Project Update

 

As of right now, I have completed the mapping of most of the historic boundaries and present boundaries of sites currently under the purview of the National Parks Service (NPS). The four sites all have different ethnic components with one site for European whites (Saratoga), Native Americans (Sand Creek Massacre), African Americans (Fort Monroe), and Asian Americans (Tule Lake Internment Camp). 

So far, I have only been able to construct one VERY rough draft for the Saratoga Battlefield site whilst I have not been able to do ones for the others. I am currently planning to do spatial correlations to calculate loss of acreage for each of these sites alongside pulling data on historical land occupation for areas that are actively populated on non-preserved land.

Another addition that needs to potentially be made is the addition of the Schuyler House to the map of Saratoga, as it was also a component of the battle and is actively protected by the NPS.

One point of note is that some of these sites have active preservation efforts stemming from outside of the National Parks Service. Organizations/Non-profits, such as the American Battlefield Trust, are actively preserving land for transfer over to the NPS once funding is acquired. These conserved lands are also displayed with different colorations to indicate non-government cooperation in preservation efforts.

Saratoga Battlefield (Stillwater, NY)

Sand Creek Massacre (Kiowa County, CO)

Fort Monroe (Hampton, VA)

Tule Lake Internment Camp (Tulelake, CA)

Project Proposal

 For my final project, I am mainly focusing on conservation efforts at a variety of federal historical sites across the country. The main question pertaining to these sites is "How much land is preserved at specific historical sites with different ethnic contexts?" Overall, I am selecting the sites of Gettysburg, Tule Lake Internment Camp, the Sand Creek massacre site, and one additional site with an African American component. My project will mostly revolve around researching the historical background of these sites, georeferencing appropriate maps to provide context, and overlaying the information with current NPS map boundaries. The ethnic context of the site and its location will both play a role in determining the NPS' goals in preserving the selected sites.

Spatial Analysis Lab

This upcoming lab was different from previous ones as we were given free rein over which spatial analysis tools we would use in reference to our previous tornadoes project. For this lab, I primarily used point density as kernel density was not a functioning option for the tornado points--for some unknown reason. As a result of using point density, I also incorporated a time slider to show the tornado densities within an output cell size of .1731952 and a circle radius of 1.44329. I also chose to distinguish the map by decades in order to provide enough data for each individual map to ensure clarity.

As expected, the highest concentrations of tornadoes were located in the Midwest and the Gulf Coast from the years of 1970-2000. I initially attempted to change the color schemes of the tornado densities to help distinguish the decades, but I found it to be highly time consuming for time that I did not have in the moment. Below are the maps that I created for this project: