Learn Python!

Here's a compilation of useful resources in case you want to teach yourself some Python, especially in the context of GIS.

Books and Tutorials

• How to Think Like a Computer Scientist: Learning with Python
• Dive Into Python
• Learn Python The Hard Way
• Python Scripting for ArcGIS (Esri Press)
• GIS Tutorial for Python Scripting (Esri Press)
• The Python Tutorial
• Python for geospatial data processing

MOOCs and More

• Codeacademy: Python
• CS50x: Introduction to Computer Science (edX)
• Introduction to Computer Science and Programming Using Python (edX)
• Introduction to Computer Science and Programming (MIT Open Course Ware)
• GEOG 485: GIS Programming and Automation (Penn State)
• Geoprocessing with Python using Open Source GIS
• Esri Training: Python

Esri

• Python for ArcGIS
• Tapping Python (ArcUser Spring 2008)
• Using Python and QML to build native apps

For more, please see What are some resources for learning ArcPy?

Homo Sapiens - Child of the Ice Age

Homo Sapiens - Child of the Ice Age is an interactive 'story map' where you can trace and visualize the connections between human evolution and climate change over the last 4 million years.

The New Normal

Extreme heat events are more frequent by WXshift is a nice illustration of the so-called New Normal.

Scale of the Solar System

Global View: Climate Change in Perspective

Global View: Climate Change in Perspective by BloombergView is a nice and simple story map with a minimalist layout and design.

2014: The Hottest Year

This may have to get updated once the data for 2015 are all analyzed, but 2014 Was the Hottest Year on Record is a great visualization!

The Swiss Topography in 3D

Super-cool: Swiss Topo

GPS Radio Occultation

For GPS users the atmosphere introduces errors, but someone's errors are other people's treasure: weather forecasting using GPS radio occultation and CubeSats, in-essence a new way to get massive amounts of atmospheric profiles from all over the world.

Earth Primer

Earth Primer looks great - a geology 'textbook' that explains and simulates the ways in which lava, wind, temperature, and water shape our planet. The built-in simulator puts geological forces at your disposal to carve out canyons, grow volcanos, smash continents together, and more. Read more about it here.

Earth, A Primer — App preview from Chaim Gingold on Vimeo.

IR Thermometers for Smartphones

I'm always intrigued by IR thermometers that can be viewed via a smartphone - these can be great teaching tools when explaining the concepts around electromagnetic radiation - here are three options:

1. The Ryobi Phone Works IR Thermometer and App ($40)
2. The SEEK Compact or Compact XR ($249/$299)
3. The FLIR ONE ($249.99)

The 12 Days of Evolution

The 12 Days of Evolution is just that - a 12-part video series on evolution and natural selection by It's Okay To Be Smart.

1. What Is Evolution, Anyway?
2. Is Evolution Random?
3. Have We Ever Seen Evolution Happen? 
4. Can Evolution Make an Eye?
5. Have We Ever Seen A New Species Arise?
6. Evolution Is Dumb
7. Why Do Men Have Nipples?
8. Does Evolution Violate the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics?
9. Can Evolution Create Information?
10. Why Are There Still Monkeys?
11. Are Humans Still Evolving?
12. Does Evolution Have a Point?

The Best of 2015

This is the time of the year, so here we go:

• VisualLoop: 100 outstanding interactive maps of 2015 – part 1…
• VisualLoop: 100 outstanding interactive maps of 2015 – part 2…
• VisualLoop: 100 outstanding interactive visualizations of 2015 - part 1...
• VisualLoop: 100 outstanding interactive visualizations of 2015 - part 2...
• Maps Mania: 2015 Maps of the Year - Part 1
• Cartonerd: Favourite maps from 2015
• FlowingData: 10 Best Data Visualization Projects of 2015
• Eagereyes: 2015 Year in Graphics Links

Bonus feature: 15 of history's most revealing maps

Historical Carbon Emissions

The Historical Global Emissions Map is an interactive map of carbon emissions since 1750. I especially like the time lapse video (see below).

2000 Years of Urban Growth in 3D

2000 Years of Urban Growth in 3D is cool, but I agree with Maps Mania: no need for a map and certainly no need for a 3D globe.

Why Do Rivers Have Deltas?

Historical Geography of the United States

Here is the digital version of Charles O. Paullin and John K. Wright's Atlas of the Historical Geography of the United States, first published in 1932, beautifully prepared by the Digital Scholarship Lab, University of Richmond.

