GIS Class - Mike McAdams

Direct E-Mail To: mcadams@mail.utexas.edu

Work and Work Plan

Current Plan:

The overall scope of this project is to construct a map of potentially usable forest lands. Currentlly, I am planning on choosing northern Idaho as my project site. Northern Idaho is a good choice because it is heavily forested and a good portion of the land there is owned by the National Forest Service (NFS). In addition a NFS office id located in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho which might come in handy for the procurement of data (found through Idaho Panhandle National Forests site).

The map generated will encorporate some law and conventional pratices, which involves excluding certain areas. Harvesting is not normally praticed on steep slopes and areas near water bodies and paved roads are normally left "un-cut". In additon the National Park Service land and Indian Reservation lands (see Bureau of Indian Affiars) are in essence off limits to commercial harvesting.

GIS Term Project Steps


I. Conceptual Design
II. Data Aqusition
III. Data Manipulation
IV. Map Generation
V. Report Write Up

Tasks Cronological Order


01/25/97
I started with a net search for the National Forest Service. There I found a link to The FIA Database Retrieval System.

02/04/97
Being a graduate of the University of Maine I decided to check out their resources related to my term project. While I was searching their site I found that three professors in the Forestry Department who's research is specifically related to my project. While at the Maine site I found this cool article on Identifying Ethics in GIS.

Later I hit the jack pot, I found downloadable files in Arc/Info grids format at a National Forest Service map site named Forest Land Distribution Data for the United States These maps have a cell size of 1,000m. The preceeding page on Forest Service Maps and Publications also contains very useful data. I have since downloaded these files.

02/05/97
Now I plan to work on getting all the other maps needed to crop the forest maps that I have gotten. The data needed is listed with its source below:

  • 1. Stream, River and Lake Data from a USGS Hydrology Site or at this site
  • 2. Elevation data from The Digital Elevation Map will be used to generate slopes.
  • 3. Road Data on the 1:100,000 scale will be obtained from the USGS Digital Line Graphs
  • 4. State Boundries can be obtained from Dr. David Maidment's Home Page and Anomous ftp.
  • 5. Indian Reservation Boundries can be found through the Bureau of Indian Affiars
  • 6. Park Service Boundries can be found through the National Park Service and this NPS site might help me out.
  • 7. I think that both of the Park Service and Indian Reservation Data could be found on Land Use and Land Cover (LULC)

    02/09/97
    I have now obtained numbers 1, 2, 3, and 4 above! Numbers 5+6/7 will come later. My next task is to start using my data.
    A. Take all data and clip out just the state of Idaho
    B. DEM to data generate slope data

  • 1. Delineate steep slopes - make boundries of too steep slopes
    C. Hydrology and Road Data
  • 1. Delineate buffer zones - make into boundries
    D. Get boundaries for National Parks and Indian Reservations
    E. Cut all boundaries above out of the forest maps.

    02/13/97

  • 1. I found the State of Idaho homepage where I hope to get the "Best Forest Management Pratices" for Idaho (or mabye from The Department of Fish and Wildlife.) This document or documents describes how and where forest management can occur. For example buffer zones left un-cut next to rivers lakes and roads. These "beauty strips" as they are sometimes called, can have specific dimensions, which are state specific.
  • 2. I found a link to the U.S. Bureau of Land Management where I hope to get information on national lands owned within Idaho. They also have this GIS Projects Page which looks useful. From there I found theIdaho's BLM Homepage.

    03/30/97 - 04/11/97
    Well I haven't really updated this thing for a while so I will tell you what I've been up to for the past month or so. Basically for 02/15/97 thru 03/15/97 I was working on other things like research. I have basically put a lot of my project together in the last two weeks. Tasks and accomplishments.
    1. Retrieved all data. Most of the data was obtained for the entire 48 Contigiuous States
    2. Uncompression and importation of data - I found a new data standard (see SDTS crash course)
    3. All data was clipped with Idaho's State boundry. This saved a bunch of file space.
    4. Buffered rivers roads and streams.
    5. Discovered that the state DEM, Forest Grids and DLG data was too coarse for clipping a buffer zones out - basically they wouldn't show up because the other cells were too large.
    6. Redefined my study site to a smaller more manageable area. Coeur D' Alene Idaho (30'X30' - map of Coeur D' Alene,ID)
    7. Inherent in making my site smaller I had to "re-sample" my Forest Data.
    8. After re-sampling and buffering I removed the protected land, and was left with a manageable forest map.
    9. Went about making many many (10-15) layouts in Arcview
    10. Exported the good ones
    11. Designed the framework for web page
    12. Constructed Web Page
    13. Started filling in the text.

    Yet to be finished:

    1. Get forest values
    2. Construct Money Maps
    3. Make layouts of money maps
    4. Transfer money maps to web page
    5. Fill in all text in web page - NO SMALL TASK
    6. Correct text and pages
    7. Scan in pictures of Idaho - link to web page
    8. Get more NT account space
    9. Spell check web page text
    10. Write E-mail to DM saying I'm done

    On to Idaho Forests

    Go to Mike's GIS Page
    Go to Mike's Home Page
    Go to Civil Engineering Home Page
    Go to UT's Home Page

    (c) Copyright Mike McAdams, 1997
    if you want something e-mail me at:
    mcadams@mail.utexas.edu