Your Very Own Spatial Question!

Introduction

What is your research question? What are the specific objectives of your project? What is your intended audience? Who would use this information? 

While at my Uncles house for Christmas break, I was talking to my cousin who has a 3 year old who has never been camping. Being that camping is our family tradition, we decided that we both wanted to go camping this summer. But we both had different criteria for the campground we wanted to go. Being that my Cousin had a 3 year old she wanted to be between Marshfield and Eau Claire, in case our experiment failed and her child did not end up enjoying the experience. Understanding the need to be close we decided to meet halfway between both our locations. I wanted to go to a park that has a lake as I have a kayak, and would enjoy kayaking while we camped. We also decided that the closer to seclusion the better as we are used to camping in relatively remote areas and we enjoy being deep in the woods. While a remote location does not exist in the area, we both decided that we would try and find a campground that was as far away from bigger cities as possible. And my special question was born. My research question is this, “where can my cousin and myself, who lives in Marshfield, go camping in state or county parks that have a lake in which I can kayak, is in an area between our two locations and away from light pollution”. 

My intended audience was for myself and any family members who would like to come camping with us, but this analysis could really be used for anyone who had the same criteria or relatively close criteria about camping in the area. The analysis could also be completed again using the same criteria with a different location if anyone wanted to find another area of interest.

Data Sources

What data did you need to answer this question? Where did you get this data from? Provide pertinent metadata and citation information for all data. (Providing a web address for the metadata is sufficient). Do you have any “data concerns?” (e.g. scale, completeness of the dataset, reliability, age, etc.) 

The data that I needed to answer my question was data that was retrieved from ESRI servers specifically from the 2013 US Census Data, and 2013 US data. Links to both sources are listed below. The specific data layers that I required were U.S. Water Bodies, U.S. Parks and from the U.S. Census data, I retrieved the U.S. National Atlas Cities data. The U.S. Water Bodies Layer had to be selected specifically for lakes in Wisconsin. While the U.S. Parks data had to be narrowed to Wisconsin as well, but no further selecting or narrowing down of the data was needed. Similarly the U.S. National Atlas Cities file had to be narrowed down for just a selection of Wisconsin cities. 

I have several data concerns, as always worrying about how up to date and accurate the data that you are using should always come up. Having said that I am not that worried about the accuracy of this data as established rarely change as new county, state, and national parks are not built or created that often. Additionally, Lakes should be a stable data source in that lakes also do not change in a drastic way where their location would be different or the information provided by this data would be inaccurate. My greatest concern is that while the data for parks is listed at the county, state and national level, the metadata does not list weather camping is available at these parks, and as such further analysis on my part will be necessary to determine if these parks, do in fact, have campgrounds.

http://www.census.gov/geo/maps-data/data/tiger-geodatabases.html

http://factfinder.census.gov/faces/nav/jsf/pages/searchresults.xhtml?refresh=t

Methods 

What methods did you use to answer your geospatial question? This section should include your data flow model and a brief description of the methods.

The first step that I took to map this information was to create a 75 mile buffer around both Eau Claire and Marshfield. Being that the distance between the two cities is 100 miles I wanted to include the halfway point between both locations (50 miles), and an area of  interest of about 1/4 the total distance on each side of the half way point in order to get a large enough area for multiple parks. I then 'Intersected' those buffers to get a defined search area. Then to find out which parks would have lakes, I used the 'Select layer by location tool' to find lakes near parks at a distance of 1/4 mile. The reason that I used this distance, is that when looking at the polygons which made up the parks, I noticed that they did not always touch the lake they would normally be touching in the real world, and that no parks in my area of interest had another lake that was within 1 mile of their location. I then via the 'intersect' tool, I Then created a 30 mile buffer around cities that had populations of more than 10,000 in the vicinity around my area of interest.  My thought was that cities that had a higher population of 10,000 people produce more light pollution, increasing in intensity as the city grew larger, such that the larger the city the more light pollution it produces. 

I then 'erased' all parks that fell within the 30 mile radius of the towns which, under my criteria, produced light pollution. 

Results
What was the result of your project? This section should include you map as the result and explain the result.

After completing the above data flow model, and processing all of my data,  I was able to determine that there are # of parks that would fit all my criteria for finding a park to camp at this summer that were in my area of interest (see Picture below). 

There are some parks that look more temping then others, particularly parks with larger lakes. 

The parks that meet my criteria are shown in the map below. While the results do say that Lake Eau Claire County Park does match my criteria and therefore was not erased from my light pollution buffer, I would discard this park from my final results as the majority of the park is erased from the buffer. It is also important to note that the largest park on the map is actually the Chegquamegon National Forest, and is not a campground but an area that could have many campgrounds. So I would call this an area of interest rather than one specific result, which is what my other locations actually are. Also it is important to mention that while these parks do meet the criteria, there was no data which was available to determine if these parks do have camping as a function of the park.

Data Sources: ESRI 2013 U.S. Census Data, ESRI 2013 U.S. Data.

Criteria: To find a State or County Park that was also near a lake, and away from light pollution, which would be a good place to camp during the summer.

Evaluation 
What was your overall impression of this project? If you were asked to repeat the project, what would you change and how would you change it? What challenges did you face?

I really enjoyed the project and the ability to come up with my own spatail question and preform my own analysis. With increased knowledge and ability I would have procceded with my analysis differently. Being limited to the data that was provided on the ESRI servers I was not able to use a data set that specifically looked for campgrounds. If I were able to either find a data set or create a data set of my own, digitizing campgrounds, to create a point feature class, and then enter in specific attributes for those campgrounds to tailor a date set to more specific details, the ability to answer my spatial question would be more precise and accurate. 

Being limited to the data provided, if I was to do this analysis again, I would go further to address some more specific details that I had not considered at the start of the project such as, not all parks have the same size lake and that may limit my enjoyment, future analysis would include a lake size. Or I may not focus on lake size but rather also search parks with rivers or parks with the greatest number of lakes within a short driving distance of any park if the lakes were smaller than a desired size (see above). This way even if the campground did not have a lake or a small lake, a short drive would still allow me to kayak while camping. 

I think that the largest challenge that I faced was that I had a very specific geospatial question, and I had to come up with a way to find an answer using the data that was available. Overall, I very much enjoyed the project.