1 Scientific Analysis of Aesthetics vs Safety in Wyoming

Scientific Analysis of Aesthetics vs Safety in Wyoming

2 Scientific Analysis of Aesthetics vs Safety in Wyoming

Table of Contents

Description Page 1 Methods Page 1 Results Page 1

Discussion Page 1-2 Maps Pages 3-4

3 Scientific Analysis of Aesthetics vs Safety in Wyoming

Description: Wyoming is a state where there is more pristine environments rather than human developments making it an ideal place for outdoor recreation. However with the large amounts of backcountry hikers and skiers comes more threatening opportunities of getting lost. The Search and Rescue team in the area could benefit greatly from the creation of a radio tower. On the other side of the spectrum the Sierra Club and the World Wildlife Fund see the introduction of a radio tower as destroying an aesthetically beautiful area that they say, ”should remain forever wild”. Science can be used to make a compromise between the two making sure that the visible impact of the towers is not as large as the benefit the search and rescue gains from having the tower.

Methods: Data about the Gannet Peaks Area in Wyoming which includes the digitial elevation models of the peaks in the area as well where local recreation. Next viewshed should be calculated from the height of the highest tower to prevent ArcGIS from automatically creating a flat viewshed rather than applying it to the various peak heights. This made it so that one could see where the area is viewable and is not viewable in a Boolean Fashion. To input the average height tower height which I calculated to be about 60 meters from an average of towers in the US I added another field in the attribute table for tower layer. The attribute table also showed quadrangle area and where each tower had a view. Next came changing the recreation layer and tower layer from vector to raster so that they could be combined in raster calculator. Next came reclassifying the lake layers for a value of 1. Next came multiplying the towers by the viewshed to calculate how many towers could be viewed from each lake.

Results and Summary: The area within the quadrangle that is affected varied from tower to tower. The highest value went up to 436241 meters while the lowest value was 43522 meters squared. The lakes that will be affected by each individual tower would be Big Tourist lake, Flagstone Lake, Desolation Lake, Klondike Lake, Scott Lake, Lost Pipe Lake, Stone Hammer lake, Peak Lake, Dale Lake, Elbow Lake, Summit Lake, and Summer Ice Lake. From Lost Pipe Lake the most towers could be seen at 3 and 2 can be seen from Scott lake and Big Tourist lake. From the rest of the lakes that were referred to only 1can be seen as seen in the map in figure 1. As seen in the second figure 2 Scott Lake has a view of 6 radio towers. Finally a good recommendation for a radio tower spot would be the one located between Peak Lake and Lost Pipe Lake.

Discussion: Overall I believe that the safety of people is more important the aesthetics that have to be given up from building a radio tower. Tower height can be modified based on preferences but 60 meters is generally a smaller respectable height. Also instead of building multiple radio towers a single could be made eliminating worst scenario viewshed spots.

4 Scientific Analysis of Aesthetics vs Safety in Wyoming

Figure 1: Shows both how many towers can be seen from each of the recreational sites and the viewshed of each tower or where peaks are visible and where they are not

Lost Pipe

Peak Lake

Klondike

5 Scientific Analysis of Aesthetics vs Safety in Wyoming

Figure 2: Shows how many towers can be seen from each of the recreational sites

Desolation

Scott

Big Tourist