Last Lab: Census 2000/2010

In this lab, we learned how to use the data complied of Census 2000 to show the population trend of Asian Alone, Black Alone and Some Other Race Alone in the United States.

The first map shown above is the Asian Alone Population in the United States by Percent. It shows the Asian population across the United States county. According to the website of US Census Bureau, an Asian defines as a person having origins in any of the original peoples of the Far East, Southeast Asia, or the Indian subcontinent including, for example, Cambodia, China, India, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Pakistan, the Philippine Islands, Thailand, and Vietnam. From the map, the high concentration of the Asian population existed along the coast. The west coast of the United States has the highest concentration of Asian population. Most Asian settled down in California, and that's why it has the highest concentration of Asian among all the states. In particular, the blue area shows the most percent of Asian. The blue area covers the San Francisco Bay Area. I can tell high concentration of Asian in Bay Area because most of my Asian friends come from the Bay Area. 

The second map shown above is the Black Alone Population in the United States by percent. It shows the black alone populations across the United States county. According to the website of US Census Bureau, Black defines as a person having origins in any of the Black racial groups of Africa. It includes people who indicate their race as black or provide written entries such as African American, Afro American, Kenyan, Nigerian, or Haitian. The South East part of the United States has high concentration of black population. Louisiana, Mississippi, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina and along the east coast has the highest concentration of black population. As shown in the map, red color shows the highest percentage of black population and most of them concentrated in the states I mentioned about. For the middle and western part of the United States, there is not that much of black population. Most area are in the color of green.

 The last map shown above is the Some Other Race Alone Population in the United States. It shows other races that across the United States county. According to the website of US Census Bureau, other races define as all other responses not included in the White, Black, American Indian and Alaska Native, Asian and Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander race categories described above. The reason for setting up this category is obvious because some people may not want to define itself as one of the category above and there are so many cultures and races in the world. As shown in the map, most of the some other race population concentrated in south west area of the United States and especially California and Texas. These area has the highest concentration of other races alone population. I guess it is because these states are pretty close to the Mexico. So there are more cultures and diversity among these two states.

By using the Mapping Census 2000 data, we can see the distribution of Asian, Black and Some other races population across the United States. It is fast and easy to connect the data between the census 2000 and the past data in the United States.The Census is a good source of data to know more about the distribution of certain population in the United States. However, I have some concerns about the data. Asian and Black is easily to define by itself. And it is easy to see the distribution across the United States. How about the other race? This category is vague. Some people may not define itself to either category because they may have more than one identity. This may produce an error result in the findings.

I really enjoy this class. Before taking the class, I was confused between GPS and GIS. I thought they were both the same system and GIS is an more advanced system than GPS. After taking this class, I notice GIS stands for geographic information system. It stores different kinds of useful data but not only the position of the world. For example, in this lab, we learned about the distribution of population in using GIS. Learning how to use the ArcGIS is a very good experience for me because I spent a lot of time in using this software. I especially enjoy the weekly lab because I learned a lot of details in using the software. Although I spent a lot of time in doing each lab, I think it may help me in finding jobs in the future. More and more companies are using ArcGIS to view the data and to make map for distribution or statistics.

