Teaching Science with Geospatial Technologies

New USGS publication on Marcellus drilling and water resources

kedelstein — Tue, 12 May 2009 14:38:34 +0000

This is very nicely written, clear, and succinct….

Water Resources and Natural Gas Production from the Marcellus Shale
By Daniel J. Soeder(1) and William M. Kappel(2)

(1) U.S. Geological Survey, MD-DE-DC Water Science Center, 5522 Research Park Drive, Baltimore, MD 21228
(2) U.S. Geological Survey, New York Water Science Center, 30 Brown Road, Ithaca, NY 14850

View or download the publication:

http://md.water.usgs.gov/publications/fs-2009-3032/

US grid shown in NPR’s interactive maps

kedelstein — Tue, 05 May 2009 14:20:28 +0000

NPR did a nice job creating a fairly interactive graphic that represents the power plants, the grids, solar power and wind power. Select an area along the top and then you can change the visualization with drop down menus or other choices on the left.

http://www.npr.org/news/graphics/2009/apr/electric-grid/

Old Japanese maps on Google Earth unveil secrets

kedelstein — Tue, 05 May 2009 14:16:10 +0000

TOKYO – When Google Earth added historical maps of Japan to its online collection last year, the search giant didn’t expect a backlash. The finely detailed woodblock prints have been around for centuries, they were already posted on another Web site, and a historical map of Tokyo put up in 2006 hadn’t caused any problems.

But Google failed to judge how its offering would be received, as it has often done in Japan. The company is now facing inquiries from the Justice Ministry and angry accusations of prejudice because its maps detailed the locations of former low-caste communities.

Read complete article here: http://tech.yahoo.com/news/ap/20090502/ap_on_hi_te/as_japan_google_dark_secrets

Help science, monitor birds….

kedelstein — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 14:17:48 +0000

A couple of items for teachers interested in incorporating bird population studies into their curricula:

Last week, The State of the Birds report was released. You can download the report from http://stateofthebirds.org . Noteworthy for the classroom is the 6-minute long video embedded into the webpage that succinctly describes the current state of the birds, concerns, and what we can do to help. It’s really beautifully done, and was produced by the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology (CLO).

If you’d like to combine technology and birding right at your school, consider installing a migration recorder on the roof of your building. Techniques for monitoring night migration are described in this blog entry http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/03/birdmonitors.html, which features the work of CLO’s Andrew Farnsworth, and also my friend Bill Evans. Bill, who’s based in Ithaca, has worked with public schools along the Gulf coast, setting up a bird monitoring network, and has designed microphones that can be built for $30.

This might be a nice project to share with your school’s technology teachers.

Free Terrain and USGS DRG Topographic Data…and more!

kedelstein — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 15:08:41 +0000

Carol Burch, one of our GIT Ahead participants, found this cool website with great link. She especially liked the historical topo maps from the Army collection- topos from all over the world! http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/imw/

Note that you can now download (for free!!) Landsat satellite imagery from anywhere via http://glovis.usgs.gov/

Immigration Explorer online resource

kedelstein — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 14:27:08 +0000

GIT Ahead teachers may want to share this resource with colleagues in social studies.

This is an interesting display of census info, 1880-present, on an interactive New York Times website from 10 March 2009. Note that the default setting is “All Countries” but you can also use the drop-down arrow to show immigration levels from individual countries.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/03/10/us/20090310-immigration-explorer.html?exampleSessionId=1236774583736&exampleUserLabel=nytimes

NASA-Funded Carbon Dioxide Map of U.S. Released on Google Earth

kedelstein — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 21:17:13 +0000

Thanks to Al Bodzin, our colleague at Lehigh University for sharing this with us.

Interactive maps that detail carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel combustion are now available on the popular Google Earth platform. The maps, funded by NASA and the U.S. Department of Energy through the joint North American Carbon Program, can display fossil fuel emissions by the hour, geographic region, and fuel type.

FULL STORY: http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/co2_map.html

Be sure to check out the CO2 Flyover link at the top, right-hand side of the page.

The site will take you to the Vulcan project at the Purdue site where you can view the data online with the Google Plug-in or download the KML files.

Mapping Industrial Pollutants

kedelstein — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 18:50:28 +0000

The Comission for Environmental Cooperation’s new map layer for Google Earth lets users explore pollution data from over 30,000 industrial facilities in North America. With new information on chemical releases and transfers from Mexican industrial sources now available to the public, the CEC has created the first seamless, North America-wide map layer connecting citizens with point-specific industrial pollutant data in Canada, Mexico and the United States. Information can be downloaded in KML file format, and used directly in Google Earth.

For more information, visit http://www.cec.org/naatlas/prtr/

Science Videos from American Museum of Natural History

kedelstein — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 15:21:58 +0000

Gamma-ray bursts, flashing in the sky. Melting glaciers, offering clues to climate change. Lemurs of Madagascar, struggling to survive. Stem cells, ushering in new cures for human diseases.

Educators and students can explore these and many more developments in astrophysics, Earth science, biodiversity and human biology, and evolution, courtesy of New York City’s American Museum of Natural History (AMNH). The museum’s Science Bulletins, a free online program, takes viewers to where science is happening through high-definition videos and interactive media.

To make these electronic science news and information updates more widely available, AMNH created a website for them at www.amnh.org/sciencebulletins.

Science Bulletins are documentary-style feature stories, averaging approximately eight minutes, about scientists’ work in the field, along with regular research updates employing scientific visualizations and imagery. Bulletins come in four categories: Astro, Earth, Bio, and Human. These tools can help students “see science in action” and expose them to science careers, as well as make it easier for them to understand science concepts and data.

Excerpted from http://www.nsta.org/publications/news/story.aspx?id=55589

Global Imagery GIS Datasets Available

kedelstein — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 14:46:51 +0000

Unearthed Outdoors, LLC is making a selection of True Marble global GIS datasets available for free use (with limitations). You can download the files in two formats (32km to 250m resolution): georeferenced GeoTIFF files for use with GIS programs and PNG files for use with graphics programs. Google Earth uses this imagery. You can now use it with ArcGIS.

http://www.unearthedoutdoors.net/global_data/true_marble/download