Assignment 14: Studying landscape change with historic aerial photography
Due: Monday, November 23 by the beginning of class
This assignment will give you an opportunity to gather and rectify historic aerial photography and then digitize lines and polygons representing landforms or other features which may have changed over time.
The main tasks are:
Download at least two historic images from a location (a few hundred to a few km in extent) in Maricopa County where there has been some geomorphic or landcover change due to erosion, deposition, or urbanization. Choose time intervals which span significant changes. These images should be downloaded from the GIS web site from Maricopa County: gis.maricopa.gov Historic Aerial Photography. (You can do this elsewhere if there are sufficient images).
Georeference the images to basemaps loaded into ArcMap or that you may have downloaded from USGS EarthExplorer
Trace out lines and polygons (and possibly points if needed) delineating the major changes in the landforms (channels, flood plain, hillslopes, roads, neighborhoods, etc.) over time. Make sure that they are coded by time (and other attributes if you choose).
Turn in on your web site:
At least one well laid out map with north arrow, scale, and clean legend illustrating the changes.
A few sentence narrative of the changes you observe and any speculation on the events which may have driven those changes.