WEEK 7. Wildlife Crossings

SCENARIO
Funding is available to build a new wildlife crossing for Florida Black Bears (Ursus americanus floridanus), which are a threatened species. Wildlife crossings reconnect habitats, allowing animals to cross roads safely. They help to reduce the number of accidents involving wildlife.

LOCATION DECISIONS:
In which county should the crossing be built?
Marion County was chosen as the county with the highest number of roadkills, and with no wildlife crossings.

Where in the county should the crossing be built?
Five criteria were chosen to guide the site selection process. These were
1) Proximity to the county seat (one of the main reasons for failure of wildlife crossings is that they are not maintained. My reasoning was that the closer they are built to a town, the more likely they are to be maintained)
2) Proximity to active landfills (bears eat trash and the further away from a landfill site, the better, as one would not like to provide an easy conduit for bears to gain access to a landfill site)
3) Human population density (low human population density is preferred)
4) Proximity to public land (close to or within a protected area is best)
5) Density of bear roadkill (the more bears are killed on the road in a particular site, the greater the need for a safe wildlife crossing, for both bears and people)

1. Base Map of Marion County, Florida


2. Maps of the five criteria chosen for site selection


3. Maps of two weighted overlay analyses identifying suitable sites




Three sites to the east of the county seat Ocala, were identified as the best sites by both analyses.

WEEK 6. Location Decisions

I have not used portrait format for my maps very often, and I enjoyed trying out and gaining experience with this format. Otherwise the lab went smoothly, its great to see what spatial analysis capabilities ARCGIS has.

1. Base map of Alachua County:



2. Map of Four Site Selection Criteria:



3. Map of two overlays:

WEEK 5. Urban Planning and Impact Assessment

This was a straightforward lab. I ran into the problem with adding a field in the first exercise, but switched to the corrected folder and files, which worked fine. I had a problem again in one of the later labs (Economic Impact assessment) where I was required to add a field to a table. Fortunately this step was not needed to complete the lab and create the neccessary maps.

WEEK 4. Oilspill Animation and Participation Post

Click here to view an animation of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill



Participation Post

Summarize the role of GIS in disaster response and discuss how it relates to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill event occurring in the Gulf of Mexico

After a disaster has happened, GIS plays an important role in understanding what happened and where. Because of its excellent visualization and data consolidation capabilities, GIS is particularly suited to this task. The next step in disaster response and recovery is understanding what help is needed and where. GIS is gradually becoming more widely used as part of a traditional disaster response.

In the immediate aftermath of a disaster, GIS is used to map, or model, the damage – this allows immediate disaster response teams to target the areas most in need. This early mapping or modelling of the disaster can be expanded upon later to help longer term recovery and reconstruction to target the right areas, and is an especially important tool for planning the clean-up of debris.

Another important function of GIS in disaster response is to keep the public informed. This relates particularly to keeping the directly impacted communities up-to-date on aspects of damage, disaster response and clean up and recovery efforts, but is also important for the news media who increasingly use maps in news stories.

One particularly useful function for disaster response is that maps and other products can be produced on demand and tailored to the specific needs of those requesting the products. Thus GIS can produce anything from urban maps for search and rescue teams, to 3-D images of debris piles, to models of earthquake damage.


How does it relate to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill event?

GIS plays a key role in keeping the public informed of the oil spill. Oil spill maps show the extent of the oil slick, the movement of the oil, and the areas which could come under threat from the oil. It is also being used to inform the public about fishing bans and health risks associated with the oil spill. GIS modelling is being used to model the spread of the oil, and to predict where oil will make landfall next. Thus communities can prepare themselves for a response.

GIS is being used to map the areas affected by the spill, which is useful both for disaster response as well as for historical documentation of the oil spill disaster. Both ecological and socio-economic impacts of the oil spill can be mapped, and used for immediate disaster response and clean-up, as well as for future compensation of communities for loss of income and damage to property.

WEEK 4 Oilspill

I am a little late on this one due to our internet connection crashing for 24 hours.

Here's the Google Earth Image of the fishing ban:


This was quite a challenging week, but interesting and topical. I would have liked to have had more time to do this and explore the data and the issues more. But time marches on.

I chose the Indian Pass quad as it looked it would be an important area for bird conservation.


The topographic quad did not look very good as a background, so I chose not to use it for two of the maps.

APPLICATIONS IN GIS

Week 3. Hurricanes