., S.I. Stewart, J.S. Fried, S.S. Holcomb, and J.F. McKeefry. “Wildland-Urban Interface in the United States.” Ecological Applications. Vol. 15(2005): 799-805.
http://www.wildfirelessons.net/documents/The_WUI_in_the_US.pdf

·         Pringle, Paul “Cost concerns weakened Forest Service’s assault on Station fire, study says” Los Angeles Times, 10/11/2010
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-station-fire-20101011,0,6110902.story

·         “State of the Climate: Wildfires for January 2010,” NOAA National Climatic Data Center, published online Feb. 2010
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/?report=fire&year=2009&month=13

·         “Station Fire Final Update Sept. 28, 2009”, InciWeb: Incident Information System, 09/28/2009
http://www.inciweb.org/incident/1856/

·          “Station Fire Initial Attach Review,” Fire and Aviation Management, United States Department of Agriculture: Forest Service, 11/13/2009
http://www.fs.fed.us/news/2009/releases/11/station-report-11-13-2009.pdf

Station Fire Maps:
Temporal Progression of Station Fire of 2009

Close Up of Temporal Progression of Station Fire of 2009

Map of Major Roadways Contrasting with LA County Parks - Demonstrating WUI

Lab 6: Digital Elevation Models in GIS

DEM

The Digital Elevation Model Area I selected was the San Francisco Bay Area.  I chose the SF Bay Area for two reasons: first, it is where I’m from so I wanted to see it from a different perspective, and second, I thought it would be a more visually interesting map to see the landmass surrounded by water.  The model shows that the Bay Area is made of elevated land littered with hills all around the water.  At the same time some areas are below sea level as evidenced by this map and indicates remarkable engineering to keep the water level back from these areas.  The geographic coordinate system used to build this model is the North American 1983 datum.  The extent of the area from north to south is 38.1022 to 37.5158 decimal degrees.  The extent of the area is west to east is -122.5416 to -122.1205 decimal degrees.  

Lab 5: Projections in ArcGIS

Map Projections
Distance Between Washington D.C. and Kabul
GCS WGS 1984: 6,944.09 miles

Significance, Perils, and Potential of Map Projections
The world is a three-dimensional sphere-like object spinning through space.  In order for humans to represent it in a useful form, we translate it to a two-dimensional projection on paper or a computer screen.  The problem with this translation is that some information will unfortunately be lost in the process.  Most map projections can preserve one or two properties such as the angles of the lines of longitude and latitude, the distance between places on the map along a parallel, or the area of each location.  When preserving one property, another will be distorted.  Another problem is that the larger the area covered on the map the greater the distortion.  The distortion is negligible when the effect of the curvature of the Earth isn’t felt on the area covered.  In order to decide which projections to use, a map reader needs to decide which properties are important for the maps use.  In this lab we looked at two versions of the three categories of projection: conformal, equidistant, and equal area to compare the distance between two cities, Washington D.C. and Kabul.

Looking at the conformal projection of the world, I used the Mercator and Gall Stereographic projections.  Conformal projections preserve the angles of the globe at the expense of the area and distance between locations.  The Mercator map is generated from a cylindrical projection giving it a rectangular shape.  The rectangular shape is the map shape we are most familiar with and so makes it the easiest to use.  However, the Mercator projection has two problems is it heavily distorts the area, making Antarctica appear larger than the rest of the continents combined, and it distorts the distance between the two cities with the measured distance approximately four thousand miles longer than the actual measured distance.  At the same time, the Gall Stereographic has a rectangular shape.  Conversely this projection doesn’t distort distance as much as the difference between the actual distance and the projection distance is less than two hundred miles.  The conformal projection is most useful in directionality and navigation as the angles between the longitudinal lines.  However, the distance between the different points could vary greatly so you would need another map to check the actual distances between locations.

Equidistant maps are projections that preserve the distance between locations on the globe.  For the exercise I used the Equidistant Conic and the Aitoff Projection.  The Conic projection takes the shape of a cone projection with the southernmost area of the globe heavily distorted around the edges.  However, this map does a great job of preserving the distances of points north of the equator close to the North Pole.  The Aitoff projection presents an ellipsoid with heavy distortion near the poles away from the equator.  Conversely there isn’t a lot of distortion of area on the map as the northern and southern poles taper in to a point.  For this reason the distance between the two cities is much distorted in comparison to the conic projection.  Depending on whether you were looking at the Northern Hemisphere or the equator, you would use either the Conic or Aitoff map.  However, if you were looking for a map that doesn’t distort area much, you would use the Aitoff map.

