Recently PBS aired The National Parks: America’s Best Idea. The series has inspired this sequence of blog postings about aspects of my personal park explorations over the years via ArcGIS Explorer (AGX). See other national park blog posts for more.

We’re moving through my Fav 7. Today, Crater Lake. This visit too was on a family vacation which included other incredible parks along the way like Badlands and Yellowstone (See Bernie Szukalski’s Yellowstone AGX blog posts on adding Webcams and animations to a map.) But, Crater Lake wowed me beyond belief because of the geologic drama that happened there: The death of Mt Mazama.

Crater Lake is the caldera remnant of the former stratovolcano which is part of the Cascade Volcanic Arc. Although much material went into the landscape and atmosphere, the mountain essentially collapsed into the vacated magma chamber. In addition, the caldera became home to small volcanoes (e.g., Wizard Island) and eventually filled with water to form the lake. What a wild thing for a 1960s teenager from Illinois to learn.

With that as backdrop, I know that I want to grow my AGX project by adding content to better understand the scene and the violent climax. First to place Mt Mazama/Crater Lake in context, I want to add volcano data. The Smithsonian’s Global Volcanism Program has a free KML of volcanoes around the world. Once downloaded, I add it to my AGX project using the Add Content > KML Files menu. I place the new data inside my Crater Lake folder and rename the KML. Besides displaying the symbology and labeling as designed, it provides a couple of other nice features. The file contains a series of geographic subfolders which allows me to turn on/off selected parts of the world. Also, a click on any volcanic feature launches a Web link to detailed information.

Here’s my map so far.

Some Web research nets me two sets of data about the cataclysmic event—ash spread and caldera formation. I create three notes, one polygon (ash perimeter) and two point locations (caldera/lake animation and graphic). NOTE: Drawing the ash polygon is better accomplished by changing the AGX display to 2D.

Back in 3D mode, I zoom into the park with a primary focus on the lake. I add the new point notes, and create another frame in my growing AGX presentation.

Stay tuned for the next installment.

- George Dailey, ESRI Education Program Manager