Final Lab: Station Fire 2009

In August and September of 2009 the largest fire in L.A. County history occurred, the Station Fire. As usual, firefighters did their best to put out the fire, and in the process, two firefighters were killed. (Incident Information System). Furthermore, not only were two brave men killed, but there was a possibility that nearby residents suffered health effects due to smoke produced by such a large fire. In the following report, I attempt to show that although the perimeter of the fire did not reach populated areas of Los Angeles County, the smoke and residue from the Station Fire were close enough to populated areas to cause health complications.

In Figure 1, the map shows the perimeter of the Fire station in relation to topography of Los Angeles County. However, further mapping was required in order to see which, or if, populated areas of L.A. County were within that perimeter. As Figure 1.2 shows, there were no populated areas that were directly affected by the fire. But it is clear that there are a couple of populated areas south of the fires that were in danger of the fire. Even though this map shows that the fire did not reach populated areas, reports do show that homes were destroyed. In fact, 21 homes were destroyed and 1,200 were at risk (NASA).

Figure 2 was published by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and from it one can see were Los Angeles is located in relation to the smoke produced by the Station fire (2009). This is an important satellite image to look at because it gives us an idea of the general pattern that the smoke traveled.

According to a report from the Division of Environmental Health in Washington, smoke from fires is toxic to the lungs because it is made up of toxic gases, and can cause breathing problems (Washington State). This is especially dangerous to those who already have breathing problems such as asthma. Moreover, this is significant because 20% of people who don’t even know that they have respiratory problems have “hyper-reactive airways.” This means that they are more likely to have complications because of the bad air quality produces by the smoke from the fire (Global Times).

In conclusion, it is clear that the Station Fire was dangerous not only because it was large and spread over a vast part of Southern California, but because it had adverse side effects as well. The health of people in the nearby populated areas was undoubtedly affected.

Figure 1:

Figure 1.2:

Figure 2

MODIS satellite image showing dense smoke from Station fire in Los Angeles County (Aug. 31, 2009)


Works Cited

Incident Information System. Incident Overview. 10 November 2009. http://www.inciweb.org/incident/1856/.

NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory.“Smoke from Station Fire Blankets Southern California: 31 Aug. 2009. http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/features.cfm?feature=2298

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “NOAA Satellites Support Battle against California Wildfires” 31 Aug. 2009 http://www.noaa.gov/features/03_protecting/calif_wildfires.html

Washington State Department of Health: Division of Environmental Health. “Your Health and Smoke from Fires” July 2006. http://www.doh.wa.gov/ehp/smokefactsheet.pdf

Wildfire Causes Serious Pollution around Los Angles. Global Times. 5 Sept. 2009. http://world.globaltimes.cn/americas/2011-04/464551.html

Lab #2: Make-Up

1. What is the name of the quadrangle?
Beverly Hills Quadrangle

2. What are the names of the adjacent quadrangles?
Canoga Park, Van Nuys, Burbank, Topanga Park, Hollywood, Venice, Inglewood

3. When was the quadrangle first created?
1966

4. What datum was used to create your map?
Vertical datum: National Geodetic Vertical Datum
Horizontal datum: North American Datum of 1927

5. What is the scale of the map?
1: 24,000

6. At the above scale, answer the following:
a. 5 centimeters on the map is equivalent to how many meters on the ground?
Answer: 1200 meters

b. 5 inches on the map is equivalent to how many miles on the ground? Convert from inches to miles
Answer: 1.89 miles

c. one mile on the ground is equivalent to how many inches on the map? Convert from miles to inches
Answer: 2.64 inches

d. three kilometers on the ground is equivalent to how many centimeters on the map? Convert from Kilometers to centimeters
Answer: 12.5 feet

7. What is the contour interval on your map?
20 ft.

8. What are the approximate geographic coordinates in both degrees/minutes/seconds and decimal degrees of:
a) the Public Affairs Building: 118̊ 26’ 20” / 180.4384 AND 34°04’30” / 34.075
b) the tip of Santa Monica pier: 118̊ 29’ 59” AND 34°0’25” / 34.0069
c) the Upper Franklin Canyon Reservoir: 118̊ 24’ 36” AND 34°7’19” / 34.1219

9. What is the approximate elevation in both feet and meters of:
a) Greystone Mansion (in Greystone Park): 570ft. or 173.78 meters
b) Woodlawn Cemetery: 140 ft. or 42.67 meters
c) Crestwood Hills Park: 720ft. or 219.512 meters

10. What is the UTM zone of the map?
Zone 11

11. What are the UTM coordinates for the lower left corner of your map?
361.5 Northing
3763 Easting

12. How many square meters are contained within each cell (square) of the UTM gridlines?
1,000^2 meters

13. Obtain elevation measurements, from west to east along the UTM northing 3771000, where the eastings of the UTM grid intersect the northing. Create an elevation profile using these measurements in Excel (hint: create a line chart). Figure out how to label the elevation values to the two measurements on campus. Insert your elevation profile as a graphic in your blog.

14. What is the magnetic declination of the map?
+14̊

15. In which direction does water flow in the intermittent stream between the 405 freeway and Stone Canyon Reservoir?
Southward

16. Crop out (i.e., cut and paste) UCLA from the map and include it as a graphic on your blog.

Lab #5: Map Projections

This exercise was somewhat difficult at first. Although I read through the Wikipedia page about map projections, it was hard to figure out which options to choose in the ArcMap to make a map that represented the various map projections. Therefore, it took a little more research in order to figure it all out. However, overall, this exercise was fun, because it was interesting to see how one can manipulate a single map into various shapes that would preserve different aspects of it.

Significance: It is important to know the different types of map projections, because each changes the map so that different elements are changed or stay the same. For example, equidistant map projections, like the Equidistant Conic World Map that I created, distance was preserved from some standard point or line. This is different from an equal-area map projection, like the Sinusoidal World Map that I created, because equal-area projections preserve area. Furthermore, the maps are significant because it is important to know why one type would be used over another. While researching map projections, I found out that Mercator projections are most popular because it preserves angles and because of it is a rectangular map.

Perils: Obviously one of the biggest perils of map projections is the fact that each type preserves certain elements while distorting others. For example, the Stereographic World Map that I created preserves angels but does not preserve distance or the area of figures. Sometimes these kinds of distortions are acceptable, but other times they are not. Therefore, because there are various map projection types, one must be careful as to which one they choose.

Potential: Working with map projections was somewhat fun. As mentioned, it was interesting to see how a single map can be manipulated to represent the same thing (in this case, the world) in several different ways. Therefore, one of the major potentials of map projections is that they allow us to represent the Earth or parts of its surface in a wide variety of scales.