Happy Face

 Speaking of air photos, try this one from Canada.

This is why I like the window seat.

Stecoah Gap and the AT

 After a night in Wesser, NC, we climbed UP the mountains.  

Looking back to Wesser, we got this view.

A drop in elevation got us to Stecoah Gap as seen in the topo from 1941.

Today, using Google Street View, we get these shots of the trail crossing.  But from my memory, I think they were paving and grading the road through the Gap in 1974.  Both pics are from June 2016.

The air photo from 1976 seems to confirm the construction we saw.

Instructions to get AT Map data and LiDAR for Massachusetts

Instructions to get AT Map data and LiDAR for Massachusetts

First open your browser to

https://nps.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=cea61820e75c4ce997f866eea3aaf5b3

And after acknowledging the disclaimer, zoom into Massachusetts.  It will look something like this.

To add information for the trail, click on the 3 horizontal bars in upper right to get this view.

Click on the features you want like shelters, AT Boundary Sections and AT Lands.  At this point specific boundary data and monuments are not found.  I am still trying to figure that out, since that data needs to either be on your computer OR accessible via the web, but you need “permission” to get that.

Now is the LiDAR part.  So far, I have only been able to link Massachusetts, Vermont and Maine LiDAR data, but I am still searching for the states.  To add these data, click on the “plus” sign box in upper left of screen to get this window.

And search for MassGis lidar.  And then add “Shaded Relief from LiDAR (Tile Service) Map Service by MassGIS” to reveal Webster Road for this example.

Not bad for a simple approach.

Relos in Massachusetts' AT

 Hmmmm, let's think about this relo on the AT..

All these USGS maps were downloaded from this page.  The first is Egremont, 1948 and a scale of 1:31680.

This is back in Earl Shaffer's day, the first recognized thru hike of the AT.  Notice the road walking heading west to east or trail north.  Also this route was described in one of the American Guide Series compiled and written by the Members of the Federal Writers’ Project of the Works Progress Administration:

Appalachian Trail: Enters from Egremont at 12.5 m. and crosses Hubbard Brook on the Sheffield-South Egremont Rd. At 12.6 m. is the Shays' Rebellion Battlefield Site, indicated by a stone marker. Left from the Sheffield Rd. on a dirt road at 13.2 m. and R. on US 7 at 14.4 m. At 14.5 m. L. across the Housatonic River at Upper Bridge to East Rd., 15 m. Left on East Rd. to 15.4 m. where the Trail swings R. across fields and woods roads to a road running N.-S. between East and June Mts. Right on this road a short distance and then L. on the Soda Springs Rd. From this road the Trail ascends over a series of ledges and at about 17 m. enters Great Barrington.

         Berkshire Hills Conference. (1939). The Berkshire Hills, Members of the Federal Writers' Project         of the Works Progress Administration for Massachusetts. Funk & Wagnalls Co: NY.  

Next we have the same titled map from 1958 and a scale of 1:24000.

And still a lot of road walking.

Now I add the map (same title) from 1973 and 1;24000 scale.

Recall, I was hiking this in 1975 and didn't have a guide book or map, so I was depending on the blazes for me to cross the valley.  I did this on the road.

Surprisingly, in 1997, the new 25000 scale maps and now called Great Barrington, since they were printed on larger sheets of paper, the trail returned to the road?

Finally, the most recent map in 2021 shows the newest corridor of the trail on protected NPS lands.

Stay tuned and I will share some info of a historic cultural feature found on the east edge of the map.

Lastly, here is an air photo from 1975.  See me waving?

Lehigh Gap, PA, 30 March 1975

 Here are a couple shots of the human caused destruction of the mountain gap.

The wool plaid jacket was the one I bought in Maine the previous September.

Here is an air photo from 1976:

Things have improved in the area and one needs to thank the Lehigh Gap Nature Center, among others.

Lastly I saw this plane wreck right on the Trail somewhere east of the gap.

And the approximate location 3 miles east of Little Gap.

White Cap Mountain, Maine

 I climbed White Cap MT today (in 1974) and as you can see the weather was perfect.

