Final Project - Rock Climbing Destinations in Wisconsin

Objective   
The purpose of the project was to come up with a research question and try to answer it using some of the data processing methods learned throughout the semester.  The research question for this project was: "Where could possible new climbing destinations be found in Wisconsin?".

This was chosen because rock climbing is a growing sport and more and more people are exploring for areas that could be useful for rock climbing around Wisconsin.  Though there are existing established rock climbing areas around the state already, there is still some potential for exploration of new lesser known spots.

Literature Review
Though no projects were found with the goal of finding new climbing destinations, these sources were interesting references that incorporated rock climbing into scholarly/academic work.

Aldighieri, B., et al. “3D Exploration of the San Lucano Valley: Virtual Geo-Routes for Everyone             Who Would Like to Understand the Landscape of the Dolomites.” Geoheritage, vol. 8, no. 1,               2015, pp. 77–90., doi:10.1007/s12371-015-0164-x.

Bollati, Irene, et al. “Geoheritage and Sport Climbing Activities: Using the Montestrutto Cliff                  (Austroalpine Domain, Western Alps) as an Example of Scientific and Educational                              Representativeness.” Italian Journal of Geosciences, vol. 133, no. 2, 2014, pp. 187–199.,                      doi:10.3301/ijg.2013.24.

Buchroithner, Manfred. “Creating the Virtual Eiger North Face.” ISPRS Journal of                                    Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, vol. 57, no. 1-2, 2002, pp. 114–125.,                                          doi:10.1016/s0924-2716(02)00109-0.

García-Rodríguez, Manuel, and Enrique Fernández-Escalante. “Geo-Climbing and                              Environmental Education: the Value of La Pedriza Granite Massif in the Sierra De                                Guadarrama National Park, Spain.” Geoheritage, vol. 9, no. 2, Dec. 2016, pp. 141–151.,                      doi:10.1007/s12371-016-0187-y. 

Data Sources
-WI State Boundary and Cities were acquired through "Geospatial Data" in the Q drive.
-Major Roads are from the 2010 U.S. Census Bureau
-Depth to Bedrock is from the DNR, GCSM dataset
-10 meter elevation raster (DEM) from NED dataset on the UW - Madison GIS website

Data Analysis
First a map incorporating slope and bedrock depth was created.

-In the bedrock feature class the feature to raster tool was used to convert the shapefile to a raster with the bedrock depth value being displayed, as shown in Figure 1.  This was done so that raster overlay could be performed.  It was reclassified so that a weighted overlay could be performed.

Figure 1: The depth to bedrock feature.  

-The slope tool was then used to show slope on the landscape throughout all of Wisconsin, as shown in Figure 2.  A resample was used to make the processing faster.  This feature was then reclassified also to rank the slopes from highest being the most desirable areas to lowest slope angles being the least desirable.

Figure 2: The DEM after the slope tool was used.  

-These two features were used in a weighted sum to create a map showing areas most likely to contain areas with possible rock climbing crags.

Next a map showing accessibility of the areas with steep slope was created using the cities and major roads features.

-A buffer was created around both the cities and roads was created and combined with a union/dissolve, as shown in Figure 3. 

Figure 3: The buffer around the cities and major roads.  

Areas within these areas are the most accessible.  Feature to raster was used so that raster analysis could be performed.  Then euclidean distance was used to show the distance to areas from the roads and cities.  Reclassify was used to rank them in order, and weighted sum was used with the reclassified slope feature to create a map.

Results

Figure 4: This is the map that shows possible climbing destinations based on slope and depth to bedrock.  It can be observed that the southwestern part of the state, or the "driftless area", contains the most areas with a higher probability of possible new climbing destinations.  

Figure 5: This is the map showing the accessibility of the areas of steep slope based on distance from cities and roads.  Again the driftless area contains the most areas with potential climbing sites, and the most accessible ones are within the buffer of the cities and roads and then in rank from red to green.  

Conclusion/Future Work
The driftless area seems to have the most potential for possible new climbing destinations, with many of the areas being easily accessible to major cities in the state and by major roads.

This method could be replicated and more/other characteristics could be added in searching for climbing destinations.

One possibility for future work could be to use the locations of established climbing destinations and see how they rank in each of the maps created for this project.