Category Archives: Education

Please join us – Thursday, February 2, 2017

By iowaviewJanuary 21, 2017Earth as Art, Education, Event, Imagery, Landsat, Outreach

IowaView and ISU GIS Facility will be hosting an art exhibit in the Design on Main gallery in February. It will be a unique exhibit that is a fusion of art and science – we hope that the exhibit will inspire viewers with beautiful images from around our planet and also provide a platform for education (satellite imagery, geography, earth science, physics, and art.)

The opening reception for the exhibit is on February, 2, 5-8pm. We are planning to have a gallery talk at 6:30pm by Brent Yantis, the AmericaView collection curator as well as refreshments. AmericaView is a nationwide consortium for remote sensing education, research, and geospatial applications. For additional details visit our Earth as Art exhibit page.

How will you be celebrating this Martin Luther King Jr. Day?

By iowaviewDecember 21, 2016Education, Event, Humanitarian Mapping, MLK Jr. Day, OutreachMapping Party, MLK Day of Service 2017

“Life’s most persistent and urgent questions is: what are you doing for others?”

– Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

The ISU GIS Facility would like to invite you to spend part of your day with us.

The ISU GIS Facility, in cooperation with IowaView, will be hosting a Martin Luther King, Jr. Day of Service Event on January 16^th, 2017 in Durham 206. The event will take place from 10am to 1pm. Attendees will participate in a worldwide volunteer effort called Open Street Map – (OSM), a crowd-sourced map of the world that is open source, free and available for any use. OSM provides online web mapping tools for users to map roads, buildings, water bodies and features of interest using satellite imagery as a base.

Past projects have worked with humanitarian groups like the Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders using OSM to coordinate mapping in areas with a critical need for new maps, past projects have included areas in western Africa fighting Ebola, hurricane affected areas in the Philippines or other emergencies or disasters around the world.

*No previous experience is necessary to participate – anyone can join us!*

If you are interested in participating in the ISU OSM Mapping Party, or have questions, please send an email to iowamapgive@gmail.com or visit https://www.iowaview.org/isu-osm-mapping-party-details/.

Save the date: Earth as Art Exhibit – February 2017

By iowaviewDecember 1, 2016Education, Event, Outreach, USGSAmericaView, Earth as Art, Education, February 2017, IowaView, Outreach

: Colima Volcano

: Earth Selfie

: Cubism – Landsat Style

: Canyonlands

LouisianaView is loaning us their Earth as Art art exhibit for the month of February. We are working to create a fun and educational art exhibit for all. You will not want to miss this exciting event. For a preview, visit Earth as Art online: http://eros.usgs.gov/imagegallery/earth-art-4.

earth-as-art-laview2

IowaView hosts a Successful Earth Observation Day!

By iowaviewOctober 13, 2016Activity, Earth Observation Day, Education, OutreachBrian Hornbuckle, Celebration and Mapathon, Earth Observation Day 2016, SMAP

We had a fun and informative Earth Observation Day. Here are some highlights and pictures:

There were 24 attendees.
We had 15 mappers, who helped build a better basemap in for areas in Botswana. Volunteers mapped dozens of roads and over 500 buildings during our mini-mapathon (45 mins)!
Dr. Brian Hornbuckle shared with us about his research observing the earth with microwave satellites and ground sensors. If your are interested in learning more about the SMAP (Soil Moisture Active Passive) satellite, NASA has a free webinar series (5 hour-long sessions) available through their Applied Remote Sensing Training (ARSET program).

Earth Observation Day is here!

By iowaviewOctober 11, 2016Earth Observation Day, Education, Game

Happy Earth Observation Day!

We will be celebrating the day by having a mini-mapathon followed by pizza and an earth observation research talk by Dr. Brian Hornbuckle. Dr. Hornbuckle will be discussing his work with the satellites SMAP (Soil Moisture Active Passive-US) and SMOS (Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity- European) and ground sensors to determine soil moisture across Iowa.

If you have time for some fun today consider playing the AmericaView Remote Sensing Imagery Game!

