Tuesday, September 6, 2016

Land Where the Water Flows

Attempt at outlining the Accotink Creek Watershed in Google Mymaps
Fairfax's  Viewer Topographic layer
Fairfax's Viewer with imagery layer
The major neighborhoods that fall within the Accotink Creek Watershed are Fairfax City, Town of Vienna, and a grouping of suburban areas; Mantua, North and West Springfield, and Newington.  Also, part of the Army, Fort Belvior, resides in the watershed.
Fairfax's Topographic layer showing hieghts in red and  closer to sea leve turing green
I tried to use googles mymaps to outline the topography of Accotink Creek watershed with reasonable success.  The inability to finely adjust the zoom feature inhibited more precision with outlining.  Some more research and playing around with the app may enlighten.  Fairfax county already has a very well established topography map database called 'Watershed Viewer' which allowed me to explore the different topographical options they had provided.

I plan on visiting one of the tributaries and photo-documenting the experience.  It will hopefully give a bit of life to the big-picture/birds-eye view that maps provide.  

Fairfax County's website provided the above Watershed Viewer screen captures along with information regarding the square footage but I wanted to try and calculate it myself using Microsoft paint, so below is just that.


Using the 2 mile legend I calculated mymap to 48sq2 miles of watershed area, where Fairfax has is designated at 51sq2 miles.  I was impressed with how close this rough calculation was to the one Fairfax has.  


2 comments:

  1. Hi Brian,

    You have a lot of great information so far! Just one small thing - I had a bit of difficulty reading the white writing against the light blue background. Hopefully this feedback helps you consider design details in the future. I look forward to seeing your photographs from your adventure into Fairfax County.

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    1. Hey Erin,

      Thanks for the feedback! I'll look to make some design changes next update and include that in them. I'm excited to visit some of my old stomping grounds as a child and snap some pictures. See how much has changed over the years.

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