Using satellite images, 5th and 6th grade students in a Laramie (WY) School learn about human impact on environment

With the help of satellite images fifth and sixth grade students at Mr. Tim Blum’s geography class (photo below) at the UW Lab School got a birds-eye view of how humans have impacted or modified their environments (31 January 2011).  Images acquired by satellites decades apart showed cleared forests, irrigated crop fields in the middle of the deserts, altered landscapes (new roads and water bodies), and urban growth.

As part of the Earth Observation Day (EOD) activities, WyomingView coordinator Ramesh Sivanpillai described the utility of images acquired by satellites are useful for monitoring changes on earth’s surface.   For example, Landsat images acquired in 2000 (bottom left) and 2009 (bottom right) shows the newly constructed roads (linear features), drilling pads (square features at the end of the roads), and ponds (in different shades of blue) for an area within the Powder River Basin.

The goal of EOD activities is to introduce teachers and students to remote sensing science and technology and is promoted by AmericaView.  Sivanpillai works with individual teachers in Laramie-area schools and develops remote sensing course materials that relate to the topics taught to students.

Blum and his student teachers introduced students to the human impact on the environment.  The remote sensing “presentation fit with our curriculum and the students were captivated,” Blum commented.  “Your presentation certainly made an impression on our students because the information you provided was referenced in several discussions that occurred later in our unit.”  Tailoring materials to individual class needs increases student engagement and learning.

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Virginia Middle School Students View the Earth’s Surface in Time and Space

By Tammy Parece, Geographic Society at Virginia Tech


On Saturday, February 25, 2012, VirginiaView, and the Virginia Geographic Society participated in Kid’s Tech University (KTU). Kid’s Tech University is a program at Virginia Tech with one primary goal: creating the future workforce in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) by sparking kids’ interest in these fields. KTU, active at Virginia Tech since 2009, invites middle school students from across the Commonwealth to participate in a university research experience. Geographic Society Members have participated on an individual basis in the past, but 2011 is the year we decided to be involved as a Society.


The title of our program was Looking Down is Looking Up: Why do we work with aerial photography? The GIS portion of the program was designed by Dr. John McGee, Associate Professor and Geospatial Extension Specialist, Department of Forestry and Environmental Conservation, and a leader of the VirginiaView program, and has been presented by John at KTU over the past three years. This year, John asked if the Geographic Society could provide the manpower for the event and members jumped at the chance to support student research experience. Geographic Society Members have participated on an individual basis in the past, but 2011 is the year we decided to be involved as a Society.

The program introduced participants to applications of some common geospatial tools - geographic information systems (GIS), global positioning systems (GPS), and remote sensing, to provide these young minds with a new understanding of the earth. In this activity, the students used GIS to identify changes on the earth’s surface. They also examined aerial photography from three different time periods (1962, 2002, and 2008). The students explored, estimated, and measured general changes in land use during these periods. Our display was the first one the students saw when they walked through the door of the Lane Stadium West Club Box. 


At our first table, we had two laptops with GIS programs running. The students were shown how to display the different layers in GIS, zoom in and zoom out to obtain different scales, and view the changes between aerial photos of the New River Valley Mall area. Students were awed at the changes between 2002 and 2008, but flabbergasted when they saw 1962. In most instances when they saw these 1962 aerial photos, they commented “nothing is there.” When they looked closer, they were able to identify farm fields, trees, streams, and the VPI Horticulture Research Center which was located on land now occupied by a strip mall.

At our second table, Dr. James Campbell, Professor, Department of Geography, introduced students to applications of stereovision in the analysis of aerial imagery introduced students to applications of stereovision in the analysis of aerial imagery. On a portable light table students could look at a glass plate of a 1968 aerial photo of Chicago and a 1980s high-altitude color infrared aerial photograph depicting the Roanoke, Virginia metropolitan region. Using a large mirror stereoscope, students could examine coastal landforms near a Minnesota Lake, using stereoscopic capability to see subtle variations in landforms and vegetation cover.
At our third table, participcants could view episodes of the Geospatial Revolution, a video series that introduces key applications of geospatial technologies in today’s world. We discovered that parents were not the only ones extremely interested in this video - many of the middle school students could not believe the capabilities of geospatial technologies, and their significance for our society.

