Week 1: Sandbox Exercise

Introduction:
 The first week of Geospatial Field Methods consisted of a sandbox terrain exercise. The activity was to go out and construct an elevation surface of terrain using snow, as it is winter, and survey the created terrain with our own coordinate system. The exercise is to help us open our minds to geospatial thinking by crafting our own terrain and applying the surveying exercise to a real world experience or job. My group consisted of two other students and myself and we worked together to complete our task.

Methods:
 The first step was finding time to get together and do the project, we met on Friday (2/1/13) morning and went outside to our sandbox. The box was full of snow and that was the medium we chose to construct our landscape. There were a few land formations that were suggested to be included in our terrain such as a ridge, hill, depression, valley and plains. After construction of the terrain it was time to come up with our own coordinate system to help us complete a survey. Supplies were provided to make measurements and after concluding on our system we began to survey.
 Our coordinate system started with using the bottom left hand corner of the sandbox as our origin. We decided as a group to survey our terrain using 10x10cm squares. To do so we measured 10cm to the East and made a mark at each coordinate along the axis. Then we used a string drawn across the top of the sandbox as a locator for the position we moved north for each measurement. Our box was approx 100cm wide and 240cm long so we had about 240 points total. Our terrain was mostly below the top brim of the sandbox as there was about a 10cm difference from the basin to the top of the box. So to get the measurement of elevation for each coordinate we measured down from the string using a meter stick, as a result our elevation points were all below are beginning sea level. We later decided to alter our data and lower our sea level by 8cm so most of the terrain was above sea level.
 After gathering all our data it was necessary to put the points into a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet for further use in plotting those points in ArcMap 10.

Discussion:
 I felt our group did a good job of creating our coordinate system and finding an efficient way of completing the survey. We used two meter sticks, a few feet of string and a tape measure to finish the surveying of the terrain. The group was able to place each land form suggested into our sandbox, there was plenty of room to work with, maybe even too much space, luckily we needed some plains. (See Figures 1-1 through 1-6 on the Photos page). We made measurements as consistently as possible to avoid error or give all coordinate pairs the same error as each other. It was difficult to get the best survey because our coordinate grid was much to large for the delicacy of some of the landforms we created.
 Unfortunately our group neglected the forecast of the week and came Friday morning it was -7 degrees Fahrenheit outside. A High pressure system containing frigid Canadian air migrated south right over southwestern Minnesota on Thursday evening giving us those near frostbiting temperatures. Luckily we all came out unscathed from the cold after our task was done. (See Figure 1-7.)

Conclusion:
  This first exercise drew a good amount of attention from me, these skills attained from completing this assignment can be applied easily to what I aspire to do later in life. Surveying landscapes is always up to interpretation it seems and being able to go out and create our own method of doing so is a great challenge.
 I am very excited to see how the terrain turns out in ArcMap, the idea of going out and creating a simple land form outside and putting it into 3D modeling is a fascinating concept. I used to build and design landscapes and cities outside in my sandbox as a kid, who knew I would end up doing it as a student and possibly for the rest of my life. Programs such as ArcScene leave much for the imagination and inspire creation and innovation for many things.