Day 22: Lab Day

Today was spent at the lab processing the data I’ve been able to find throughout these past few days. I began playing with the DEM to try to get the water channel to become more visible. After a few attempts I decided on weighing the Z factor by 3 which finally gave me the results I needed to view the water channel.

I was also able to get a hold of the lidar data which showed the elevation difference to a clearer extent, but I’m unsure if it’s enough to change any of the data I’ve already collected. Speaking of, I think I’m going to walk the water channel tomorrow to try to obtain better Z values so that my longitudinal stream profile is accurate.

After sorting through the soil layer’s attributes I was able to find water table depth throughout the valley. I was a little disappointing because the map didn’t really show any promise in becoming a suspect in the water channel mystery. I was hoping I’d see some sort of change in depth in the area where the water comes back to the surface, but the depth is shown to be the same. It was also helpful to see that the characteristic of the southern side of the stream was terrace and the northern side alluvial fan. Looking at the points I collected last week overlayed on the geologic map showed the stream carving into the terraced side, which makes sense. Although, I can’t really count on this being certain, because I’m unsure of the precision of this map.

There is talk that tomorrow will finally be my day to use GPR! Hopefully things go as planned! This little guy has been hanging out with me for the past hour!