FINAL PROJECT

QUIZ #2

1.) 1. China (biggest) 2. India 3. U.S. 4. Indonesia 5. Russia 6. Brazil 7. Pakistan 8. Japan 9. Bangladesh 10. Nigeria

2.) 1. Nigeria (most) 2. Ethiopia 3. Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC)

3.) South American Countries with lowest pop (ascending order):
Lowest: Grenada (95,608 people)
Second Lowest:St. Vincent and the Grenadines,
Third Lowest:St. Lucia
Fourth Lowest: Barbados
Fifth Lowest: Suriname (428,026 people)


4.) 15

5.) Cities within 500km of the Amu Darya and Syr Darya rivers:
Leninobod
Jalabad
Zareh Sharan
Turgay
Zhezkazgan
Taldykorgan
Kyzylorda
Almaty
Bishkek
Talas
Karakol
Nukus
Shymkent
Dashkhovuz
Urgench
Naryn
Tashkent
Namangan
Andizhan
Osh
Gulistan
Fergana
Dzhizak
Navoi
Bukhara
Samarkand
Kashi
Chardzhev
Karshi
Dushanbe
Ashgabat
Kulob
Qurghonteppa
Mary
Termez
Feyzabad
Taloqan
Konduz
Mazar-E Sharif
Sheberghan
Mashhad
Aybak
Baghlan
Meymaneh
Mahmud-E Eraqi
Charikar
Qal eh-ye
Asadabad
Bamian
Mehtar Lam
Kabul
Chaghcharan
Mayda Shahr
Herat
Srinagar
Peshawar
Baraki Barak
Islamabad
Rawalpindi
Gardez
Ghazni
Dzhambul

6.) 516,490,670

7.) Least populous: Vatican City
Most populous: Ethiopia

8.) within 300km of Veszprem, Hungary:
Poland
Czech Republic
Slovakia
Austria
Slovenia
Hungary
Romania
Croatia
Bosnia & Herzegovina
Yugoslavia

9.) Monaco

10.) Niger, Libya, Sudan, Central African Republic, Cameroon, Nigeria

WEEK 9

I preferred to use the Inverse Distance Weighting and Kriging methods in comparing this season’s rainfall to normal precipitation amounts. I decided not to use splining, as that would be better in predicting thermal values, such as temperature, more than kinetic values, such as rainfall. However, I felt kriging to be the most superior to all three, as it not only revealed values throughout Los Angeles County, but was a geostatistical meaurement also including accuracy of the measurements, relating to the "hard science" Theissen method used in hyrdologic science.

After converting the degrees, minutes, and seconds to decimal degrees and determining the difference between season normal and current season precipitations in Los Angeles County, I converted the Excel file to a .dbf, then projected the .dbf as a shapefile onto the polygon of Los Angeles County, both in the North American Datum 1983 Geographic Coordinate System. I then used spatial analyst to create kriging and IDW models of the season to date, normal, and differing precipitation amounts of the three models.

Overall, the season normal was larger than the season to date. This is not a very accurate depiction of data, due to the fact that the 2009-2010 season has not concluded, and this season will most likely have higher rainfall records. This weekend’s storm has already raised season to date amounts higher than that of my models presented, which were created the Thursday before the storm. I feel that ordinary kriging provided the best representation because it is a visual depiction of the hydrologically trusted Theissen method, relating the variance of rain gage amounts to the distance between each gage. In both kriging and IDW, I expanded the amount of points from the default (12) to 20, in order to cover the entire county boundary. Through kriging, it is evident that there are increased precipitation differences from the center moving northeast in Los Angeles County. The kriging model depicts the trends more acutely through the geometric polygons, as opposed to the more vague, circular IDW model with increased precipitation differences from the county center moving southwards. I chose the IDW method, assuming that all of the gages posted would provide rainfall recordings. I felt that the amount of gages provided was dense enough, but that is subjective and could be considered too small a network for accurate depictions to another geographer. However, I feel that overall, the kriging method was most accurate and presented the best spatial depiction of the data.


SOURCES:

Earls, Julie. http://proceedings.esri.com/library/userconf/proc07/papers/papers/pap_1451.pdf

Shi, Yunfei. http://spiedl.aip.org/getpdf/servlet/GetPDFServlet?filetype=pdf&id=PSISDG00675300000167531I000001&idtype=cvips&prog=normal