Vermillion and the Whitefish Point-Two Hearted country, Michigan

This is a website for my land and the surrounding country near Vermillion (Also spelled 'Vermilion', one L, but that's not how they spelled it originally, nor how I spell it!) and Whitefish Point, Chippewa County, Michigan.

So far it's got several parts, as follows:

1. Maps (mostly satellite & aerial imagery) for my land, Vermillion, and the WP-2H country:

This link will take you to the main set of maps.
In April 2015 I'm updating some of the maps and adding new scenes. In the meantime, I'm leaving the older ones above and srating the revised pageshere.
Some of the first ones I made just after buying the land in 2006. I hadn't been there yet, so made these for friend George to try to locate and look at for me (hence the annotations, distances, etc.)

Use the controls above the maps to view manually or automatically in sequence. If the maps are too big and you can't see both the controls and views on the screen, hit F11 for fullscreen to make more space.
Press on the maps to get full-size - up to 65mb versions to see more detail.

There are about 50 in the first set, last added to in October 2012; about 35 or so in the new 2015 set, and a dozen or two in the 2006 set. They're at four different scales - from zoomed in on my land (1:3k) to the area encompassing the entire 'Whitefish Point & Two-Hearted country' (1:130k); which is Whitefish Point and west to Muskallonge Lake and south to the Tahquamenon. They're all the same size (the scale bar changes appropriately). They might jump a little between maps due to precision of the georeferencing of the imagery and/or software oddities in the programs I created them with. Lots of detail in those big versions to look over though!

It's fun to see how the land changes from year to year - note esp. the large increase in forest cutting 1992-2005, but also the forest growth rates 1992-2011. I've got aerial photos back to the 1950s to add later for a much longer view - but have to georeference them first to go on the maps. Will even add the original 1850's land survey maps here - they're beautiful! (see one here for my section; 50mb)

2. 2012 Duck Lake Fire maps:
I made these maps showing the extent and severity of the May-June 2012 Duck Lake Fire in Luce County, with a little on the nearby 2007 Sleeper Lake Fire. Haven't added yet, but the 2012 NAIP imagery shows the burn area well - in meantime, see the one on the Vermillion-WP-2H page, above.

3. For more information on Vermillion:
Here is C. K. Dodge's 1921 paper 'Observations on the wild plants at Whitefish Point and Vermilion, near the south shore of Lake Superior, and other parts of Chippewa County, Michigan, in 1914'!

Here is T. L. Hankinson's 'Results of the Shiras expeditions to Whitefish Point, Michigan', with many old photos of the landscapes at Vermillion ca. 191x!

See the vikipedia article, to which I've added a bit.

And here is forestry information from the MI DNR for this area: lots of info in the reports if you know how to interpret it. The MI website addressing is awful, so when this link breaks (it will; I update it from time to time, last 2015.03) go DNR > Forests, Land & Water > Newberry Management Unit

4. For more information on the Duck Lake Fire (DLF) and Sleeper Lake Fire (SLF), see:
The Michigan DNR DLF info page (always breaking; fixed 201503).
Eastern Upper Peninsula Regional Planning & Development Commission's DLF info page.
Edward Vielmetti has some articles on the DLF and SLF, including fire extent maps for different periods that the DNR has deleted. Assume you can still find the DLF maps here too when the wonky MI website deletes or moves the above DNR link.
Some more info, (with some working and some broken links), on the SLF.

5. For information on the NBR and NDVI analysis used for the fire maps, here are good overviews with illustrations:
http://wiki.landscapetoolbox.org/doku.php/remote_sensing_methods:normalized_difference_vegetation_index.
http://wiki.landscapetoolbox.org/doku.php/remote_sensing_methods:normalized_burn_ratio.

6. About the map web page display:
The 'slideshow' display uses javascript (since that's what I was into years ago when I made the first version, and I still like the display) the initial versions you see on this page are 100-300k each, so will take a little (or long) while to load, depending on the connexion. The screen views load five pictures ahead in the background, so if you load and hurry to zoom to view 10 you might get a delay.

The DLF and SLF fire perimeter shapefiles were supplied by the Michigan DNR, Newberry Forest Unit.

7. What's this all about?
First, it's to amuse myself and do some map-looking and imagery-looking of areas I like. Also the best way to 'visit' my land when i can't really be there (see below). My larger project is a full "Atlas of the Whitefish Point & Two-Hearted country", covering roughly the area between Whitefish Bay and M-123 on the east, M-28 on the south, H-37 in Luce County west, and north to Lake Superior. Planning several larger-scale sub-areas also, as Vermillion here. The finest country in Michigan, to my mind. See my (cryptic) running notes on the idea here.

So far there's just these general maps & the Duck Lake Fire maps, but I'm busy (off and on) working on the design and data for the WP-2H atlas. Expect some thematic maps sooner or later.

8. See also:
Similar for my new Keweenaw estate: http://rjl.us/land/keweenaw.
Similar for my Eureka, Alaska land... here are some pictures though.
The neat 3-item land index is here.