Exercise 1

Goals

The goal of this exercise was to refresh our model builder skills and the use of tools in geoprocessing. The specific scenario of this exercise was that research needed to be done to find the ideal location for a brand new ski resort in the Rocky Mountain region. Things like annual snowfall, and average temperature were important to ensure that snow would last throughout the year. Another important factor was that they were on National forest land to make sure that the areas were not built up. 

Methods

The majority of this exercise was built within Model builder. Before the model could be built, the necessary data needed to be downloaded. It was provided through a class geodatabase. The geodatabase contained data like our study area, the average temperatures, average snowfalls, and where the National forest land was located. With this data the model could be started. The first step was to take each of the three pieces of data stated above, and clip it to our study area. This ensured that we could get rid of any data outside of the Rocky Mountain region. Once each piece of data was clipped, we needed to take the airport feature class that was provided, and project it to the same coordinate system as the other feature classes. We then created selections in each of the clipped classes in order to create areas that meet the criteria give. SQL statements were written to ensure that the ideal areas had snofall greater than 240 inches, the mean temperature was less than 32 degrees Fahrenheit, the airports had a tower and were within 40 miles, and the area was in National Forest land. 

Results

The results of the model that was built will be shown in this section. To start off, the model that was built to run the necessary tests is shown below as Figure 1. Directly below Figure 1, is the final map that shows the ideal area for a new ski resort in blue, and the study area in a transparent green. A hillshade map was used as a basemap to show elevation in the Rockies. 

Figure 1. shows the model that was built in order to run the necessary tools to find the
ideal land to place a new ski resort.

Figure 2 is the final map that shows the ideal locations in blue and the study area in green.

Conclusion

This exercise helped to get us back into the swing of things for the summer session. Using model builder and all of the geoprocessing tools are extremely important skills in order to expand our GIS knowledge. This wasn't necessarily the most difficult model to create, but it was good to start back up with. This exercise made me excited to become more comfortable doing these sort of models in a Python script.