Taos High (132)

The Taos High team (#132) is from Taos. This year they've submitted a project titled Impact of Air force Training Flights over Taos and Northern NM.

Team Members

 * Rodolfo Garcia
 * Daniel Kroning
 * Melissa Pacheco

Sponsoring Teacher

 * Tracy Galligan

Proposal
http://mode.lanl.k12.nm.us/get_proposal1112.php?team_id=132

What is the problem?
The Air force has proposed to conduct training flights over Northern New Mexico and Southern Colorado.

Why it is important?
Cannon Air force Base will be performing an environmental assessment for the proposal. The Mayor, and town council opposed the training flights. There has been public outcry of opposition about the training.

How do we plan to work on the problem?
Multiple software programs will be used to create animation and computer simulation/models to study/calculate the possible impacts from low altitude training flights.

Interim Report
http://mode.lanl.k12.nm.us/get_interim1112.php?team_id=132

Problem Definition
The United States Air Force has proposed to conduct training flights over Northern New Mexico and Southern Colorado. This has raised many concerns for the people who reside in these areas, about the impact this could have on the town of Taos and its surrounding areas. Essentially, the Air Force had proposed to fly over the town of Taos, which included the Taos Pueblo. The Taos Pueblo has tremendous historical significance to the town of Taos and is one of the main tourist attractions of the area.

After citizens of Taos and Taos Pueblo opposed and protested against this, the Air Force decided not to fly over the Taos town limits. Although, they have said it would be difficult to estimate the potential trainings that would fly over outlying areas such as Arroyo Hondo, Tres Piedras, San Cristobal or El Salto. There is a concern about the flights frightening livestock and avalanches in southern Colorado. The Air Force has released a statement stating that there would be no significant effects on livestock, wildlife, or any of the other proposed, possible problems. However, this has been contradicted by other studies.

Problem Solution
Our proposed solution is to create a computer model showing the affects and impact on our agriculture and environment. However, we need further knowledge of the chemical composition of the town of Taos. Depending on the chemical composition and average age of buildings as well as current weather conditions close-ranged avionic flight can have various effects. Many simulations will be made to prove whether or not low altitude avionics can or will affect the general human population, region, and other species of living organisms in the area. The idea is to help make a decision on to let the Air Force fly over Southern Colorado and Northern New Mexico.

Progress to Date
Our new mentor, John Paul Montoya visited us in our class, who helped us with Star Logo and explained to us how we can start to build our computer model the way we need to. However, we are not confident enough with the program; therefore we may need more help. Also we started an animation on Alice and started to animate Planes flying over an area. We have been getting frustrated with Alice because we are unable to use a three dimensional background with this program. We have thought about getting another program and/or experimenting with another program. We have started researching the possible impacts the Flyover planes could have on the Taos Pueblo. Some of these impacts include, the potential vibrations from the flights that could pose structural damage to the Pueblo, loss of tourism, effects that noise might have on the people and wildlife. It is also noted that people with disabilities such as autism, post-traumatic stress disorder, or schizophrenia can also be affected by sudden noises.

Expected Results
With careful analysis of city composition and logical planning in our simulation(s)/animation(s) we hope to give an accepted concept of low altitude safety concerns that the people of the town of Taos and Southern Colorado have come to express. We also include agricultural and environmental issues in our concerns. We want to give the Air Force another point of view and a clear representation of and on the potential consequences of their proposed actions.

Introduction
Hi,

My name is John-Mark Collins, a Computer Engineering student at UNM & a technical intern at Sandia National Labs. See the biography on my User Page. Should you need any more assistance or have any questions throughout this process, please do not hesitate to contact me at johnmark@unm.edu [mailto:johnmark@unm.edu]

Progress
From the progress listed in your report, it sounds like you have hit a snag in the modeling of the flight, but how is the modeling of the information going? While modeling the flight is a nice visual aid, you do have a number of great ideas as to why these flights might be detrimental to the surrounding environment, but have you started writing code and gathering data to model these factors? How is the code coming along? Do you have a plan for presenting your data at the face-to-face presentation in a few weeks?

Mentors
It sounds like you have a very helpful mentor, his guidance would be good to follow. Are there other questions that you need answered? I am sure that he or I would be happy to help - the more questions, the better! There is never a bad question, only ones that go unasked.

Model
The models that you are currently attempting to construct sound more like a flight simulator than a computational simulation of the troubles caused by low altitude flights. It sounds like you have taken into account the possible disturbances that these low-altitude flights may cause, but have you thought about ways of modeling those, in addition to or in place of the actual flight? You don't even necessarily have to model the plane, you could model the height and geographical distance of any flight, compared to the data that you find on vibrations, sound disturbance, livestock interference, etc... My recommendation would be to not focus too much on the flying plane visual and focus more on the data gathering and visualization - maybe something that shows a visual of the height of a plane flight, and, as it gets lower, there are corresponding visuals representing the amount of sound and vibration caused by the flight, which would go up appropriately based on the data that you found. (Just a thought).

Overall, it sounds like a great project - finding your data and making that data into a visual model is the big challenge - good luck!

Rubrics
The judges will use these rubrics to evaluate your projects. Use them as checklists for what you need to communicate to the judges.

Expo Judges Rubric