During the filming of the movie ‘Wild’, actress Reese Witherspoon wondered off the Pacific Coast Trail and got lost somewhere in the Willamette National Forest in eastern Lane County. As a geospatial guru, I used my vector and raster analysis skills to compute a plan of possible search and rescue efforts. When downloading the raster data set, I noticed the layer showed a very mountainous region. The cell size of this data set was 32.81371204, 32.81371204. In my first step to finding Reese, I created this map which shows the search area based on two ideal lookout points, the terrain’s slope and water features, her starting point and ending point. Notice how the light blue areas are the water features. They are classified in the analysis as 100 and water features with no data are classified as 0 because we are only interested in displaying water features that meet the criteria.
The next element of analysis was constructing a map that shows a least cost path and cost surface in order to help locate Reese. The cost distance is a calculation of the least accumulative cost of traveling from the start point. Other data that could be used instead of cost distance is a cost allocation analysis. I think the slope/water cost surface is the best representation of travel difficulties because it takes into account the terrain, water bodies, and ability to navigate. The attribute table shows the viewshed’s object values, count, and ID.
Finally, I created a map that shows the ideal lookout points and their viewsheds shown in blue and green, the least cost path, the cost surface, water features, and Reese’s starting and end points. Based on each of the map results, I would say that the least cost path, viewsheds, and cost surface map seen below is the best way to find Reese and I recommend using Lookout Point 2.
