Thursday, July 2, 2009

Remote Sensing Module 2:














The bright blue areas in the multi-spectral image are very hard to recognize in the panchromatic image. When viewed as a color infrared composite the areas stand out in bright red suggesting it must be some type of vegetation. Given this and the fact that the blue colored areas are located in the water, I would guess that they represent a algae bloom, a very dense concentration of seaweed, or some other type of sea plant.

Friday, June 26, 2009

Remote Sensing Module 1:


What problems might you infer or identify in using this type of photograph?


Plants and foliage showing in red tones in not at all intuitive and could cause misinterpretation of the photo. Visually, the dark contrast between the bright beach and the ocean gives the impression of rapidly deepening water, which isn't at all accurate to the area. Seeing a familiar area from the overhead vantage offered by an aerial photo may cause problems as the bird's eye view of a location looks quite different from our regular line of sight experience of it. Also, at a certain height, details become too small leaving a lot of different areas looking much like any other in the absence of large features like mountains, lakes, rivers, and seas. Without a stereoscopic image the photo lacks the dimension of depth, making it impossible to get a sense of the relative difference in elevation between different locations.

Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Module 11: Google Earth















Average wind speed at Station MKGM4 at Muskegon, MI (to the northeast of site) is 11 knots (12.7 mph)with gusts of 15 knots (17.3 mph). It's beyond the BERR recommended 200 to 300 meter distance fromdwellings to minimize noise pollution. It is also beyond the BERR recommended 400 to 800 meter distance to avoid adverse reactions to Shadow Flicker. Major shipping routes out of Chicago and Milwaukee are to the southwestand west, respectively. The site is a good compromise with regards to major bird migration corridors,and should be minimally impactful to most species. Its proximity to land should help minimize buildingand transportation costs.

Saturday, April 25, 2009

Before and After













I drew my isolines as closed loops that went beyond the boundaries of the state. That's what you see in the first picture. I used the pencil tool, and once they were complete I clicked on the path and set the stroke and fill as normal. I used ColorBrewer to come up with the grayscale. After drawing all my isolines, I created shapes with the pen tool to conceal the portions of the isolines that went beyond the edge of the Georgia map. You can see the concealing shapes in the bottom photo. I changed their stroke to black so they would be visible. You will have to change the fill of the Georgia map from that beigey/orangey color to No Fill and make sure it is in a layer above the isoline shapes.

It becomes an exercise in setting up Layers appropriately. It's a bit slow (and tedious). I'm sure there's a more efficient method to do it, but I have not puzzled it out. Good luck!

Sunday, April 12, 2009

Module 9: Flow Maps




















Maximum stroke size was 30 points. I grouped Antartica into the Unknown category and added the question mark circle to indicate unknown countries of origin. I also did not include Alaska or Hawaii. Since I'm only showing immigration to the country itself and not to individual states it seemed unnecessary to add anything beyond the contiguous U.S.

Friday, April 10, 2009

Module 8: Contiguous Cartograms




















I'm not at all sure about the legend. I wanted to convey that the countries with the greatest increase in size indicated a greater GDP. I used a divergent color scheme to further highlight which countries had higher GDP's. The size increase from the cartogram application made it easy to see which countries had higher GDP's, if I was familiar with the geography. But, a country like South Africa, whose actual shape I'm not terribly familiar with was difficult to determine at a glance.

Failed to include the number of iterations I used. It was 8.