Summary of Project

• Our team’s goal was to analyze landslide risk on the Sea to Sky highway (hwy. 99) in British Columbia, Canada based on several factors: lithology, hydrology, Quaternary sediment, vegetation, faults, and slope. We used historical data from 1855-2007 to characterize the individual factors that contribute to enhanced landslide risk.
• We organized our team based on a group approach, so no single person was given a direct task. We worked together, nearly always as a group in person, to find the correct data, create the maps, and produce a final product.
• We learnt several very interesting facts about our project area:
  • Only a few geologic units and vegetation types are characteristic of producing landslides along the highway.
  • Slope was not as directly related to landslide production as we once believed, although it played a major factor on the type of mass movement produced, which was understood before the beginning of the work. For example, rock falls are produced at much higher angles than debris flows, which use mountainous channels to travel.
• Several GIS analysis techniques were used to analyze the data, and this list is by no means exhaustive:
  • Several overlays and intersections to create initial characterization discussed above.
  • DEM analysis to create slope profiles and hillshades.
  • Several joins to create attribute tables which contained the data that we required to complete analysis and summary tables.
  • Manual entry of literature data, and subsequent importation into ArcGIS.
• If I were to redo the project, I would have organized team meetings the day of the proposal. It was very difficult to complete work remotely, but when we were together brainstorming and completing tasks the job went very smoothly. Advice to any future students completing projects like this: organize team meetings as soon as possible!
• In continuation with the above bullet, data management was difficult remotely. Data was always transferred in our group as a zipped (!) file through a physical USB device. It is very important to zip up geodatabase and associated files to ensure no little files our lost which could cause important data loss!
• The data we used was all public domain. That being said, its reliability was questionable. If a similar analysis were done in industry, the data would have been created by the firm themselves using geologists, ecologists, and other related professionals to capture the data. Historical landslide data was only available through the literature and had to be manually entered, which was very tedious and slowed progress. All in all, I am very satisfied with our final product given the resources at our disposal.

Link to final project:

GEOB270FinalProjectReport-Mondayat2Group4.pdf