Progress for Wednesday 4/29

Today I started organizing my data and standardizing what I needed from each DEM file which I had split into four equal extents.

For each DEM extent I calculate:

• slope
• aspect
• hillshade
• elevation > 2800

From these I have been using the overlay of elevation to get an idea of where to look in the study area. This overlay covers a huge area but it's much easier to look at these spots than to clandestinely search around the map.

This image displays what areas in the study extent are greater than 2800m in Orange

Now that I have all the DEM files and county level data standardized I am going to simply focus on finishing the rock glacier database. I have finished finding rock glaciers in the upper left quadrant, and now I am going to complete the other ones with the 20 or so hours that I have left in this independent study.

As far as scanning the orthophotos I have totally finished the following counties:

• Ouray
• San Miguel
• San Juan

I am currently lacking the following:

• Mineral
• Hinsdale
• La Plata
• Dolores
• Gunnison
• Sagauche
• Conejos
• Rio Grande
• Archuleta

I have already downloaded hinsdale and La Plata counties orthophotos and I will be processing those two tomorrow. If I do 2-3 Counties a day I should be finished in time before the end of this independent study.

This screenshot show the current distribution of the rock glacier database as of 4/29/2009 with the DEM as the base layer, elevation > 2800 in orange, and rock glaciers as triangles.

Currently completed 74/90 hours as of 4/29/2009

Progress for 4/28

Today I was focused mainly on completing the rock glacier database. I found a new source of much higher resolution orthos that I'm using and it's making identification much easier. Today I finished finding all rock glaciers in San Miguel county and I hope to get finished with the database by sometime next week.

Here is a screenshot of rock glaciers that I found in San Miguel:





Currently completed 70/90 hours as of 4/28/2009

DEM processing and more rock glacier database features

I had been previously using Google Earth to find rock glaciers in the study area, using a overlayed layer that showed me the most likely places. I figured that I could easily convert the KML file over to ArcGIS but it seems like it won't be very efficient. I've decided to start using the orthophotos I have already downloaded and fully work in ArcGIS so that I can write features directly to a shapefile or database.

The first thing that I did today was divide my DEM and my study area up into 4 parts. I wanted to go back and process everything in sections since the original DEM file was so huge and hard to navigate around. I will be using these four study areas for the completion of the rock glacier database.

This screenshot shows the four areas the main study area is divided into. The overlap of the DEM is from the quadrangles of the original data. I am currently processing these DEMs so that they will be in four separate files as well, making processing the individual parts much easier. Since this clip operation is computationally intensive, I have left all four to finish overnight via a script.



The next thing that I will do is finish downloading the orthophotos for the areas that I need. Since not all the counties are actually favorable for rock glaciers, I will only get the files that I absolutely need and get rid of the rest. The orthophotos take up a lot of disk space.

I currently still only have about 150 rock glaciers in ArcGIS, I am hoping that I can find another source of orthos since my current ones don't seem to be the best quality. I am using Google Earth in conjunction with the older orthos in order to verify a rock glacier is actually there.

Later this week I hope to be fully finished with the rock glacier database so that I can start doing analysis on the ones that I have found.

Currently completed 66/90 hours as of 4/23/2009

Finished final poster and more glacier identification progress

I submitted my final poster for the undergrad symposium, although I was not able to be there due to some unforeseen problems with traveling.

The screenshot below shows what my final poster looked like, even though I didn't really get a chance to put refining touches on it, I think it worked out well.






What I have been working on mostly today is a way to refine my rules for locating probable rock glacier locations and trying to complete my final database. The original paper had about 600+ rock glaciers, and as of today I have about 110. I hope that by the end of the this Independent Study I will have a number close to that so that I can do some more analysis with the data.

Currently completed 60/90 hours as of 4/20/2009

Progress for 4/11

Today I have been mostly working on putting the finishing touches on my poster for next week. I have been using some images from this blog, as well as generating some other nice visuals to make things look nice. I used ArcScene to render my DEM in 3D which made for a very nice visualization of the study areas topology.

I am also compiling a map that shows the study area in relation to Colorado and the US, as well as major cities near there. I will also be putting the original hand drawn map in to compare with.

