Hiking and data collection

We got to Kaʻaʻawa Valley a little before 9AM. James and I made sure our radio worked and then got a ride toward the back of the valley. For today we wanted to create the most accurate representation of the streams in the valley that we could, so we would try to walk one. Most of them are either marshy or overrun with dense vegetation. We went up a small stream that crossed one of the roads. The water flowed for a couple hundred feet but became mostly-dry afterwards (it rained a little early this morning). There was a slightly overgrown path next to the stream that we followed for a while before it slowly disappeared.  We followed the stream up until it became too steep and overgrown with vegetation and then we walked down the center of the stream back to the road. It was fun to do for one stream, but most of the streams are impassable due to the vegetation.

Most open part of path next to the stream.

For the impassable streams we may just try to find the points where they intersect hiking paths or roads and then see how the points look on a DEM. We started doing this by taking a hiking trail up toward the back of the valley. It ran all the way up to the top of the watershed on the ridge. It was a good opportunity to scope out the valley from above and to take a couple pictures. I took a panorama from the ridge using Microsoft ICE and Photosynth that can be viewed here (you may need to create an account to view it): http://photosynth.net/view.aspx?cid=1a3ba0af-21e6-49f4-99da-fd285855be01

Ka'a'awa Valley

After hiking back to the road we tried to find out the extent of one of the large marshy areas in the center of the valley, but we may need to come back later with heavy duty rain boots.

Tired from the hiking we went back to base camp (where all the cars are parked) and found a pond and marsh area (a bit less marshy than the last one) to outline with the Trimble.

We created a map with the data we have to visualize what we have so far. I’ll upload a completed map later this week.

Tonight I’m going to do some brainstorming for what project I want to do in the coming weeks.