Evaluate site suitability for a vineyard in San Diego

Problem

Wine flavors are influenced by site conditions for grapevines, such as soil, climate, elevation, slope, and slope aspect. Site selection in the San Diego valley is crucial in producing high-quality grapes which will make a great wine.

Analysis Procedure

The three main influencing factors to a vineyard are warm temperature, gentle slopes and close to highways for ease of distribution. Therefore, locations that have an aspect between 157.5 degrees and 247.5 degrees gives maximum sun exposure for warmth, gentle slopes between 1.5 percent and 15 percent protects vines from frosts, and sites within 1 mile of a major highway provides easy access. The aspect, slope and distance feature layers are classified to the same ordinal scale so that they can be overlaid for meaningful comparison.

Using the Elevation feature layer as input, the Aspect and Slope layers were generated using the Aspect and Slope tool. The freeways feature layer was used to generate the Distance feature layer via Euclidean Distance tool. The Aspect, Slope and Distance layers were "Reclassify" so that they used the same scale of suitability of 1 to 5 with 5 being the most suitable. Remap files were used to simplify the reclassification process. Weighed Overlay tool was used to overlay the reclassified Aspect, Slope and Distance layers with 50%, 30% and 20% weights respectively. The San Diego map was classified into four areas of suitability ranging from 1 to 4.

Workflow Diagram

Results

Application and Reflection

Unlike the binary selection, the site is either suitable or unsuitable. The Weighted Overlay results in a range of degree of suitability. That is most suitable, follow by less suitable to the unsuitable.

Problem Description There is increasing demand for renewable energy sources such as wind and solar, hence the search for suitable land across states to house Wind Farms.

Data Needed Land cover and DEM data can be downloaded from USGS. Wind data can be downloaded from National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL).

Analysis Procedures The most suitable land for Wind Farms is where the slope is less than 20^o, barren land, wind speed of 60m/s. For wind turbines, the survival wind speed is between 40 m/s and 72 m/s. Slope is derived from DEM data. The Land cover, slope and wind speed is classified in the ordinal scale 1, 2, 3 with 3 being the most suitable. The three layers are then Weight Overlay to produce land areas with three degrees of suitability.