Lab #8: Los Angeles Station Fire

The Station Fire started in the Angeles National Forest near the U.S. Forest Service ranger station on the Angeles Crest Highway, which is the California State Highway No. 2. The Station Fire started on August 25, 2009 and it ended on October 16, 2009. More than 160,00 acres and 209 structures were destroyed. In this wildfires, there were two firefighters killed while attempting to escape the flames when their fire truck plunged off a cliff. The wildfire costs the state over $93.8 million to fight. The map above showed the spread of the fire from Aug 29 2009 to Sep 02 2009. It was the first week of the wildfire started. The map shows that the fire was spreading from the south to the north and the area was getting much larger than the previous time. Some of the features on the map such as river and streams, and major highways will refer to my writing on the consequences of the Station Fire.
In this map, it shows several features with cities, river and streams, major highways, and the California park. The Station Fire has affected the mostly the California State highway No. 2. From the map, most of the part of highway No. 2 is in the area of the station fire. The Station Fire also affected many of the rivers and streams system as shown above. And the large park area as shown in the map above is affected by the Station Fire. Several cities on the map such as Altadena, La Canada Flintridge and La Crescenta Montrose are so close to the Station Fire or even inside the fire perimeters. The fire has affected many area or living things in Los Angeles.
The Station Fire affects many aspects in Los Angeles. First, the smoke from the Station Fire rose over downtown Los Angeles. Residents of Los Angeles were contending with thick smoke and ash hanging in the air, causing air quality to drop to unhealthy levels. Many residents in Los Angeles caused sick or respiratory diseases with the smoke. Los Angeles is one of the busiest county in California. The Station Fire caused the California Highway No. 2 to be closed. Although it is not the busiest highway in California, many Los Angeles residents use this freeway to by-pass the traffic in peak hours. This burdens the heavy traffic in peak hours in Los Angeles. 
The map shows that the river and streams system was affected by the Station Fire as long as the Station Fire happened in the park. It must affected the living habitat and living things around there. The first thing is the huge amount of forest lost to Station Fire. The Station Fire was happened in the Angeles National Forest in which the location of the valuable forest. What have caught my attention are the dozens of prized outdoor recreation spots in the Angeles National Forest now consigned to memory, obliterated in the furnace of the wildfire. Some locations like the famous Vetter Mountain Lookout of the San Gabriels’ chaparral-covered slopes, meadows, streams, forests, and Mojave Desert and L.A. Basin views. Moreover, thousands of acres of old-growth chaparral were lost, and as is the case with the frequent fire pattern currently at work in Southern California, the way has been cleared for aggressive, non-native grasses and other plants to move in, increasing the risk of fire in the near future, and making it more difficult for the natural ecosystem of the region to re-establish itself. Since fires become more frequent in Southern California, it seems people will forget California’s chaparral.
In conclusion, the Station Fire affects many aspects of lives in California, from the Los Angeles's resident's health to the living things around the Angeles National Forest. Is there a possible way to control the happening of fire? There are many factors causing fire such as the climate of California and human neglect. One interesting fact is that wildfire is supposed to happen because it is the main natural disturbance. The fire is actually beneficial to the re-growth of plants.


Reference:
1. “2009 California Wildfires.” Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. 1 Nov. 2010. Web. 22 Nov. 2010. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_California_wildfires>.
2. "Wildfires in Southern California" The Big Picture-News stories in photographs, 2 Sep 2009. Web. 22 Nov 2010. <http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/09/wildfires_in_southern_californ.html>
3. "Consequences of the Station Fire" Treehuggers International. 27 Sep 2009. Web. 22 Nov 2010
<http://treehuggersintl.com/2009/consequences-station-fire/>
4."'Angry fire' roars across 100,000 California acres". CNN U.S. 31 Aug 2009. Web. 22 Nov 2010
<http://articles.cnn.com/2009-08-31/us/california.wildfires_1_mike-dietrich-firefighters-safety-incident-commander?_s=PM:US>
5. "Huge amount of forest lost to Station Fire" Los Angeles Times. Aug 30 2009. Web. 22 Nov 2010
<http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/greenspace/2009/08/huge-amounts-of-forest-lost-to-station-fire.html>
6. "Empty debris basins wait for Station Fire's winter impact" Southern California Public Radio 89.3 KPCC. 16 Nov 2009. Web. 22 Nov 2010
<http://www.scpr.org/news/2009/11/16/station-county/>

Lab #6 DEMs in ArcGIS

For this week's lab, I have chosen the location the east of San Francisco. That is the East Bay Area. I used to live around this place. My living place was really close to the freeway-680 and the Mountain Diablo. The reason for me to choose this location because I really want to discover more around that area. By downloading the data from USGS, I can make the maps and models for this lab. The 3-D model shows that the area that I choose is a mountainous area. There are high and low mountains or hills in that area. Although I am not sure the map or model that I made is correct, it is a good experience for me to explore the area.

Extent information:
Top: 37.8592
Left: -122.1836
Right: -121.9997
Bottom: 37.7317

Geographic coordinate system:
North American Datum 1983
UTM Zone 10

Lab Assignment #5

Lab #5 is all about the application of ArcGIS. We used ArcGIS in the last lab to learn the basic. In this lab, we use ArcGIS for map projections of the world. Map projection is any method that allow us to represent the surface of a sphere on a plane surface. To be simple, it allows us to represent a 3-D image to a 2-D image. There are many methods to project the earth. In this lab, there are 3 types of map projections. They are conformal, equal-area and equidistant. There are two examples showed under each map projections.