A big problem with most map projections is that they distort area, especially on world maps.  Many maps oversize Antarctica or distort the size of Greenland heavily.  In this exercise I looked at the Mollweide and Bonne projections.  The Mollweide projection has an elliptical shape that preserves the area of continents around the globe, but does not preserve the distance between points away from the equator.  The Bonne projection has a heart like shape that preserves the area of the continents while the distance between the cities is well preserved.  In this case the distance is preserved as the point in which the projection was based off of is the North Pole, keeping the distortion of Northern Hemisphere locations to a minimum.  However, this projection is an unusual shape for a map that makes getting information from it difficult.  At the same time, the projection has intense curvature and the appearance of discontinuities between the heart edges of the map. 

Looking at the different available projections that can made of the world, you can see the power of GIS at work.  You can take the same data and filter it through different projections in order to analyze different properties.  Each projection has its own positives and negatives and requires the map maker to decide which properties to prioritize and which to allow distortion.  Each projection changes the way in which we can see the world, which can allow for misleading information to be presented as fact.  It is important when making a map to clarify the distortions so that incorrect information will not be taken as fact.  At the same time, map projections allow us to take the complexity of our three-dimensional world and break it down into a form that is easiest for us to process.

Lab 4: ArcGIS

Airport Expansion

*For some reason my graph would not export in color, even though it displays in color on ArcMap

Potentials and Pitfalls of GIS

Starting out using ArcGIS, I was surprised at how familiar the program felt.  While it is a completely new and different program than I was accustomed to using, I found it to be laid out in a familiar manner to many other applications and/or programs found on Windows.  Many of the first few features I tried out had visual components making it that much easier to use.  Thinking about it, ArcGIS is setup in a manner similar to Paint which is found on all Windows machines.  This kept things intuitive when I just started out with the program.  The familiarity made it that much easier when the program branched off into its specialized features to follow what to do. 

                This software program has great potential to visualize different data collected and convey information.  It has an amazing amount of versatility in the kind of information you can present about one location.  A user is able to take a map of a local area (i.e. near the airport) and locate the schools, plot out a noise contour of the area, show what land parcels are residential, or plot the population density of the area.  This is just a small taste of the capability of this software.  This software gives more precision to map making to clearly define borders and landmarks.  The best feature of this software is that you can take a base map of an area and create many different maps of the area corresponding data without having to reenter the information of that map.    

Conversely, the software has some issues that can make it difficult to use.  Data migration and storage is somewhat complicated; you have to use a different element of the program to load your data storage.  Another issue is that running statistics on a given geographic layer map or combining geographic layer elements into a new layer map can be quite involved and challenging.  I found manipulating the existing maps to be fairly simple, but manipulating the data of the layers required some work and understanding of the product and how it can combine and merge data.  Another issue came about when transforming data from a table to a graph and then adding into a map.  While some of it was intuitive if you have used a Spreadsheet program like Microsoft Excel, it is not as straight forward a process when moving from a stand-alone graph to layering it into the map.  The most glaring issue I found was learning how the data sets are stored and to be used when compiled together for creating a new map or data frame.  Not comprehending how I could use each data set was frustrating because I felt I was learning through trial and error.  However, I would recommend this software for analyzing geographic data and creating visuals.

Overall, I was impressed with the ease of use of the ArcGIS software.   The learning curve of the program slowed me down, but once I got over that, I found it to be a very effective program.  For someone new learning to use the program, as long as he/she have seen a Spreadsheet program and worked with a Paint-like program, he/she can figure out how to work this software.  When completing the tutorial I starting thinking of the additional plots and maps I could make analyzing this airport expansion issue.  As a person uses this program, he/she will be able to better understand the patterns in the collected data and begin to make hypotheses about a given geographic region.  The best part of GIS is that once you make a hypothesis and collect the data, you can quickly determine the validity of your theory and find what information needs to be collected next to get a better understanding of the situation.