This year NASA’s Earth Day theme is #ConnectedByEarth. Visit the NASA Earth Day Poster website to watch a short video about the inspiration for the poster and discover the gems hidden within the poster. Download your copy of the poster to learn more about bees and our natural world.
Here are some ways to celebrate:
A. Get outside – enjoy the beauty of the earth and mark your observations.
Consider joining a citizen science project such as Nature’s Notebook or GLOBE observer Tree Challenge.
B. Explore our beautiful Earth with Ellie Leydsman McGinty’s (UtahView) Earth as Art 4 tour.
C. Learn some new GIS skills with resources from AmericaView members: Google Earth Engine (GeorgiaView), QGIS (WestVirginiaView), or ArcGIS Pro (VirginiaView).
D. Put together an Earth image Puzzle.
Below is the poster that IowaView staff displayed at the virtual 2021 Iowa Water Conference, April 6-8, 2021. Click on the image below to explore the poster.
Students in grades 4-12 are invited, with their teachers, to participate in this year’s mapping contest sponsored by Esri, the Iowa Geographic Information Council (IGIC), and William Penn University. This year’s theme is Mapping Unique Iowa Features.
Contest Website: https://sites.google.com/site/iowamapcontest/home
Story Maps Website: https://www.esri.com/en-us/arcgis/products/arcgis-storymaps/overview
How to participate: Use the Story Map application to tell a story about a unique feature site using a map and pictures.
There will be $100 cash prize and a certificate for the top five middle school (grades 4-8) and top high school (grades 9-12) map entries. The top entry from each state will be submitted to the national competition hosted by Esri.
Schools must submit their winners to the state for judging by 5 p.m. on Wednesday, May 12, 2021. Iowa GIS professionals will judge the entries so Iowa awards may be announced, and send winning entries on to Esri for the national competition.
Are you interested in learning more about remote sensing but have a limited budget? This February, OhioView will be presenting , “Remote sensing on a shoestring,” and will guide you through how to begin using freely available software and data to perform remote sensing analysis.
Topics for each of the workshops (and their skill level) are as follows:
February 5, 2021, 9am – 1pm (EST):
Use this link to register for the February 5 workshop: https://forms.gle/Z269biTar4vU23DU7 The last day for registration for the February 5 workshop will be January 28, 2021.
February 26, 2021, 9am – 1pm (EST):
Use this link to register for the February 26 workshop: https://forms.gle/HkRGQ3fn8S81443U6 . The last day for registration for the February 26 workshop will be February 18, 2021.
On November 1st, IowaView staff participated the “meet-a-scientist” at the annual Reiman Gardens Spirits in the Gardens event featuring a self guided pathway with hundreds of carved pumpkins as well as scientists to meet along the way. During our shift, there were over 250 visitors of all ages. We were able to share posters featuring remote sensing and GIS, which included aerial imagery of Ames and Reiman Gardens dating from the 1930s to 2019. Participants enjoyed seeing change over time as Ames has urbanize over the last ninety years. Staff gave out goodie bags with AmericaView poster, USGS trading cards, and Earth as Art bookmarks and booklets.
Join us this week, November 15-21, 2020, as we celebrate Geography Awareness Week. Throughout we will be posting various activities and videos from our friends at OpenStreetMap, National Geographic, and Esri to help you get engage and get informed.
As a way to celebrate GIS Day and OpenStreetMap, we are encouraging everyone to go online either during this week or on GIS Day and contribute to the OpenStreetMap basemap. If you are interested and would like more information about how to get started, please email, Amy Logan.
If this is your first time using OpenStreetMap, sign up for an OpenStreetMap account: https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/new. Then look over this helpful resource from TeachOSM about how to get started and build proficiency with OpenStreetMap: (https://ubique.americangeo.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/2_buildings_worksheet_1-2.pdf)
ESRI has put together a fun Halloween themed Geography Treasure Hunt that uses their story map technology to test your halloween trivia and world geography knowledge. Good luck.
Another exciting Halloween opportunity for those in the Ames area is Reiman Gardens Spirits in the Gardens event. Participants will enjoy walking through a garden path of hundreds of beautifully carved pumpkins. It is a ticketed event, registration information here. IowaView staff member, Amy Logan, will be at the event on Sunday, November 1st from 5-7pm, discussing remote sensing and GIS and handing out goodie bags of Earthshot trading cards while supplies last.
Mappy Halloween!
Get outside today. Take a kid outside and enjoy the beautiful world around us.
Here are a list of suggested activities to help celebrate this day:
Check out the Earth Science Week No Child Left Inside webpage for additional resources and details.
Today think about how you use minerals in your daily life.
Join the Earth Science Week team in raising awareness of and appreciation for minerals and mineralogy among the general public as well as K-12 and higher education students and teachers in both formal and informal educational settings.
Check out the Earth Science Week Minerals Day webpage for more resources.
