Blog

Earth as Art Exhibition – February 2-26, 2017

By Earth as Art, Imagery, Landsat, Outreach

The ISU GIS Facility is bringing an art exhibit to Ames! Earth as Art features beautiful Landsat prints selected from the four Earth as Art collections. We are also producing some k-12 educational activities for our younger gallery visitors to enjoy. The opening reception for the exhibit is on February, 2.  We are planning to have a gallery talk by the AmericaView collection curator as well as refreshments. Gallery hours are: Thursday: 4 to 7; Friday: 2 to 5; Saturday 11 to 5.  We are also interested in scheduling additional hours by appointment, please contact amylogan@iastate.edu for more information.

We hope to see you there!

 

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

By Education, Event, Humanitarian Mapping, MLK Jr. Day, Outreach,

“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 16th, 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/.

 

2016 Imagery available for Eastern Iowa!

By Article, Imagery, , , , ,

Spring 2016 ortho imagery is now on the Orthoserver – http://ortho.gis.iastate.edu/.  ISU GIS Facility staff created natural color, color-infrared, and 4 band image services for the spring 2016 aerial flight of the eastern half of Iowa.  The source resolution is 1 foot.  The services can be found at: http://ortho.gis.iastate.edu/arcgis/rest/services/ortho . 

2016-ortho

Save the date: Earth as Art Exhibit – February 2017

By Education, Event, Outreach, USGS, , , , ,

 

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 Activity, Earth Observation Day, Education, Outreach, , ,

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

earth-observation-day-10_11_2016
  • There were 24 attendees.1011161113_resized
  • 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)!  earth-observation-day-10_11_2016-botswana
  • 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).   img_7742

Earth Observation Day is here!

By Earth Observation Day, Education, Game

Happy Earth Observation Day!

earth-ob-day-logo

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!

 

 

Celebrating a 40 year milestone of Landsat Color photomosaics

By Article, Landsat

I was going through a collection of maps in my basement this weekend and found the map seen below: PORTRAIT U.S.A. – the first color photomosaic of the 48 contiguous United States which was featured in the July 1976 issue of National Geographic Magazine. Here’s to forty years of color photomosaics!  Happy Monday!

Here’s a description of the map from the National Geographic website: The first color satellite photomosaic of the 48 contiguous United States, this landmark map was published in July of 1976. The near-true color imagery creates a portrait of the patchwork quilt of the entire country. Trace the Mississippi river from its source to the Gulf of Mexico. See the deserts of New Mexico, Arizona, and California. Follow the Rocky Mountains through the western states. A cartographic benchmark, this map laid the groundwork for the many that have followed. http://www.natgeomaps.com/portrait-usa-map

 

LandsatUS1976

In the blog post, “When the Earth Began Looking at Itself: the Landsat Program,” Fosco Lucarelli, provides additional history and images of Landsat program. The PORTRAIT U.S.A is composed of 700 mosaic images.

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

By Education, 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.

George4-H_ 6_30_2016_closeUp

George7_13_2016-Closeup