Category Archives: Education

Oh how the years go by: 40 years – Mount St. Helens

By Article, Education, Environmental Change, Event, Imagery, Landsat, Observation, Resource, USGS, , , , ,

This week marks 40 years since the Mount St. Helens eruption. The image above is from the USGS Earthshots trading card series. The images are displayed in color infrared which is useful for showing living vegetation in red. The mountains surrounding Mount St. Helens are primarily forest. Notice the extreme change in the landscape from the 1973 image to the post eruption image in 1983. The damage was extensive and ash covered much of the surrounding forest land.

Additional Resource

Earthshots: Satellite Images of Environmental Change – Mount St. Helens: https://earthshots.usgs.gov/earthshots/Mount-St-Helens#ad-image-0-0
Scroll through the images to watch the forest begin to return as the years go by!

Missing your Mapping Peeps?

By Activity, COVID-19, Education, Event, OpenStreetMap, , , , , , ,

Join the OpenStreetMap US Virtual Mappy Hour. Members of the OpenStreetMap (OSM) Community present short, informational talks related to OSM and other mapping related topics. Here are links to some the past and upcoming Mappy Hour topics.

Up-to-date Events Schedule: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Foundation/Local_Chapters/United_States/Virtual_Mappy_Hours (To attend in real-time you will need to register on the form)

Upcoming Events
Wednesday, May 13, 2020 8:30pm ET – Imports with Margaret Spyker

Wednesday, May 27, 2020 8:30pm ET – Topic to be determined

Friday, June 5, 2020 6:30 -8:30pm ET – NY Mapathon Part 1: Mapping houses in the town of Hempstead, NY

Tuesday, June 9, 2020 8:30pm ET – Brian DeRocher, Microcosm

Wednesday, June 25, 2020 – Topic to be determined

Past Events
Thursday, April 30, 2020, Mapathon w/ MaptimeBmore – (watch) Mapping POIs in response to COVID-19 (BNIA Part-1), Mapping POIs with COVID tagging (Part-2)

Wednesday, April 29, 2020, Steven Johnson, TeachOSM. (watch) Discussion around OpenStreetMap in education.

Wednesday, April 15, 2020, Erika Nunez, MapGive: U.S. Department of State’s public diplomacy initiative for open mapping

Thursday, April 9, 2020, Miles Campbell – (watch) OSM and Accessibility: In times of crisis, publicly available information for pedestrian access, especially for those with disabilities, can be invaluable

Wednesday, April 8, 2020 8pm ET, Virtual Validation Mappy Hour hosted by Missing Maps.

Wednesday, April 1, 2020 8:30pm ET / 5:30pm PT Maggie Cawley & Jennings Anderson, OpenStreetMap US Community Survey Results

Are you up for a challenge?

By Activity, AmericaView, Education, Game, Imagery, Outreach, , , , , , ,

AmericaView has a series of over 70 Earth image puzzles to encourage people of all ages to engage with satellite imagery and learn more about remote sensing by offering a fun challenge. The puzzles can be made to match ability or time available by choosing the number of pieces from 12 to 110 pieces. There are also options that allow the pieces to be shuffled or the border to be completed.

Any way you choose, check out these puzzles.

Canyonland – 25 piece puzzle

Google Earth Engine Tutorials

By AmericaView, Education, Imagery, Landsat, Outreach, Resource, Tutorials, , ,

Google Earth Engine is a platform for exploring and analyzing satellite imagery. It is available for academic, non-profit, business and government users.

Several members of the AmericaView community have created tutorials to provide a foundation to quickly begin learning and using Google Earth Engine (GEE). If you are new to GEE, you will want to start with this Google Earth Outreach tutorial. You may need to sign-up for a GEE account with an existing Gmail email address.

For a list of additional tutorials visit the AmericaView GEE Tutorial page: https://americaview-old.ssec.wisc.edu/program-areas/education/google-earth-engine-tutorials/.

Happy Orbit Day to Hubble Space Telescope!

By Article, Education, ,

Today we celebrate 30 years since the Hubble Space Telescope began it’s orbit above Earth. In these thirty years, NASA has been able to discover and photograph so many new areas of our universe.

The Hubble Space Telescope was the first major optical telescope to be placed in space. This placement in space allows the telescope to get beyond the distortion of our atmosphere with it clouds and light pollution to make unobstructed observation of the universe. The Hubble telescope has allowed scientists to view the planets of our solar system as well as other galaxies.

Resources:
NASA Hubble Space Telescope: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubble/main/index.html
Hubble’s 30th Anniversary: https://www.nasa.gov/content/hubbles-30th-anniversary
Hubblesite Resource for Learning: https://hubblesite.org/resource-gallery/learning-resources

https://hubblesite.org/contents/media/images/2009/31/2644-Image.html

Celebrate Earth Day 2020!

By Earth Day 2020, Education, Event, Resource, , , , , ,
Earthrise by Apollo 8 Astronaut William Anders/NASA

This Wednesday (April 22, 2020) will mark the 50th anniversary of Earth Day. While many of the large scale celebrations will have to be postponed; here are some ideas for ways to celebrate in your home or neighborhood.

#EarthDayAtHome with NASA – this website has a great collection of activities to explore our world. Here are a few that you might want check out: Terrestrial Tournament (vote for your favorite Earth images), Hit the Bricks (instructions for creating LEGO models Model 1 and Model 2), NEMO-NET (mapping coral reefs), download the ebook “Earth at Night” to view amazing images of our planet at night.

Water Rocks!, an Iowa based water education campaign, has two exciting Earth Week art contests.
1) Create a sidewalk chalk masterpiece showing your love for natural resources or ways to help protect planet Earth.
2) Gather interesting objects you find outside to create art from nature!
Check out the Water Rocks website for full details: https://www.waterrocks.org/.

ISU’s Live Green Monthly Newsletter is also another resource to find ideas for celebrating Earth Day. It is filled with practical tips for living more sustainably, fun DYI Green activities, opportunities for living green as well as other interesting articles.

Have a happy Earth Day!

USGS Earthshots: Satellite Images of Environmental Change

By Activity, Article, Education, Imagery, Lesson Plan, Observation, Outreach, Resource, , , , ,

The USGS has produced an amazing collection of images (also available as trading cards!) that show Earth’s change over time. The Earthshot collection has a wide variety of examples of change over time including:
– natural phenomena changes (glaciers, deserts,)
– social change (city growth,)
– human interaction with the natural world (mining, deforestation, agriculture,)
– natural disasters (hurricanes, tornado damage, flooding.)

Below are two examples of the trading cards, Mount St. Helens pre/post volcanic explosion and Las Vegas, Nevada population growth over time.

The cards provide side by side comparison images and also context about the images on the opposite side including information about the date of the images, satellites, bands used to create the images and location data.

If you view a location on through the browser you will get about 5 images you can review as well as context about the images.

Other Resources: Tracking Change Over Time (teacher guide): https://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/133/pdf/tracking-packet_web.pdf
Lesson Plan – Investigating Deforestation Throught An Earth Systems View Using Landsat: https://mynasadata.larc.nasa.gov/lesson-plans/investigating-deforestation-through-earth-systems-view-using-landsat

IowaView has trading cards available. Please contact Amy Logan for more information.