Ryan Coatta

Sea to Sky Gondola

NordicNinja — Sat, 01 Dec 2012 00:33:50 +0000

Description coming soon…

Fernie OCP Update Environmental Input

NordicNinja — Thu, 08 Nov 2012 01:56:04 +0000

Cascade is currently involved with the Fernie Official Community Plan (OCP) project as directed by Whistler 2020. I was brought in as the lead GIS consultant from Cascade, working in conjunction with city planners and GIS technicians at EcoPlan. As an environmental consultant we are providing input in regards to wildlife habitats, ecological communities, riparian area regulations, and terrestrial ecosystem mapping. In addition we are providing assistance with a landuse suitability analysis.

Natural Areas & Biodiversity Viewshed

NordicNinja — Thu, 08 Nov 2012 00:46:41 +0000

Recently under the employment of Cascade Environmental I was asked to create a Natural Areas and Biodiversity map for the Resort Municipality of Whistler (RMOW). In addition to creating a map showing a composite of ecological layers, the client also requested a visual analysis to show how these areas are seen from various locations throughout the municipality.

A sample of the maps generated is show below however, take not that these images are approximately 1/8th the true size of the map output.

The majority of the layers shown on the map were created by running attribute queries on the Whistler Terrestrial Ecosystem Mapping (TEM) dataset. Using specific criteria for a number of attributes, each variable was generated.

A digital elevation model (DEM) was created using three different contour datasets. In areas where the contour data had spatial overlap I gave preference to the higher resolution contours by clipping away the overlapped data from the lower resolution dataset/s. Because of the mountainous nature of the terrain in this location I decided to use a Triangular Irregular Network (TIN) to model the topography. A TIN best represents steep and craggy terrain compared to other DEM options. The TIN surface was then used to generate a layer representing zones of high slopes.

Mountain Biking Race Course Maps

NordicNinja — Mon, 05 Nov 2012 01:30:18 +0000

Cascade actively participates in and supports local community mountain biking events such as the popular “toonie races.” In addition to hosting our own toonie races in both Squamish and Whistler, Cascade provides course mapping support for many of the organized races in town, such as the BC Bike Race circuit. Many of the trail features are stored in a database maintained by our staff and when necessary we perform GPS surveys to acquire course routes.

Here is an example of a couple course maps that I made recently.

2012 CERG Webpage

NordicNinja — Sat, 03 Nov 2012 19:45:44 +0000

During a slow period in 2012 we decided that we wanted our webpage to be more dynamic. The existing page looked nice, but it was a bit cumbersome to update and add new content. As is the case we did a quick re-design and ported the page over to WordPress. Everyone was happy with the new look of the page but even more so with the ability to add blog post entries, twitter feeds, and links to social media.

Check out the Cascade webpage using the link below.

www.cerg.ca

EARLS Industries

NordicNinja — Sat, 03 Nov 2012 00:50:10 +0000

After having designed the inaugural EARLS Industries web page during one summer while off from school many years ago, it was in much need of a major overhaul. Thankfully due to a mix-up with Telus, the internet service provider effectively deleted the company’s web page when the web space it resided on was coincidently removed along with an old email account. This prompted the re-creation of the EARLS Industries web page.

To visit this page click the link below:

www.earlsindustries.com

I designed this web page using the Word Press Content Management System (CMS). The EARLS site is largely blog and portfolio driven.

My First CMS Page

NordicNinja — Sat, 03 Nov 2012 00:49:28 +0000

This was my first attempt at a WordPress based Content Management System (CMS) style web page. I am finding that the more I use CMS web design the more I like it! While this page turned out decent enough, it wasn’t as dynamic and easy to contribute to as I wanted it to be. That being said, it was an excellent self-taught learning experience.

Our Wedding Page

NordicNinja — Sat, 03 Nov 2012 00:38:59 +0000

Here is a web page that had some meaning to it for me! Katherine and I decided that rather than subscribing to your run of the mill ‘create a wedding webpage’ site that I would design our own custom web page. Surprisingly this site came together relatively fast, in large part because of the limited content and mostly graphical design.

The original Coatta-Clark domain no longer exists but the webpage can still be viewed using the link below:

www.coatta-clark.com

I created this web page manually using HTML along with a few jQuery java scripts to create the glow and fade effects. For the most part this site was an exercise in slicing using Photoshop. It was fun to make and everyone was of course very impressed with our unique layout.

2011 CERG Wegpage

NordicNinja — Sat, 03 Nov 2012 00:28:38 +0000

In 2011 while employed by Cascade Environmental Resource Group Ltd. (CERG) I took it upon myself during a slow period in our year to re-design the company’s outdated web page. A few months after posting the new web page we received one of the bigger contracts of the year from an unsolicited inquiry that came to us as a direct result of the client seeing our webpage. Needless to say the time spent on the re-design paid itself off.

I created this webpage manually using HTML and CSS coding. It was on of the better webpages I made at the time, but it will also very likely be the last web page that I create from scratch as I have subsequently moved on to creating web pages using a Content Management Systems (CMS) such as Word Press, Drupal, and Joomla. And as of the time of this post I have since re-designed the CERG webpage once again to get it onto WordPress.

Trans Canada Trail – Gap Analysis

NordicNinja — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 23:01:59 +0000

Here’s a simple BC overview map I made a while ago as part of the Trans Canada Trail Completion Strategy. Cascade was tasked with creating a plan to assist with the completion of the Trans Canada Trail (TCT). The early stages of this project involved identifying gaps in the trail, locations were a trail did not yet exist or had not been officially adopted as part of the TCT.

After inventorying all of the missing/incomplete sections of trail we came up with a way to visually represent and interpret the gaps. Each “bubble” feature shown on the map represented a gap in the trail. The bigger the bubble, the bigger the gap. The basic idea of this map is to visualize and draw attention to the areas where there are a high volume/occurrence of bubbles and therefore likely require more cost and resources to complete. In addition, each bubble shown was associated with a gap report detailing the circumstances of the missing or incomplete section of trail.

See more about this project on the www.cerg.ca web page.