Initial Publication Date: April 3, 2010

Week 8: Monitoring Fires

On This Page

Getting to Know Cartography in ArcGIS
Launch ArcGIS and Open the Aspen Fire Project
Investigate the Spread of Fire with Database Queries
Investigate the Spread of Fire with Spatial Queries
Create a new Project to Explore Additional Fire Data
Create a Map to Tell a Story of Interest to You
Resources
Movies on this Page
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Getting to Know Cartography in ARCGIS

Review of Symbolization and Querying as the key skills reviewed

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Launch ARCGIS ArcMap and Open the Aspen Fire Project

Shortcut1
  • Launch ARCGIS ArcMap by double-clicking its icon on your desktop or by clicking its icon Launch Bar.
  • Choose File > Open, navigate to C:/Eyesinthesky2/Week8/AspenAM, select the Aspen_fire.mxd file, and click Open.
  • When the project opens, the base map displays a satellite image of Earth.

    The image is part of the Blue Marble collection at NASA. It is a composite generated from several different types of data. Much of the data comes from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument, a remote sensing device on the Terra satellite. Latitude and longitude lines are visible on top of the image.
68 Introductory Shot




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Investigate the Spread of the Fire with Database Queries

You might wonder . . . How far did the fire spread and how many acres did it consume by the end of Day 1? Day 2? Day 3? Day 4? Use database queries to find out.

  • Scroll down to the bottom of the Table of Contents. Turn off the Blue Marble Earth image. Then turn on the Shaded Relief and False Color Aerial images plus the Daily Fire Perimeter layer. Zoom in until you can clearly see the perimeter lines.
  1. Scroll down to the bottom of the Table of Contents.
    27 Scroll Down to Bottom of TOC
  2. Turn off the Blue Marble Earth image by clicking the box to the left of its name.
    28 Turn Off Blue Marble
  3. Turn on the Countries and US 48 States layer by clicking the boxes to the left of their names.
    29 Turn On US 48 & Countries
  4. Turn on the Shaded Relief and False Color Aerial images plus the Daily Fire Perimeter layer. Look carefully and you will see a small dot in the Southeastern part of Arizona. This dot is all that is visible of the fire images and perimeter layer at this scale. It is necessary to zoom in for a closer look.
    30 Shaded Relief False Color Daily Fire Perimeters
  5. Right click on the Daily Fire Perimeter layer in the Table of Contents. Then click on Zoom to Layer in the context menu.. This is what the map looks like when zoomed in on the Daily Fire Perimeter layer.
    31 Zoomed in to Daily Fire Perimeter

  • Open the Attribute Table of the Daily Fire Perimeter layer and scroll across the table until you find the ACRES field.
    • The ACRES field indicates the number of acres consumed by the fire, feature by feature. You'll notice that a single day frequently consists of several features displayed as polygons that show the area of the fire each day. We'll ask ARCGIS to select these, highlighting them together.
  • Close the Attributes of Daily Fire Perimeter table.

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    Create and execute a query that shows how far the fire spread on the first day

    How would you write the query statement?

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    Create and execute a query to find out how many acres burned by the end of Day 2

    Hint: To find out how many acres burned by the end of the second day, build and execute a query using Select by Attribute that selects the features that burned on both June 17 and June 18, 2003.

    How would you write the query statement?
    1. To find out how many total acres burned, right click the ACRES field heading in the Attributes Table and choose Statistics from the context menu.
      44 Statistics 2 Days Fires
    2. The Statistics window opens. Look in the SUM field to find out that 461.85 ACRES burned during the two days of your selection.
      45 Statistics Window 2 Days

    The Statistics Results include the Total which sums the acres burned for each feature. The query you built selected all the features from Day 1 and Day 2. So by the end of the second day, the fire had covered 461.85 acres.
  • Close the Statistics Results window.

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    Create and execute a query to find out how many acres burned by the end of Day 3

    How would you write the query statement? How many acres burned?

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    Create and execute a query to find out how many acres burned by the end of Day 4

    How would you write the query statement? How many acres burned? Movie Icon

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    Investigate the Spread of the Fire with Spatial Queries

    You might wonder . . . How many parcels were within one mile of the fire on Day 1? Day 2? Day 3? Day 4? Use spatial queries to find out.

    1. The Shaded Relief and False Color Aerial images plus the Daily Fire Perimeter layer should still be on.
      31 Zoomed in to Daily Fire Perimeter
    2. Turn on the Parcel Status layer by clicking the box to the left of its name.
      46 Parcel Status Turned On
    3. Right click the Parcel Status layer and click on Zoom to Layer in the context menu. Individual parcels are now visible on the map.
      47 Parcel Status Zoomed


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      Select the area of the fire on Day 1

    1. Click on Selection > Select by Attribute on the menu bar.
      50 Open Select by Attribute
    2. A new window opens. Move it to where you can see both the Select by Attributes window and the map.
      51 Select by Attributes and Map
    3. In the Select by Attributes window double click the field DATE. Then single click the "equals" sign. Lastly, click on the Get Unique Value button and double click the Value 617. You can also type this equation (DATE = 617) into the box in the middle of the window. Click Apply.
      52 Select Day 617 with Parcels
  • Close the Select by Attribute window. One feature is selected on the map.
    53 Selection with Parcels

