509 4th Ave E
Olympia, WA 98501
USA
The formation of the Mima-type mounds has been a puzzling and contentious topic. This study started as an idea for an undergraduate GIS lab. I was interested to see if I could use ArcGIS tools designed for hydrology analysis to classify the Mima mounds. High-resolution elevation data made this possible and I was able to identify over 27,000 mounds in five different prairies in southern Thurston County. A dataset of this size allowed subtle, but statistically significant, morphological and spatial characteristics to be identified.
Ken Tabbutt, Ph.D., a faculty member at The Evergreen State College, has taught interdisciplinary geology programs for the past twenty years. He frequently incorporates GIS in his classes that generally focus on environmental geology, hydrogeology, and landscape processes.
