VictoriaJarvisMaps.com

A good map shouldn't need interpretation. I wanted a place where my favorite maps could be more easily viewed so I will no longer be updating this blog, maps will now be here: 

 https://www.victoriajarvismaps.com/

Hydrologic analysis

To establish stream order for a watershed using GIS is quite complex despite the simplicity of the end visualization. Using a DEM you can establish flow direction. This tool uses the elevation data in the DEM to calculate per pixel what direction water would flow. Then you can calculate the flow accumulation. This calculates how many pixels flow of water would into any given pixel. Once you know this you can establish hydrology "stream orders." A stream order of 1 is a stream with no other streams flowing into it, or headwaters. A stream order of 2, has 2 or more stream orders of 1 flowing into it. A stream order of 3, has 2 or more stream orders of 2 flowing into it. And a stream order of 4, has 2 or more stream orders of 3 flowing into it. The "threshold" is the lowest value of a pixel in the flow accumulation raster considered for inclusion in your watershed orders.

Alpine Lakes Wilderness fire restrictions

The idea behind this map was to give a visual reference for Cle Elum Ranger District Wilderness Rangers. With this map they can easily see fire restrictions for the areas most commonly patrolled. In the Alpine Lakes there are elevational fire bans and there are also specific areas that have 1/2 mile closures to fires below the elevational ban zone

 

 

1993 campfire and camping regulations for Alpine Lakes

 

Habitat modeling for Northern Gannets

Northern Gannets are coastal seabirds that nest on cliffs. By running GIS analysis on steepness (slope greater than or equal to 80%), proximity to coat (within 100 meters of the coast), distance from roads (300m from roads) and size (at least 1 hectare), I could isolate and visualize potential habitats preferred by the bird in an area of Maine.

Hypothetical snail habitat modeling

I really don't like any of Esri's basemaps so I took the time to generate my own hillshade and contour layers from DEM data as well as some point data for nearby cities labels. The habitat polygons were generated by isolating the following habitat requirements for this snail:

• Land cover of: grassland, open water, or riparian (from raster data of landcover classifications)
  
• 100 meters of a stream (from USGS stream lines)
  
• Elevation of 1200 – 1600 meters (highly suitable) and 1600m – 2000 meters (moderately suitable) (from USGS DEM data)
  

 

Mapping mars

 You can download Mars elevation data from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) project at the University of Arizona’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory: uahirise.org. I took this data and generated a hillshade layer to give it a 3D effect and then colorized elevation data to match the way Mars looks. So it looks like a photo of the surface but it's not!

Pirates and aliens

I got a hold of some real pirate data which I stylized in a storybook pirate way. It shows locations of acts of piracy within 100 nautical miles of the Caribbean Islands.

The National UFO Reporting center manages GIS point data for locations of UFOs seen in the US. They're still collecting this information but the data that I got only went to 2005.

Alpine Lakes permit map

 I've been looking at Wilderness boundaries a lot the past year for work. I thought it would be fun to make a map clipped to the strange boundaries of the Wilderness area I work in. It's very apparent where the roads are that dictated the area's starfish shape. I used colors inspired by our permits.

 

 

Honeymoon Story Map

I've always loved the Esri Story Maps I've seen online. They're used as a visually focused and dynamic way of telling location driven stories. I made my first one of the honeymoon my husband and I took after our wedding because we traveled to a lot of different locations and I had a lot of good photos to use. It was a lot of fun and I'm excited to come up with ways to use Story Maps to deliver placed-based information and stories in the future.

United Birds of America

I've been learning to work with Ilustrator more and how shapefile data can translate in useful and fun ways from mapping software into visual editing software. I thought that my skill level in Photoshop would transfer seamlessly and although it's definitely helped, there's plenty of skills to learn that are different from Photoshop. I made this map of the US using each state's state bird plumage. I was surprised to learn that many states share the same state bird creating an interesting challenge for attempting visualize the same bird in different ways either by selecting a bird of the opposite gender, playing with scale, or selecting less glorified plumage.

New blog!

Welcome to my new blog! I have used the immense amount of time spent at home with the COVID-19 stay at home order to try and develop some new mapping/GIS/data visualization skills which I'll be sharing here. I have always loved maps as attested by this proclamation you'll see below, written by a 7 year old me.