The first type of map projections are conformal. Gall Stereographic and Mercator projection are shown above. A conformal map means it preserves angle equally where the parallels and meridians are in perfect 90 degrees right angle. This kind of map will clearly display every landmass on the earth. However, since the conformal map projections preserve angle equally, the location and size of landmass on the maps and distance between them may be distorted. Conformal projection is not a good choice to measure the distance because that will be the distance will be much over than the actual distance.

Mollweide and Bonne projections are shown in above. They are the examples of equal area map projection. Equal area projections preserve the area or amount the space with features. For example, the area of Mexico and Greenland is similar. In the above example, the two territories are approximately the same size. However, equal area projections preserve area only. They distort all other properties such as shape, distance and direction. Equal area projections are useful in comparing the size or the area on a feature on the map.

 

The third type of map projections are equidistant. Equidistant conic and plate carree are two examples for equidistant map projections. Equidistant map projections preserve the distance between two points or the distance of a line on the map. That means when centered at any given point on the map that a straight line radiating from the center to any other point represents the shortest distance and can be measured to scale. Equidistant projection will only preserve distance on the map because area and shape will be distorted in the map. 

Lab Assignment #4 ArcGIS

This is the first time for me to use a geographical information system software. I actually had a hard time in doing the tutorial because I am not good at controlling the program on the computer. I like reading maps but this is the first time for me to do maps. I repeated the tutorial more than three times and I tried to feel comfortable with the ArcGIS. Right now, I feel much better after repeating the tutorial. This is a good experience for me to know more about geographical information system.

Although I had a hard time in using ArcGIS, I think it is straightforward and easy to use for most people. The user can read and store the data easily on the computer. All of the data can show at a time just like the exercise I did here. Although it can become complicated when more than 1 layers come together in the system, it is a good way to show the related information that the user need to know. I really like the part that except the stored data, most of the part you can design on your own. For example, the legend and the scale can resize and reposition all the time. User can use different color in the legend to represent different things and it may not confuse others.

ArcGIS can provide useful information to everyone, from public to business. From this ArcGIS exercise, we can notice the noise area of an airport and the potential noise impact that schools in the area may receive. It provides an useful information to the public that the impact of the airport to its surrounding area. In other words, ArcGIS can provide information like population density in the area. For those people who would like to have business in particular area, they can notice if the area is heavily populated or not. It provides any kind of information that may help people to make their decision in a wisely way. 

Last but not least, there is pitfall with ArcGIS. I believe that ArcGIS is an useful tool for many aspects of the world. However, it is too expensive to afford the cost of the software. This is a reason for ArcGIS is more available to government, business and school to do research, but not the public. ArcGIS is an useful tool in daily life. I hope the cost of the software will be lowered in the future so more people can get access into this useful tool. People will get more aware into their surrounding area and environment. 

Lab Assignment #3

View Bay Area trip in a larger map

The theme of this map is to demonstrate the road trip that I head back to San Francisco Bay Area from the Los Angeles Area. I am an international transfer student and I studied in the community college of the San Francisco Bay Area. In this map, I would like to demonstrate what freeways I need to use in my road trip. From the starting point of my home to my old apartment, it needs 4 freeways. They are freeway 405, 5, 580 and 680. It takes almost 6.5 hours for more than 300 miles from Los Angeles to Bay Area. I also pointed 2 gases station for to refill for the gas and take a rest. The map also showed where I used to live and where my first host family in the United States. Both of them were really close to my college. Some of the places I love in the Bay Area are also shown on this map. Finally, I embedded videos for both my community college and UCLA in the map. Everyone should know more about what my community college and UCLA after watching the videos. Both colleges are awesome! 
Neogeography can have a lot of pitfalls, potentials and consequences. First, we always concern about the accuracy or the source of information. For example, in this map exercise, all of the information is given out by myself. I designed everything in this map such as the location that I lived, the freeway that I choose. However, I am not a professional so it is not guaranteed that everything shows on this map it's real and accurate. This is the biggest pitfalls in neogeography. Second, I think neogeography has a great potential in the future development of search engine. For example, yelp and yellow pages are the concepts of neogeography. They have information with the map locations and some personal reviews. Search result can be narrowed and all depends on what type of information you would like to get. Neogeography can be one of the most popular topic in the future. However, there are some consequences with neogeography. As well as everyone can access to the public information, privacy will be one of the problems in neogeography. Everyone can read the information or the maps that the user has made. Moreover, since most of the information is public, some can even edit by other users. This may also lower the accuracy of the information given out in the concept of neogeography. Other then that, neogeography can be a sucessful tool in human life.       

