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, Great Sand Dunes. The park is made up of various ecological components including mountains, grasslands, and other features but what drew me in originally and continually are the dunes These are the tallest sand dunes in North America, rising about 750 ft and covering a zone equal to about half the area of Washington, DC. Estimates place the dunes age at about 12,000 years. I also discovered the park includes a very intriguing creek system, Medano Creek, which pulses in the spring and early summer.

Adding to my growing AGX national parks project, I begin by creating a new Great Sand Dunes folder adding my park location as the first folder component. Next, I explore the park vicinity and discover a few things—the park is inside a large valley ringed by mountains and the park itself is up against one of these ranges. Through personal knowledge I know the names of these features. Using Find, I key in the three names, pinpoint the locations, and, with a right click, move them to my map.

Next, I create regional and park focused Views helping me set some context. From here, I want to be able to see the physical base map but also examine the park using the imagery layer. I go to Add Content > ArcGIS Online > search on “imagery” > Layers. I add the found layer to my map. Using the Manage Layers function (Home tab), I position the imagery layer just above my Basemap. Next, I use Transparency and Swipe (Tools tab) to peer between them.

In my Web research, I uncover a few key elements about the park and fascinating Medano Creek (text, videos, animations). I add these as links inside a new Background folder. Lastly, I add one of the videos to the map as a note. There is still much to discover about this park, but not right now. However, with the many components I have in the project, I can return to and expand it any time I want.

Stay tuned for the next installment.

- George Dailey, ESRI Education Program Manager