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
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