Since the forest is closed, I decided to spend some time working on the interactive maps on the site. The maps have been overhauled quite a bit. Several things most people won't notice (version upgraded and some under the hood optimizations), but a few of the new features are:
- Ability to overlay the modeled snow depths (this is useful in the late fall and springtime)
- Ability to overlay the current perimeter of active fires (will display in an orange color) - clicking on the fire area will popup a bubble with the name of the fire and the current size in acres. This data is sourced from public sources which is updated frequently.
- Ability to overlay the boundaries of wilderness areas (will display in a green color) - clicking on a wilderness area will popup a bubble with the name and description of the wilderness area. This is sourced from a public resource that should remain current.
- Added the Current Forest service map as a base map option
- I removed two map layers which I didn't think really offered anything useful (Thunderforest and Mapbox Outdoors) - they didn't offer much in the way of detail.
- The map now saves your current state so if you refresh the map it will display mostly as you saw it when you clicked refresh - you can also copy URLs which will have the base/overlays chosen, the zoom level and the center of the map. The URL will update as you move the map around and change the underlying maps or zoom level.
In addition, the base map/overlay setup was completely re-vamped. Previously, I had the same options in both, however I found out this caused issues with some of the new functionality I was using. Now, the base map options are current maps, and the overlays are the historical maps and the above mentioned overlays. If I find more interesting overlays in the future I may add those as well. This change doesn't really affect what you can do - you can still overlay whatever maps you want and change the opacity of any of the layers, it is just a bit different now - but it did streamline the basemap/overlay popup substantially.
I've done a fair amount of testing, but if you find something wrong, you can leave a note here or send an email to webmaster@trailadvocate.org.
I've added more features to the maps on the site. The list includes:
- The most interesting/useful I think - A new overlay - Riverside Fire Burn Severity Overlay - this shows the burn severity that the BAER team prepared - red is high severity burn, yellow is medium severity and the greens are low severity burns. It will help you see where the damage from the Riverside fire is. If you use this link which displays all the trails as well as this overlay, you can see how the trails are impacted by the fire: https://www.trailadvocate.org/MapViewer.html?q=https://www.trailadvocate.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/MHNF-ClackamasDistrictTrails.kml&o1=32&z=10 (hopefully a similar overlay for the Lionshead fire and the Beachie Creek Fire can be located soon)
- Displays current GPS coordinates on the map in the lower right corner
- Added a "Get 3 Day forecast" to the right click menu - it will show a pinpoint forecast for the area where the mouse is.
- Added spinner to show when something is "working" - some of the weather updates are rather slow at times.
- Added Snotel and RAWS weather station display to the map - right click and choose "toggle display of Snotel and Weather stations on map" - clicking on an icon will display recent observations as well as links for detailed data.
- Added several more overlays:
- Historical Wildfire perimeters
- Current Weather Radar
- Public Land Ownership borders
- Geographic names
- 24k Quad Names
- Township/Range
There are probably more features I've forgotten about but it adds quite a few new features that I think are very useful.
As always, please let me know if you find any issues with any of these changes.
If anyone was using the fire severity maps, the source I had for the riverside fire went offline, so I had to change. I've created overlays for the riverside, beachie creek and lionshead fire. The riverside one isn't quite as good as what was there previously, but it should still be reasonably accurate. The Beachie Creek and Lionshead fires are new.