Observing these kinds of changes helps us understand how landscape changes influence our local communities and environments. The activity was co-sponsored by VirginiaView, a state level organization within AmericaView, a national consortium that focuses on research, outreach to K-12 and community college educational communities, and distribution of imagery to a spectrum of users at state and local levels.

At the end of the day, we were thanked by VBI officials, including Dr. Kathleen O’Hara and Dr. Reinhard Laubenbacher. They told us that they were looking forward to our participation again next year. We let them know that we are participating in the next KTU event scheduled for Saturday, March 25. The theme for that KTU session is Health, Nutrition, Biomedical Engineering, and Medicine. They asked how we could participate in such diverse topics from session to session, an insight that highlights the essence of Geographic inquiry, which seeks to illuminate interrelationships between the physical and human worlds.

MultiSpec Update

A new version was released on December 19, 2011. Some of the new features include:

MultiSpec now handles the Polar Stereographic projection.

MultiSpec now reads the GML header projection information in JPEG 2000 files. The test for this has been with simulated French PLEIADES data. This spacecraft was launched this past week.

The coordinate view will be displayed and default to Lat-Long units when an image window is first opened if MultiSpec can handle the projection information that is available in the image file. This was done as a time saving feature; at least it has helped me out!

More details on the update are at the MultiSpec News link.

Archiving and Distributing Indiana Historic Sanborn Maps

This project archives and distributes the Indiana Sanborn 1883-1966 Historic Maps via the Indiana Spatial Data Portal (ISDP). All 11,517 maps are available in both TIFF and PDF formats on Indiana University’s Scholarly Data Archive (SDA). The SDA is located at both Indiana University Bloomington and Indianapolis campuses, providing automatic off-site copies of data for disaster recovery. Both the larger TIFF and the smaller PDF Sanborn images are available for spatial discovery via the Indiana Spatial Data Portal (ISDP). The public domain Sanborn images (1883-1923) which represent 87% of the dataset are available for download. Users may contact the staff at IU’s Government Information Services to request copyright restricted images (1924 – 1966) once they discover the images they need via the ISDP interface.

Landsat Tutorials from ColoradoView

ColoradoView has some really great downloadable PDFs and HTML files that take users step-by-step through essential remote sensing and GIS functions including downloading free Landsat data from the USGS GLOVIS website, creating multiple scene mosaics, clipping mosaics to a defined study extent, applying Maxent modeling and more! Many of the following ColoradoView tutorials were directly funded through AmericaView and created by ColoradoView Student Interns at Colorado State University.  Head on over to the ColoradoView Training page!

K-12 Students Present at the AmericaView Remote Sensing Conference in Cleveland, OH

On Tuesday, October 11, 2011, 20 middle and high school students presented their research projects alongside professors and graduate students at the AmericaView Fall Technical Meeting and Remote Sensing Conference in Cleveland Ohio. The projects all used geospatial technologies (GPS, GIS and remote sensing) to address an environmental problem. Ten student-led research projects were presented in a poster session in which a total of 40 projects were highlighted, including projects from university students, professors, and state agency researchers. Some of the student projects included study of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, the best roofing material to use to reduce urban heating, the Earth’s energy budget as affected by land cover changes, and the impact of ocean temperature on Cholera outbreaks. Students attended the conference for free and stayed for research presentations on wetland monitoring and ecological assessment by United States Geological Survey (USGS) and university scientists. The students received an AmericaView medal and teachers received a certificate for their participation.

Students and teachers from the following schools attended:
Penta Career Center, Perrysburg, OH – 12th grade
Lakewood Catholic Academy, Cleveland, OH – 7th and 8th grade
Roswell-Kent Middle School, Akron, OH  - 7th and 8th grade
Westerville North High School, Westerville, OH
Mr. Stefan Smolski, Grafton High School, Taylor County WV

AmericaView 2011 Fall Technical Meeting Kicks Off

The 2011 AmericaView Fall Technical Meeting kicks off today in Cleveland, Ohio.  There are a broad range of panel discussions, presentations, and workshops from some of the leading remote sensing experts in the nation.  You can view the full program here.  If you are looking to connect with a remote sensing guru in your state you can find contact information on the AmericaView membership page.  You can follow the meeting on Twitter #avftm2011.