Another thing that I have completed is the abstract of the report and a broad outline of the methodology. I currently have a flowchart that shows the processes that I have used and it makes for a nice visual as well.

I will post some of these screenshots to the blog when I get back home to my Mac where I have the poster saved at the moment. I will also post a image of the final poster as soon as I feel it is ready to be published.

Currently completed 54/90 hours as of 4/10/2009

Progress for 4/10

Today I have been working on the new orthophotos I have downloaded and luckily they seem to have been taken in the Spring/Summer. I was able to complete finding the rock glaciers in Ouray County and the area around Telluride. I am using these datasets as the basis for my poster, since I am not sure that I will have a fully completed database by next week.

I also had a chance to move the labels I created in Google Earth over to an ArcGIS point shapefile based on their latitude/longitude. So far I have about 30 rock glaciers in Ouray and Telluride. Based on the +600 number in the other paper, I'm sure I have a long way to go. I am also using the statistics generated from the original glacier inventory (like elevations >2,500m) to make the searching process a bit easier. I will post more information on this as soon as I get it.

I have also been putting together my poster. So far I have my abstract and a ton of screenshots to choose from. I am also working on a flowchart for my project methodology and some other things. It seems to be coming together nicely and I hope to be finished with this by this weekend if at all possible.

Currently completed 50/90 hours as of 4/10/2009

Progress for 4/7/2009

Today I have finally begun the process of actually locating rock glaciers using the downloaded orthophotos. Using the geo-referenced map as a guide, I started looking for rock glaciers near Telluride, CO.

I started using Google Earth to search through the orthophotos since the lag time when searching around the orthos is minimal compared to using ArcGIS. I currently have about 30 rock glaciers near the Telluride and Ouray areas of Colorado. I currently have this set as point features in ArcGIS, but eventually I will begin to convert this into polygon features.

I am getting much better at location the rock glaciers now that I have a little more experience in doing so. I hope that I have enough material to start on my poster for the undergrad research symposium. I figure that I don't have to be fully finished with the rock glacier inventory for the poster, just have some results that are good for display on my poster.

I started this morning looking at only North facing slopes and altitudes about 2,500m, using a shapefile I automatically generated using the DEM data. But I quickly found out that this was an incorrect move on my part since I found several rock glaciers on south-facing slopes. Currently I am searching around haphazardly for whatever I can find. I am using the clusters of already mapped rock glaciers in the older map for guidance, and it seems to be working well. However, I am not finding them in the numbers originally recorded. I am not sure if this is because they have dissapeared since the 70's or if my lack of experience is to blame.

A big problem that I have been running into is the fact that some of the orthophoto tracts were taken in Winter when there was alot of snow fall. This is making the location of rock glaciers in these areas nearly impossible to find. I am currently looking for another source of orthophotos that will hopefully solve this problem.

Next week I will be putting the finishing touches on my poster and trying to find more rock glaciers to add to my ever growing database.

I will post a few screenshots of my progress below:

This is an example of one of the more well-defined rock glaciers I found

This is the current inventory of rock glaciers near Telluride

Example of a few rock glaciers nearly invisible because of winter snow cover

Currently completed 46/90 hours as of 4/7/2009

Progress for 4/2/2009

This week I have been downloading new sets of Orthophotos that I hope will aide me in finding and mapping the rock glaciers. The current orthos I have are at the county level and don't provide much detail. The new ones I am currently downloading cover the entire extent of the study area.

I will be using Ouray county for my first "test case" to find rock glaciers and use it as a model to find other ones in our study area. I have been pouring through the imagery and have found 3-4 instances of what I believe are rock glaciers in this county. I am also going to try to use the old map from the original paper to find the areas that were marked in 1979 around the Telluride region.

As far as the DEM data goes, I have a huge DEM that covers the entire study area at the moment. I am currently looking for a way to split it into sections so that it will be easier to work with. Then I will go through the process of creating slope/aspect maps for these split DEM files. I tried to do the slope/aspect processing for the large DEM but found out that it would take entirely too long to finish.

I hope that I can get a good shapefile of rock glaciers for Ouray county next week, so that I can extend to other areas and begin compiling a good database of the other ones I find. This should let me get to the point where I can start getting my poster finished with all the data that I need.



Currently completed 40/90 hours as of 4/1/2009