See the map for the area on the USGS site.  and an air photo from 1978!

Examples of LiDAR for Cultural Resource Monitoring

 

Name this airport

 Slap happy fun today.  Since we haven't travelled for quite some time (you know, Covid), I have set up my computer to cycle through pictures as a slide show.  Fun stuff.

So first question, where is this airport?

Hint, FDF.

Helicopter on Mars

 Isn't this just great!

https://mars.nasa.gov/technology/helicopter/#Watch-Online

and on YouTube

Encyclopedia of Tourism Management and Marketing

 The first 75 entries (out of about 1,000) in the Encyclopedia of Tourism Management and Marketing are now found online.  Two chapters are free,  Unfortunately, mine is not, but that is the realm of academic publishing.  

Content costs.

The complete listing of encyclopedia entries is found here.

All told, I contributed 5 entries:

Aerial Imagery (Timothy LeDoux lead author)

Dark Tourism

Fright Tourism

Liminal Tourism (Ian Jenkins lead author)

Master Plans and Tourism (Alina Gross lead author)

enjoy!

LiDAR for Parks and Protected Areas

 

Applying LiDAR for Parks and Protected Area Management 

Robert S. Bristow, Anna Therien, Timothy LeDoux 

 Abstract: Many parks and protected areas around the globe lack basic resource inventories needed for the creation of effective sustainable management plans. Despite the absence of comprehensive resource inventories, outdoor recreation planners still have to address existing problems and threatened resources on protected lands as best as they can. The challenge for parks and protected areas managers is to establish this priority, given the lack of much-needed resources and data. To address this gap, remote sensing technologies such as Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) can be used by recreation managers to create cost-effective resource inventories for large areas of land in national and local parks. This research note demonstrates how the use of LIDAR technology and historical archives can be used to create a resource inventory of a variety of historic features in the Bear Hole Watershed of West Springfield, Massachusetts, an area that encompasses over 1,293 acres of protected park lands. 

Cascading Falls in Bear Hole Watershed 

 https://js.sagamorepub.com/jpra/article/view/10481 

 

Stone Walls and LiDAR

I took Bubba-Doo hiking to day and did a little bushwhacking in the Westfield Wildlife Management Area west of Honey Pot Road.  It is a nice area to hike and even has some old growth forests on the NW edge near Granville Road.

Anyway, on this visit and others, I photographed an old stone wall.  Stone walls are an interesting landscape feature here in New England, and there are estimates of thousands (yes 1,000's) of miles of these walls in the Northeast back country.

I love finding these walls and I am even more excited about the discovery using remote sensing technology with LiDAR.  LiDAR stands for light detection and ranging.

So here are some shots of the stone walls in the WMA.

Visiting NOAA LiDAR data viewer you get this air photo and LiDAR image.

Lastly you can see the wall from LiDAR and then a shot on the ground.

Finally, this white rock (you can tell that I am a geologist) was sniffed by Bubba-Doo today.

https://governmentshutdown.noaa.gov/

The URL says it all. 

"https://governmentshutdown.noaa.gov/"

Near Live Satelite Imagery

Want to track natural events over time using remote sensed imagery?  Check out this link:

https://worldview.earthdata.nasa.gov/

You can track atmospheric events on this site.  Don't expect to see what is in you backyard.  This is a global view that can only zoom in so far.  But for vacation plans and hurricanes, volcanic eruptions and big events that can be observed from space this link rocks.

Near Live Satellite Imagery

No, you can't peep in the neighbor's back yard, but this new site show current imagery on a global scale.  And to top that, a historical review of previous imagery.  Check out https://worldview.earthdata.nasa.gov/

NASA Earth Observatory Image of the Day

Always good to see what NASA is doing, and the Image of the Day is usually spectacular.

Click here for the current image.

Remote Sensing and Tornadoes

NASA has always provided some great educational material for free. The Earth Observatory site is one example.

See http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/NaturalHazards/view.php?id=50854&src=nha for an image of the Western Mass weather event of 1 June 2011.