Endless Shapefiles

July 3, 2012

Post for 07/03/2012

Today, I made a lot of progress with my data processing and analysis. I obtained the georeferenced historic maps from the lovely Avery Sandborn and went through them to pick out features of the quarry, prehistoric wetlands/waterbodies, and archaeological findings. First, I had to subset said features in ERDAS, which took up most of the morning, and then turn them into shapefiles in ArcMap. I ended up making 23 shapefiles (polygons and lines). What was very interesting was how the lake changed shape and position (slightly), but I am unsure whether that is due to the accuracy of the hand-drawn maps or due to physical causes.

Here are some interesting observations I made:

  1.  The lake disappears after 1918
  2.  After the lake disappears the Waiopili Heiau appears on the map  (1959)
  3.  As of 2001, neither the lake nor the heiau appear on the map. Only the quarry is apparent.
  4.  The quarry started in the area at the latest in 1910

I am currently running the LiDAR data analysis as I type this. Hopefully the problem was fixed and my momentum can continue.