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Challenge Team Interim Report

Team Number: 025 School Name: Animas High School Area of Science: Ecological Topology Project Title: Topology and its effects on Land Management

Problem Definition: Everyone has heard of the BLM (Bureau of Land Management) and how it controls private and public use of government owned public lands. What some people don't realize is that they control other minor, yet very important, aspects of the usage of the land. One example that is currently an argued problem is the availability of public lands for the use of livestock ranching. It is not necessarily the amount of land available, but the zoning and limitations set by the BLM, as to the amount of grazing rights per square area of land. For example, one square section of land may be rated at 5 grazing animals, whereas a portion of this section is more than capable of supporting more than it is rated. Also, another section of land may be rated much higher, but in all actuality it may only be able to support half of its rate. Because of these discrepancies our teams goal is to improve the ratings of these maps through the use of real time surveying, LANDSAT imaging, and present topological mapping.

Problem Solution: In order to enhance the ratings, we intend to create a program using C++ that will take in actual surveyed variables and input into an actual 3D topological grid. We also intend to create this program to compare present topological information to the actual surveyed information to verify our results. Once this is done, we will input surveyed data on the same area's vegetation, water, water accessibility, etc., and compare this to present BLM limitations information in order to prove that there could be discrepancies in the previously set BLM grazing rights.

Progress to Date: Although our team is in its first year of the Super Computing Challenge, we feel that we have made significant progress with our project. After attending the Glorieta Kickoff and attending the many interesting and educational workshops we feel that we have attained the general knowledge required for the completion of our project. To date we have arranged several various square areas of land for surveying, as well as attained LANDSAT imaging for two of these, and topographical maps for all but one of these. We have also met several times and compared these images with each other in order to get a general feel for the area and what we are up against. As for the programming aspect of our project, several of our members who excel in this area have met, discussed, and began the preparation and creation of a basic C++ program to meet our project's requirements.

Expected Results: With a project like ours, it is very difficult to make predictions until we have actually surveyed the area and compared our results with that of past collected data.

However, we expect to find significant discrepancies with BLM data, at least, with the data we have obtained to present date. We also intend to create a basic, yet powerful, program for the current and future use of land management surveying and limitations.

Team Members

Team Mail

• Dave Justice
• Frank Orphey
• Mark Caveliere
• Rachel Wright

Sponsoring Teachers

• Mr. Ed Kerr

Project Advisor(s)

• Dr. Richard Oliver