Truckee Meadows slope-shade progress

I was able to create a gridded dataset from 2-ft contour data with some simple routines in GlobalMapper. Here is the first cut...note that it does contain some weird artifacts related to the irregular extent of the data. Now, we are working on carrying out the steps in ArcGIS. Having no success exporting the grid from GlobalMapper which is one of the only problems I have encountered with that otherwise excellent program. I suspect that I have to read the manual more thoroughly.

Contour Exploitation...Reno / Truckee River map

I spent much of the day looking at an awesome morass of detailed contours of the Truckee Meadows...which is what we call the Pleistocene 'outwash' terraces and Holocene floodplain / swamp that hosts the Reno-Sparks metro area. I started tweaking the contour color ramps and contour thickness and accidentally achieved some interesting visualizations that reveal some interesting fluvial details. Several of us at NBMG are currently revising the geologic maps in the local area. Lots of data, but lots of development.

On the advice of a colleague, I will try to convert the data to a grid and look further into the details tomorrow. Right...no LiDAR (yet).

(download)

State of the Reno / Truckee River map (a small part of it), March 25, 2010

This effort is a compilation / map improvement process. I have been tasked with correlating and refining the Quaternary units in the Truckee Meadows...the large floodplain where most of Reno sits. This process is being enhanced considerably with georectified aerial photos from 1939. And to think, many folks wondered why the airport flooded in the 1997 flood.