DISCUSSION
GIS tools can be extremely helpful in spatial analysis and they can display data visually to make it easier to interpret. However, they can also be very time consuming and difficult to use properly. I learned that you need to be very careful in each step of the way and that you need to understand every step you are taking because the smallest mistake early on will cause you to have to redo a lot of things later on.
Overall, my spatial analysis agreed with the background research saying that a 1 m increase in sea level will have impacts on coastal communities and communities along rivers because it did slightly overlap with the land. This would cause more coastal erosion and could lead to property damage. Landuse along the coast is varied with residential, institutional, agriculture, transportation and protected watershed uses, thus, a variety of landuses would be implicated with a 1 or 2 meter increase in sea level.
One of the most interesting components of the project for me, was seeing the 10 meter sea level rise. After doing my background research I decided to make a projection of what it would look like with a 10 meter sea level rise, based on the information that sea level is accelerating at such high rates compared to historically. If in the next 100 years, studies suggest sea level to increase by 1 meter, I wanted to show what this would look like in 1000 years and so I chose to do a 10 meter rise map. The output of this map covered the majority of Richmond, Delta, Tsawwassen, Port Coquitlam, Maple Ridge and all the way out to the Fraser Valley. This analysis shows that if we do not take action in trying to stop or block sea level rise or we continue to develop low lying areas with residential and commercial uses, it will implicate many people in the long run. Much of the landuse in all these areas is mixed with lots of agricultural land, residential land and important transportation systems such as the Vancouver International Airport.