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    Buffer the area of the fire to find parcels that are within one mile of it on Day 1

    1. Click the Selection > Select by Location menu option to open the Select by Location window.
      56 Select by Location
    2. In the Select by Location window, set the Buffer Distance to 1 and the Buffer Units to Miles. Turn on the Apply a buffer to the features in Daily Fire Perimeter option, using the Parcel Status layer. Note: use screenshot for appropriate selections in Select by Location window.
      Select by Location Filled In

  • Click Apply. The map shows parcels that are within one mile of the fire on the first day, with parcels that are within the buffer showing as highlighted in blue.
    59 One Mile Buffer Day 1

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    Show the results of the spatial query

    1. Right-click on the Parcel Status layer in the Table of Contents and select Open Attribute Table.
      60 Open Attribute Table Parcel Status
    2. In the Attributes of Parcel Status table that opens, you can view the individual records for the layer. Scroll down the Attribute Table. The selected records are highlighted in blue. The table in this image has been scrolled partially down the list.
      61 Selection in Table
  • The number of parcels selected is shown at the bottom of the Attribute Table.
    62 Table with number Selected
  • How many parcels were selected?
  • Close the Attributes of Parcel Status and click the Clear Selected Features Clear Selected button.

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    Repeat the steps above to find the parcels that were within one mile of the fire on days two, three, and four



    Movie Icon


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    Create a New Project to Explore Additional Fire Data



    Now that you have explored a specific fire (the Aspen fire), you will broaden your focus to look at fires globally and in the U.S. You will create a new project, add image and vector data and symbolize it as needed to help you visualize patterns in fire data.



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    Where were the fires in February 2010?

    1. Select File > New.
      64 Open New Project
    2. Select OK.
      65 New Window OK
    3. ARCGIS will ask if you want save the project that you have open. Click No.
      66 Click No to Save Project

  • Click the Add Data Layer 5205 Add Data Button button. Navigate to the data folder, select the Feb2010_Fire.TIF, and click OK.
  • This is the map with the Feb2010_Fire.TIF image turned on. The image shows fires active across the globe during February 2010. The data come from the MODIS satellite. It was downloaded from NASA Earth Observations (NEO) site as a GeoTIFF file. It was downloaded at the 0.25 resolution, so as not to slow down the rate at which layers are drawn. Some of the points may have been lost in this reduction.
    While it is a pretty picture, it is hard to interpret this raster data without the addition of vector data to orient our brains.
    68 Feb GeoTif

  • Add the cntry95_wd.shp layer to the map. Then move this vector layer above the fire image layer.
  • The cntry95_wd.shp layer is on the map and visible, but it is hiding the layer below it. Edit the properties of the cntry95_wd.shp layer so that only the outlines are visible on top of this predominately black image. Then give the layer a more recognizable name like Countries.
  • Now the image makes more sense to our brains. It has been given context by the Countries outline.
    74 Countries and Feb Tif

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    How Do Fire Prone Areas Change throughout the year?

    1. Click the Add Data 5205 Add Data Button button. Navigate to the data folder, select the FEB_2010_MODIS.shp, and click Add.
      75 Add Feb 2010 Modis
    2. Here is what the map looks like after the FEB_2010_MODIS.shp layer has been added.
      76 Map with Modis

  • To look for patterns in the fire data, classify the Julian date field of the layer into four classes of graduated symbols using an equal interval classification. By using four classes you are breaking up the month's worth of data into weekly intervals. The Julian calendar is often used in science. On a Julian calendar, January 1 is day one of the year and December 31st is day 365.
  • Right click on the FEB_2010_MODIS.shp layer in the Table of Contents. Then click Zoom to Layer in the context menu.
    82 Modis Zoomed to US
  • What state and region had the most fires in February?

  • Choose File > Save As.. and navigate to the AspenAM folder. Name your project Feb_Fires. ARCGIS will automatically add the appropriate extension (.mxd) when you click Save.
    • Movie Icon

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    Create a Map to Tell a Story of Interest to You

    This is the screenshot that you will post to your discussion group for your required weekly assignment.

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    Resources


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    Movies on this Page

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    How to download movies

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    Flash Video Versions

    Download these versions to play on your computer. You'll need an appropriate movie player to view the file, such as Flash Player, Real Player (Mac / Win), or Adobe Media Player.

    Movie Icon Investigating the Spread of the Fire Using Database Queries in ArcGIS

    Movie Icon Investigating the Spread of the Fire Using Spatial Queries in ArcGIS

    Movie Icon Creating a New Project in ArcGIS

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    iPod Versions

    Download these version to play on your iPod or iPhone.

    Movie Icon Investigating the Spread of the Fire Using Database Queries in ArcGIS

    Movie Icon Investigating the Spread of the Fire Using Spatial Queries in ArcGIS

    Movie Icon Creating a New Project in ArcGIS


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