The National Map from the USGS

The United States Geological Survey National Geospatial Program “provides leadership for USGS geospatial coordination, production and service activities.” The National Map is one of several initiatives administered by the program . The National Map puts orthoimagery (aerial photographs), elevation, geographic names, hydrography, boundaries, transportation, structures, and land cover at the fingertips of users through its web viewer. The National Map is transitioning to a new method for delivering its products, making it ever more useful for professionals, teachers, students, and the general public. The new National Map Beta Viewer and Download platform recently made its debut. In addition to better product access, the new viewer lets you preview and download all National Map data and new US TOPO maps from one site. It will be interoperable with map viewers such as Google Maps, Bing!Maps, Google Earth using WMS, KML or ArcGIS. The viewer provides GIS tools to identify features, perform measurements and reverse geocode. For more information about features Introduction Letter Beta Information Sheet User Help/Support (QuickStart, FAQs, Contact Us). Useful tools like area measurement is provided free of charge, unlike the free version of Google Earth. The video below illustrates some of these features.

I encourage you to check out the new National Map beta viewer.

Published in:  on February 5, 2010 at 5:27 pm Leave a Comment
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Google Earth Before and After images of Haiti Quake

Originally posted on The Physical Environment blog

The folks at Google LatLong blog have created a Google Earth layer with the most recent images of the devastation in Haiti. Below are before-and-after screenshots of the Presidential Palace and an area of Port-au-Prince:

Haiti Before and After Images

Image source: Google LatLong blog

Go to the Google LatLong blog for more information and the Google Earth layer.

Published in:  on January 14, 2010 at 3:27 pm Leave a Comment
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USGS Multimedia Gallery RSS Feeds

RSS feeds are a way for content providers to send web site updates to users. Users can subscribe via a newsreader or, as I do, add them to a personal web portal page like iGoogle. The user’s feed reader is updated with the latest information as new material is added by the content provider. The USGS uses a variety of social media and RSS to push out late-breaking news, research notes,  and a host of other information. Their Multimedia Gallery (http://gallery.usgs.gov/) feeds are particularly useful for teachers looking for materials to use in their courses. The gallery RSS feed alerts subscribers to new media as its added to their collections. Collections currently include:

Geology
DOI Recovery
Animal
Natural Hazards
Water
Biology
Climate Change
USGS Museum
Natural and Man-made Structures
Astrogeology
Native American and Tribal Activities
USGS Libraries
Employees at Work
USGS Wallpapers
Biologic and Environmental Contamination

Most items in the gallery are in the public domain.

Published in:  on December 6, 2009 at 3:39 pm Leave a Comment

Keeping track of the 2009 hurricane season with Google Earth

hurrican2The folks at Google Earth are at it again. Like last year, they have created a folder under “Weather” that lets you track the progress of the current hurricane season. Included in this folder you’ll find updated storm tracks courtesy of the National Hurricane Center. The current position, predicted track, storm overview, NHS storm advisory, reference information, and a near real-time news gadget are also provided.

Source of this post and image: Google LatLong.

The Physical Environment link: Hurricanes

Published in:  on June 25, 2009 at 12:05 pm Leave a Comment

Tweeting Geoscience

twitter_logoTwitter has become a phenomenon in the Web 2.0 universe. As many know, Twitter is a social messaging and microblogging site for staying connected to people in near-real time. Users send “tweets”, text-formatted posts of 140 characters in length to “followers”. Followers subscribe to these Twitter feeds, getting regular updates on their computers and smart phones. Twitter had been dominated by tech savvy Gen-Xers, Millennials, celebrities and well-known politicians like President Obama. The social networking site has experienced an explosion of subscribers using the service for a variety of different purposes.

Those in the geoscience community have found Twitter a useful way to keep other informed.  Earth science – related professional and governmental organizations are using Twitter to keep the public informed of late breaking developments related to their missions. For example, NOAA’s OceanExplorer (http://twitter.com/oceanexplorer ) uses Twitter to broadcast updates to its site, announce new programs, highlight articles in which NOAA projects are discussed. In academia, professors can “tweet” when they are in their offices and accessible to colleagues and students.

Below is a list of Twitterers related to geoscience and what they are tweeting.

USGS:  http://twitter.com/USGS
Type of Tweets: Program announcements, news, answers to USGS Frequently Asked Questions.

USGS News: http://twitter.com/USGSNews
Type of Tweets: News from the USGS

USGS Earthquake: http://twitter.com/USGS_Earthquake
Type of Tweets: recent earthquake activity

NASA Earth Observatory: http://twitter.com/NASA_EO
Type of Tweets: Imagery added to their site, site updates, new articles

Geostuff: twitter.com/geostuff
Type of Tweets: News articles

Science Dailybot: http://twitter.com/sciencedailybot
Type of Tweets: News fed from ScienceDaily, a premier online new source.

AEG Arizona: http://twitter.com/AEGArizona
Type of Tweets: News links, conference announcements

The GIS Forum: http://twitter.com/thegisforum
Type of Tweets: GIS in the new, workshop announcements, data resources, applications

GetGeologyJobs: http://twitter.com/GetGeologyJobs
Type of Tweets: Geology job postings

Published in:  on April 28, 2009 at 7:14 pm Leave a Comment

Physical Geography Podcast

podcastI am developing a set of podcasts for introductory physical geography. These are mostly aimed at procedures used in most introductory physical geography lab courses. They are free to download and use.

View them at my site or download free from the iTunes store

Published in:  on January 8, 2009 at 11:27 am Comments (1)

Live Hurricane Hunter Missions in Google Earth

Hurricane hunters are the “eyes in the sky” for those studying and forecasting hurricanes. The folks over at the Google Earth Blog describe how you can follow live hurricane recon missions, or see the results from recent missions using Google Earth. Check it out.

For more information about hurricane hunters see:

The Physical Environment Textbook links: Hurricanes

Hurricane Hunters
Courtesy Discovery News

Published in:  on July 21, 2008 at 2:42 pm Comments (1)

UNEP – Amazon Deforestation in Google Earth

Description provided by the site: “Compare historical images to learn about deforestation of the Amazon.
Use images from the past 30 years to compare the difference in forest coverage in the Amazon forest of Brazil, courtesy of the United Nation Environment Programme’s Atlas of Our Changing Environment layer in the “Global Awareness” folder in the “Layers” Panel in Google Earth.”

Published in:  on July 12, 2008 at 12:27 am Leave a Comment

Podcast – “Water Drops: All About H2O”

SUNY-ESF and renowned hydrologist Peter Black present a 5-set series of 90-second podcasts covering all aspects of water, “Science/Hydrology”, “Government, Law, & Organizations”, “Culture/History”, and “Management/Policy”. Podcasts are available at iTunesU. Titles include:

iTunes for OS X or Windows required. Get it here.

The Physical Environment textbook links: “The Hydrosphere”

Published in:  on July 5, 2008 at 3:28 pm Leave a Comment

Focus on the Internet: Weather Underground’s Interactive Tornado Map

View recent tornado reports, current radar, photos and historically significant storms using Google Maps with Weather Underground’s Interactive Tornado Map. A great example of Web 2.0 technology in action.

Weather Underground’s Tornado FAQ is a very useful resource as well.

The Physical Environment textbook link: Tornadoes

Published in:  on June 27, 2008 at 4:25 pm Leave a Comment
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