Weighted Overlay for Shipwreck Discoveries in Biscayne Bay, Florida.

This assignment had us create a weighted overlay of possible unknown shipwreck locations in Biscayne Bay, Florida.  This can help to provide a higher probability of finding wrecks without wasting too much time in the process.

Reclassified Benthic and Bathymetric Data for Biscayne Bay, Florida

As we looked for potential areas in Biscayne Bay to find further, undiscovered shipwrecks, we used reclassified data from existing Benthic bottom files, and depths from Bathymetric files to define them.

Benthic Data for Shipwrecks in Biscayne Bay, Florida

We used existing Benthic data to more closely define a 300 meter area around some known shipwrecks in Biscayne Bay, Florida in order to see if there are any similarities or anomalies. 

Biscayne Bay Shipwreck Charts

Biscayne Bay National Park in South Florida is totally underwater, and created to protect the many types of sealife in the area along with the preservation of many shipwrecks that sank on the coral keys or islands in the bay.  Without this protection, these sites would soon disappear.  I've used current and historical charts which include bottom material types and depths.

Tuekta Sycthian Burial Mounds, Reclassified Data

This week's lab was about taking several different landscape features and reclassifying them to create secondary coverages from previously created primary coverages.  We can use this data to show how the burial mounds related to their surrounding environment, such as elevation, aspect, slope, and contours.

Tuekta Scythian Archaeological Mounds in Russia

Our GIS Topics in Archaeology class completed a very interesting lab this week about the Scythian people of Russia, who created burial mounds long ago in this region.  We used data from the government satellites to locate mountain peaks, valleys, and everything in between to get a nice 3D effect, but we also used close up images of the actual mounds viewed from satellites to create a zoomed in image.  This area does not have a lot of data available, as one might think considering it's deep in the heart of Russia, but what we did find and use was more than adequate.

The Scythian people roamed the steppes and mountains of this area for thousands of years, and they left much archaeological evidence of how they lived and some of their culture.  They are a very interesting people, and you may want to read up on them.

This is week number two for UWF Special Topics in GIS Archaeology, and again it was very interesting!  We basically are using satellite images from Landsat in order to refine the terrain features located below with the end result of locating hidden Mayan ruins or pyramids.  It is very technical work, but will be beneficial in the end and can be used to find sites all over the world.

We created different map documents using the "image analysis" feature of ArcMap, which basically takes different "bands" of the color spectrum and combines them in various ways in order to benefit from their specialties.  The human eye can only see in 3 spectrums, but there are many other wavelengths that can help us to see through obstacles such as darkness, clouds, or haze.  Also, changing up the colors can help us contrast certain features of the jungle that might have been changed by falling plaster, building collapse, etc.  This is a relatively recent extension of GIS and archaeology due to better satellites and commercial data that has become available for analysis.  In the last several years many sites have been found or located because of this technology.