The first element of this two-part project, which I completed in my introductory GIS class, was centered around determining the extent to which fire activity has increased in north central Washington State over the past two decades and predicting future burning based on landcover type. In this project, I found that the total burned area in this region has significantly increased over the past two decades, and identified specific landcover types that had the highest likelihood of burning. While not too complex, this project was a great introduction to GIS and introduced me to several analysis techniques.
The second part of this project, which I completed the following semester, was focused on predicting changes in seasonal snow cover in the same region as my previous fire analysis. To quantify seasonal snow change over time, I implemented a supervised classification model that used training data to determine where seasonal snow was present and absent. In comparing the model output over a period of 25 years, I found a significant reduction in seasonal snow. I was also interested in determining whether this snow cover change impacted vegetative productivity around streams. To measure this, I examined the change in riparian landcover over the same 20 year time period by isolating areas where riparian landcover had changed and where it had remained constant. Although a large portion of the landcover had changed over the study period, I ultimately attributed this to burn activity rather than changes in snowmelt.
The workflows and results of both of these projects are summarized in greater detail in this storymap which was also created as a part of the project.
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