High School GIS Analysis of Natural Disasters in National Parks

[PaulJohnson1]

Hi all, my name is Paul Johnson and I'm a senior at my local High School. I'm taking a GIS course called Geospatial Tools and Techniques and am one of fourteen students currently enrolled.

Our final project is essentially open end, we make maps of anything we want, but analyze it in a way that can be useful for an organization or group

I'm working on natural disasters and national parks/forests. Because I haven't been able to find much data, I'm almost forced to narrow it down to three major National Parks, Yosemite, Yellowstone, and Glacier. The problem I have there is that I only have fire data so far for Yellowstone. I have fire start points and where they spread as two separate shape files. I have shapefiles showing the three parks but no data to put in it.

Can anyone point me in the right direction to finding data?

I've attached my formal proposal, but it says this:

Short Introduction

I plan to create multiple maps showing the spread of natural disasters across the United States federal protected parks. The maps would show regions of the USA with federal parks and will show the natural disasters in those areas.


Purpose

The purpose of this project is to create detailed maps of areas affected by natural disasters in US Federal Parks. The maps would have a ranking system showing the parks impacted by the most natural disasters per year; tourism would be factored in. An index or rating system will be created, ranking each state/park with a number that takes into account amount of disasters and area size. This index could be used to suggest improvements, analyze future trends of natural disasters and compare other parks to this one.



Data

Spatial data will be required to show where parks are located in the USA. Attribute data will most likely be used for the natural disasters as well as when they happen. The data should be �??refreshed�?? on a yearly basis so the end result can analyze how many natural disasters occur annually in a given area.


Explanation of Project

When completed, my final project will have multiple data frames showing and comparing federal parks and their respective natural disasters. This information will be analyzed in  separate data frames. I estimate my project will include about five or six data frames showing very unique things. The natural disasters analyzed will include floods, fires, high winds/tornadoes/hurricanes, and avalanche danger. Perhaps the time of year these disasters are most prevalent can also be Incorporated into the analysis.

[ESRI_DBServices]

Hi Paul,

This forum is specifically aimed at helping users who are involved in the Community Maps Program.  However, you may be able to acquire the kind of data you need from the parks themselves. Sometimes this kind of data is online and available for download at various websites. Here are a few links:

http://nrinfo.nps.gov/Geospatial.mvc/Welcome
http://www.nps.gov/gis/

If you don't see anything useful to download at these sites, you could contact the parks directly using contact info you find at these links or at the park's websites. I'm told that most of the parks have this kind of data. Tell them what you're looking for and they will probably be happy to help you.

Also, you can find various fire and natural disaster layers at ArcGIS.com. http://www.arcgis.com/home/webmap/viewer.html?useExisting=1   Click Add>Add Layers and then do a search using relevant key words.

Good luck on your project!

[PaulJohnson1]

Thanks for the reply.

I checked both those websites and they seemed to link to the same place.

I was searching for data here (http://nrinfo.nps.gov/Reference.mvc/Reference/) using keywords like "Glacier National Park Disasters," "Fire," "Land fire," "National Parks" but was unable to find helpful data.

I have called the Forest Service and emailed the Park Service; neither have gotten back to me. Are there any other sources I could use?

Thanks.

[ESRI_DBServices]

I think you might have better luck if you were to contact each individual park rather than the National Park Service. For example, here is some contact info for Glacier National Park. http://www.nps.gov/glac/contacts.htm

You might find that you can obtain better or more data from one or the other of the various parks. They don't all have the same types of data. After you explore and determine what sort of data you can obtain, you might want to consider changing the focus of your project to just those areas for which you can obtain suitable data. It might help to contact a few more parks to increase your chances of finding the type of data you'd like to use.

[MarkStewart]

Have you tried geodata.gov?  Most non-classified federal data is available there.  There is a specific link for Fire Mapping that may be of interest.  Good luck.