Fire Boundary final Lab

From viewing the numerous fire boundary shapefiles, one can easily see the pattern of spread and distribution.  On August 29, 2009 the boundary was very local and small.  As time went on, the overall size of the fire boundary increased exponentially, with the largest increase in size between any two times occurring from 12:25 am to 9:14 pm on August 30.  The spread of the fire seems to have moved primarily in the northwest direction, further up the Santa Monica Mountains. 

The theme of the map in which I decided to focus on was how California Points of Interest were affected by the spread of the fire.  Points of Interest are defined as parking, fuel, food, government, churches, tourist attractions, schools, hospitals, parks, lodging, sports, peaks, towers, and view points.  While this may seem like a large amount of data points, I felt that this was a good representation of how anthropogenic destinations were as a collective unit affected by the negative aspects of the fire.  The points that were included within the fire boundaries were no longer accessible to humans, therefore the direct inhibitory effects can be measured.  Using the GIS program, I was able to spatially select and identify all California Points of Interest within the fire boundaries for three separate time profiles.  As the boundary grows, the number of points affected increases as well.

This first map shows the extent of the fire in relation to Points of Interest on August 29 at 2:48 am.  Only 13 total POI's are present within the boundary at this time, although one can easily not all of the points that lie directly adjacent and around the boundary.  Many of these become a part of the boundary as the fire spreads, as would be expected.  The initial boundary size was 5,200 acres.

This second map shows the extent of the fire in relation to Points of Interest on August 31 at 2:34 am. As is evident, the boundary is much bigger than it was previously, expanding in size from 5,200 acres to 14,000 acres in only 48 approximate hours.  Many more points of interest are included within this new boundary, increasing from 13 points to approximately 140 points.  This means that more areas of human interaction were negatively affected by the fire, as would be expected as the fire grows and migrates to more settled areas.   

This third map shows the final extent of the fire, which represents the maximum boundary that is present within the shapefile data.  The size of the boundary in this map is now 140,000 acres, which is ten times the size of the previously mapped boundary.  Approximately 500 points of interest were affected by this boundary size, which represents a significant amount of human points of interaction that are no longer accessible.  This provides evidence for strong social implications surrounding the explicit danger from the actual fire itself.



Sources:

•The fire perimeters:

http://egis3.lacounty.gov/eGIS/index.php/category/gis-data/fire

Points of Interest

http://www.mapcruzin.com/free-united-states-shapefiles/free-california-arcgis-maps-shapefiles.htm