This lab is the first step in the semester long project involving the suitability/risk of frac sand mining in western Wisconsin, specifically Trempealeau County. The main goal of this assignment was to become familiar with downloading data from many different sources. It also provided the base data that will be needed to complete the rest of the project throughout the semester.
Methods:
The first site used to obtain data was from the U.S. Department of Transportation. The railway network was downloaded from this particular site. It was not needed in this particular assignment but will be used in the future to display the location of sand mines in relation to current railways. The next two data sets came from the USGS National map viewer. The first one downloaded was the land cover data set. The second data set to be downloaded was the elevation. Since this is a national database, the assignment called for only Trempealeau County data to be downloaded.
The next file to be obtained was the Trempealeau County geodatabase. This was obtained directly from the Trempealeau County website. The final piece of information that was needed was the soil survey. This was obtained from the USDA NRCS website.
Once all this data was downloaded, it had to be unzipped in order to be used. Since most of the datasets were at a national scale, the data had to be manipulated. A python script needed to be written in order to complete this task. The script was written to create multiple images clipped to Trempealeau County from the multiple data sets that were downloaded.
Data
Figure 1.1 shows the results of the different data sets that were downloaded. They are all clipped to Trempealeau County.
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| Figure 1.1 |
Each one of the data sets has metadata associated with it. Certain sets of data have more metadata than others. This is very important information for the user. It shows how accurate the data is and how reliable it may or may not be. For each data set we had to find the scale, effective resolution, minimum mapping unit, planimetric coordinate accuracy, lineage, temporal accuracy and attribute accuracy. Below (Figure 1.2) shows the results of this.
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| Figure 1.2 |
So far we have downloaded most of the data that will be needed to complete this project. It is all being stored in a geodatabase for this project. It will be interesting to see what the final results show about the suitability of frac sand mining in Trempealeau County.
Sources:
http://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/sites/rita.dot.gov.bts/files/publications/national_transportation_atlas_database/index.html
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