6
January 2017
PHOTOGRAMMETRIC ENGINEERING & REMOTE SENSING
I
ntroduction
The 6
th
Annual GeoLeague Challenge brought six
highly competitive teams of students and projects to
the ASPRS Annual Conference in Fort Worth, Texas.
The challenge celebrated the National Park Service
Centennial. The teams used freely available imagery
to produce an innovative visualization product
featuring the national park of their choice.
The winning team, The Caldera Cruizers fromNew Mexico
Highlands University, was led by Zakiya Shivji. The team
constructed a GIS story map to promote awareness of the
newly established Valles Caldera National Preserve
Figure 1. Location Map of the Valles Caldera National Preserve (ESRI Imagery Basemap). Counties data from US Census 2010 TIGER.
. It was transferred to federal management
under the National Park Service in 2015. Currently, the
amount of publicly available information on the Caldera is
limited. The story map highlights features that are vital to
the caldera’s environment and includes material about the
geology, topography, wildlife, seasonal weather patterns,
recreational activities, landform classification, and fire
history. This information will help set the groundwork for
future expansion of tourism and support for the area.
This region is composed of a super-volcano that had
eruptions in the last 1.2 – 1.6 million years (Figure 1). The
results of these ultra-plinian eruptions is an area fifteen
miles in diameter lined with large cliffs that form concentric
circles marking the caldera edge. The inside of the caldera
is composed of a beautiful valley with large, sweeping fields
interrupted by resurgent domes, such as Redondo Peak. This
unique volcanically derived geological structure provides
a natural attraction that invites tourism to flourish and
encourages economic opportunity for local people.
Photogrammetric Engineering & Remote Sensing
Vol. 83, No. 1, January 2017, pp. 6–10.
0099-1112/17/6–10
© 2017 American Society for Photogrammetry
and Remote Sensing
doi: 10.14358/PERS.83.1.6
