Wind Farm Location in Great Lakes

The potential off shore wind farm location is near "Water intake crib" which is around 3-4 miles off from the NW of the downtown Cleveland,OH.
Reasons for selecting this location:
1. There is estimated wind power of class 3 to class 5 in offshore areas of Lake Erie. Prevailing northerly and westerly winds have a long, smooth fetch across Lake Erie which results in strong winter and spring winds, especially along the coastal areas [1].
2. Already a pilot project is being done in the selected location.
3. BERR criterias: a) The average winds on the lake Erie are the highest recorded in the state. The average wind speed in the location is 16.4 mph which is excellent for power generation(utility scale wind farms require average of 15.7 mph). Prevailing winds are Southwest [2].
b) There could be impact on aquatic organisms, fishes due to placing the wind turbines , electrical cables. But this would not be a long term problem according to the study by DLZ Ohio Inc., a subcontractor to JW Great Lakes .
c) The nearest dwelling is around 12 miles from the location which satisfies the noise and shadow flicker problem criteria in BERR. According to the BERR criteria for noise, if the turbine to receptor is between 200 & 300 m, then noise power level is less than 50dBA. Also, source noise level of wind turbine is between 100-106dBA[3]. As regards to the nearest port "Cleveland" is nearly 16 miles from the location.
d) It being a off shore site, landscape visual impact would not be a reason for concern.
Sources:
[1] http://rredc.nrel.gov/wind/pubs/atlas/chp3.html#lake
[2](http://blog.cleveland.com/pdgraphics/2008/09/large_01FGWIND.jpg)
[3] http://www.berr.gov.uk/energy/sources/renewables/planning/onshore-wind/noise/page18728.html

FlowMap

I used maximum line width of 40 points. I did not put the heading for the legend because of space constraint.

CARTOGRAM

Contiguous Cartogram, Robinson Projection; 10 Iterations

Non-Contiguous, Feature shape Cartogram

Non Contiguous Circular Cartogram (Most appropriate)

I feel Non Contiguous Circular Cartogram is most appropriate for showing the World's GDP. One can easily figure out the countries GDP from the changing size of circles. I have added both Feature shape and circular types of Noncontiguous cartogram just for comparison.

Dot Distribution Map

Module 6 Lab: Proportionate Symbol Mapping

Choropleth Map (Diverging color scheme)

Projection Selection: I selected "Albers Equal Area Conic Projection" as I feel that this projection displays the areas accurately and is best for respresenting the east -west extent of US.

Color Scheme: It is a Choropleth map. Data provided is quantitative in nature. I have considered population change as a bipolar in nature since it has negative values indicating population losses in some areas and also positive values in other areas showing population gains. There are areas where there is very negligible or no population change considering it as a dividing point shown by lighter (neutral) color in the middle. So being bipolar in nature I felt that diverging color scheme would be appropriate for this map representation.

Choropleth Map (Gray scale)

For the Choropleth map shown in the left, Gray scale color scheme is used. Also, as mentioned in the lab directions, 5 equal interval classes are considered for this map, where class interval for each class is determined by dividing the range of the data by the number of classes (here it is 5) and upper limit is computed by adding class interval to the lowest value in the data. Class limits are then specified (shown in the legend).