Dive into the OSM World of Mapping – 4-H youth mapping event

By iowaviewJuly 13, 2016Education, Event, Humanitarian Mapping, Outreach

On June 30, 2016, IowaView staff hosted a mapping workshop as part of the annual Iowa 4-H State Conference. There were 7 students in attendance. The workshop included an introduction to GIS/remote sensing, a summary of a current GIS Facility project, and two hands-on mapping projects in George, Iowa and Mount Singabung, Indonesia.

For various mapping workshops, IowaView has been adopting small towns (Leon, Ogden) across Iowa to continue adding to and filling in the Open Street Map basemap for Iowa. George, Iowa is a small town with a population of 1,055 located in Lyon County in northwest Iowa.

IowaView choose to focus our second project on Mount Singabung, Indonesia which was identified as a top priority by the United States Geological Survey – Volcano Disaster Assistance Program. Sinabung is an active stratovolcano that has had consistent activity since 2010. The volcano poses a significant risk to those living in close proximity. Recent activity includes eruptions in 2010, 2013, 2014. The latest eruption occurred May 2016, killing 7 Indonesians.

The group made over 2,500 edits during the workshop.

Below are before and after screen shots of George, Iowa.

Results from MLK Jr. Day MapGive Event

By iowaviewFebruary 4, 2016Education, Event, Humanitarian Mapping, MLK Jr. Day, Outreach

On January 18, 2016, IowaView hosted our second annual mapping party to celebrate the Martin Luther King Jr. Day of Service. Over the course of the party we mapped over 1,500 ways (linear features and boundaries) and over 10,000 nodes (points). Our efforts were primarily focused on the town of Ogden, Iowa and Raung, East Java, Indonesia, an area identified as high priority by the Volcano Disaster Assistance Program.

Below is a link to a story map showing the progress we have made mapping Ogden, Iowa over the last two mapping events we have hosted. http://arcg.is/1VNfIJH

2nd Annual MLK Jr. Day Mapping Party!!!

By iowaviewJanuary 21, 2016Education, Event, Humanitarian Mapping, MLK Jr. Day, Outreach

On January 18, 2016, the IowaView staff hosted the 2nd Annual OSM/MapGive Mapping Party at ISU’s Durham Center on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. There were 20 mappers that were able to join in the day of service on site and several that participated remotely. For the first part of the session participants mapped a small Iowa town and then for the second part of the session participants spent time mapping areas around Raung Volcano, in East Java, Indonesia as part of a collaboration with Volcano Disaster Assistance Program.

Back to School Teaching Tools: Using Phenocam Images in the Classroom

By iowaviewSeptember 3, 2015Education

The new school year has begun. As we trade in our flip flops and towels for shoes, socks, and shirts, the world around us is also signalling the change of seasons. The grass and trees will soon be getting their autumn colors as they fade from their vigorous summer greens and yellows to reds, oranges, and browns. This is a great time to introduce and discuss concepts of seasonal change, phenology,

The Harvard Forest website has over two dozen great resources to get students (5th grade – high school) thinking about seasonal change. Below are several exercises that especially stood out:

This link contains an excel template for displaying information for the temp vs % leaf loss

IowaView Phenocams are online!

By iowaviewAugust 26, 2015Article, Education, Imagery, OutreachAmericaView, Iowa State University, IowaView, phenocam

IowaView Phenocam – Grand Tetons, WY

A phenocam is a digital camera that takes pictures at set intervals as a way to track the change in vegetation and climatic conditions throughout the year at a given location. The phenocam provides fixed scene, time-lapse images over the course of a year, which can then be analyzed for a variety of scientific uses, including seasonal changes such as spring “green-up” or fall “leaf-off.”

Team members installing the IowaView Phenocam in Wyoming

IowaView has partnered with Dr. Diane Debinski and the Debinski Lab (Iowa State University – Ecology, Evolution, and Organismal Biology) to install two phenocams at their research areas in Iowa – Grand River Grassland and Wyoming – Grand Teton. The IowaView phenocams are part of a larger phenocam network across the USA and world.

Locations of Phenocams Sites

Picture taken by IowaView Phenocam – Grand Tetons in Wyoming

Picture taken by IowaView Phenocam – Grand River Grasslands in Iowa

In the coming weeks, we will provides links for educational opportunities that provide instructions on using the phenocam data in the classroom.

Thanks to the Debinski Lab for their work getting our phenocams running! Great work!

Phenocam Installation Crew in Iowa