Lab 6

The area that I chose for this lab is the Lake Tahoe basin, including the surrounding Sierra Nevada Mountains.  I chose this area because it is where I am from, and I thought that the surrounding mountains would create interesting maps for this lab due to the varying elevations.  I retrieved my DEM data for this area from the USGS website.  I then created four maps of this area: a shaded relief map, a slope map, an aspect map and a 3D image.  The shaded relief map shows the features on the surface of the area in which I chose.  On my map the middle is a lake and therefore looks smooth, whereas surrounding the lake looks rough because of the mountain range.  The shaded relief map even shows the small crevices that lead towards the lake.  Shaded relief maps use the technique of hill shading to represent different features on the Earth’s surface.  The slope map shows the topography for the area.  A slope map is influential in land development.  My slope map shows the lake and other low, flat surfaces green and the mountains are colored red.  The red and green coloring represents the terrain’s degree of slope.  The aspect map uses colors to show the direction of the terrain.  The 3D image represents the area in a three-dimensional way; the mountains surrounding the lake protrude up around the lake.  The extent information for this area is: top 39.32245, left -120.5758, right -119.5044 and bottom 38.7194.  The spatial reference coordinate system for this area is GCS North American 1983.