Lab Assignment 2

1. Beverley Hills Quadrangle
2. Canoga Park, Van Nuys, Burbank, Topanga, Hollywood, Venice, Inglewood
3. 1995
4. 1927 (NAD 27) and 1983 (NAD 83) are both horizontal datum. 1929 is the vertical datum.  
5. 1:24000
6.  
• a. (5cm x24000)=120000cm=1200m
• b. (5inches x24000)=120000inches= 1.8939 miles (cor. to 4 significant figures)
• c. (1mile/24000)=0.00004167mile=2.64 inches
• d. (3km/24000)=0.000125km=12.5cm
7. 20 feet
8.  
• a. 34°4'48"N  118°25'12"E 34.08°N 118.42°E
• b. 34°0'36"N 118°30'E 34.01°N 118.50°E
• c. 34°4'48"N 118° 29'24"E  34.08°N 118.49°E
9.  
1. a. 580 feet 176.784m
2. b. 140 feet 42.672m
3. c. 640 feet 195.072m
10. UTM Zone 11
11. Northing 3763000 Easting 361500
12.  1000x1000=1,000,000 meters square
13.   

14. 14 degree, 249 mils
15. South

Lab Assignment 1

This is a map that I found on google. It is a county map of California. It shows different county of California in different colors and names. There are 4 colors in this map, they are blue, yellow, orange and green but the patterns of color are not in order.  The map also briefly shows the geographical shape of California. I found it interesting because this is the first time for me to know different county names and the location of different counties. For example, Los Angeles county shares the border with Ventura, Kern, San Bernandino and Orange country. I used to live in the Contra Costa country in the Bay Area of San Francisco. Source: http://www.google.com/imgresimgurl=http://www.cagenweb.com/plumas/map_files/image007.gif&imgrefurl=http://www.infohub.com/Maps/california_map_262.html&h=691&w=597&sz=31&tbnid=I_hPCUPPieWn2M:&tbnh=139&tbnw=120&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dmaps%2Bof%2Bcalifornia&zoom=1&q=maps+of+california&hl=en&usg=__6f7um81KvJZCbn3tdte0hTI-_zY=&sa=X&ei=dVqiTPirCZS-sQOt4OG5AQ&sqi=2&ved=0CD8Q9QEwBw, image google, 2:35 pm, September 28, 2010.

This is the map of Hong Kong. I found this map on a website called China Highlights. This is a brief map of what Hong Kong looks like. From the map, Hong Kong is divided into three main parts, with the large bolded fonts, they are New Territories, Kowloon and Hong Kong Island. The country parks in Hong Kong are mostly shown in green color while others lands are mostly pale brown color. The map also shows that Shenzhen is really close to the New Territories of Hong Kong. Apart from that, the map also shows the rail network of Hong Kong. Different color represents different lines of railway. One of the interesting things is that not every places in Hong Kong are covered with railway network even though Hong Kong is a very tiny city. I found it interesting because I am a Hong Kong native. This is the place where I lived before I came to study in the States. The railway network in the map really attracts me a lot. Hong Kong is a very convenient place that can live without cars. Source: http://www.chinahighlights.com/hong-kong/map/hong-kong-map.htm, China Highlights, 7:15pm, October 4 2010.

This is the map of the pacific ring of fire. I found this map on the USGS website. The map shows the volcanic arcs and oceanic trenches partly encircling the Pacific Ocean. The Ring of Fire is a zone of frequent earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. The trenches are shown in blue-green. The volcanic island arcs, are mostly parallel to, and always landward of, the trenches. I found it interesting because I had a geology class while i was in the college. I was so shocked that most of the world's largest earthquakes occur along the Ring of Fire. Many of the countries such as the States, Japan, Indonesia and Chile, etc can be found in the Ring of Fire. The Ring of Fire is a direct consequence of plate tectonics and the movement and collisions of crustal plates. Source: http://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/dynamic/fire.html, USGS, 8:04pm, October 4 2010.