Geog 491: Exercise 1- Review Geoprocessing and Basic Model Builder

Goal and Background

This exercise was used as a refresher for model builder skills and reviewing standard geoprocessing workflows.  The objectives within this exercise consisted of finding suitable areas in the Rocky Mountains for a new ski resort.  The area must follow certain criteria,

• Snowfall greater than 240 inches.
• Mean winter temperature below 32 degrees Fahrenheit.
• 40 miles from a public airport with a tower.
• Within National Forest Land.

Methods

Below in Figure 1 shows the model builder process of the methods.  First the layers NSF (National Forest Land) land, snow depths polygons, and temperature had to be clipped to the study area.  The Airports feature class also had to be projected into the same coordinate system as the other layers. 

Once this was successfully done, the select tool was used in order to start forming areas based on the above criteria.  Snowfall greater than 240 inches, and mean winter temperature below 32 degree Fahrenheit were selected.  Another selection that needed to be done was to find airports that were public and had a tower.  Once these were selected, a buffer of 40 miles was created around them.

Next, overlay analysis was used in order to find the areas that met the above criteria.  After those processes were finished a new field was added to the new layers data table.  One of the new fields calculated area for kilometers squared and then found any area greater than 2 km^2.  Another field was added in order to calculate the compactness of the resulting polygon. 

Once all of these tools were added to the model it was run successfully and all added to the map.  Figure 1 displays the model used to create the map in Figure 2 of the areas suitable for a new ski resort in the Rocky Mountains.

Figure 1: Exercise 1 model.

Figure 2: Suitable ski areas map.