There is so much good material in there, for example travel times and distances from New York City in 1800, 1830, 1857, and 1930.

Update: American Panorama is an historical atlas of the United States for the twenty-first century.

There is a similar atlas just for Massachusetts: The Historical Atlas of Massachusetts by Richard Wilkie and Jack Trager (1991), but the digital version is not quite as sophisticated.

The BP Energy Charting Tool

The BP Energy Charting Tool seems cool and I like the fact that you can grab the data, but I could not figure-out easily how to use it.

DHIS2

DHIS2 looks pretty great: flexible, web-based open-source information system with awesome visualization features including GIS, charts and pivot tables.

Drones go thermal!

All kinds of new options with the Zenmuse XT by DJI and FLIR.

Deforestation in Bolivia

From the Daily Overview

A Year In The Life Of Earth's CO2

A Year In The Life Of Earth's CO2 - in this case 2006 - is a nice narrated visualization

Reality Editor

Full disclaimer: I don't exactly know what it does and how it works, but Reality Editor sounds super-cool!

The Quartz guide to bad data

The Quartz guide to bad data is great: real-world data problems and how to fix them.

U.S. Energy Flow

U.S. Energy Flow, U.S. Carbon Flow, and U.S. Water Flow - great charts from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

I am worried about my grade

Good Videos!

These videos about climate change are not necessarily all that new, but It's Okay To Be Smart does a nice job synthesizing the complex issues into watchable videos:

1. Climate Science: What You Need To Know
2. Why People Don't Believe In Climate Science
3. The Sixth Extinction

This goes along nicely: Short Answers to Hard Questions About Climate Change (Justin Gillis, NYT 28 November 2015)

World City Population 1950 - 2030

World City Population 1950 - 2030 is a nicely-done interactive map using stacked graduated symbols - and that actually works in this case. Also nice: a Map Guide and Analysis pop-up window is included.

Map of Gun Deaths

How Many People Have Been Shot Near You This Year? is exactly what it says it is: an interactive map of American gun violence.

The Yearly Biosphere Cycle by NASA

Concern vs. Emissions

From a recent Pew survey called Global Concern about Climate Change, Broad Support for Limiting Emissions:

From the NYT

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2015/11/29/opinion/sunday/29sun1/29sun1-blog480.gif

Your Country's Energy Mix

I'm not really liking the viz, but the data and information shown is pretty great - this is basically a realistic blueprint for a largely carbon-free world by 2050. And by that a welcome antidote to all this push towards geoengineering as the only viable 'solution'. Have a look at How Could Your Country's Energy Mix Look?

How El Nino affects weather

And a nice interactive chart of southern oscillation index: How El Nino affects weather

Gauging a warming world

Pretty impressive infographic / article by the Washington Post: Gauging a warming world

Map Channels

Yep, Map Channels is yet another simple interactive web mapping platform draped over Google Maps.

Shifted Maps

The Quantified Self movement has been around for a while now, but lately has exploded with the advent of inexpensive 'fitness' trackers that everyone seems to be wearing on their wrists these days. Of course, you can also use your smartphone with the Moves app and then visualize the the collected data using Shifted Maps.

Six graphics that explain climate change

Six graphics that explain climate change by the BBC News is simple - perhaps too simple - but presents a nice introduction to the issues of modern-day human-caused climate change. The key figure is the last one in my opinion.

Plan A, Plan B, or Plan C

How Will The Earth Warm? It Depends are three nice and simple animated GIFs showing three different versions of global warming until the end of the century that depend on our choices today. Here's the BAU future:

Plume Air Report

The Plume Air Report claims to be the first worldwide interactive map of air pollution. I don't think that's entirely correct, for example see The World Air Quality Index Project or this effort by Yale University.

D3plus

D3plus makes interactive data-vz using D3 easier and that's a good thing for us non-JavaScript nerds. Plan B: use Plotly.

Climate predictions for the rest of the century

More at NPR News Big Data Predicts Centuries Of Harm If Climate Warming Goes Unchecked

The Pledge Gap

The Climate Change Pledges Are In. Will They Fix Anything? is a nice data viz by the New York Times of CO2 emission reduction pledges in the context of the Paris Climate Change Conference. Scroll-down all the way for the take-home message: what future do you want?

Learn QGIS

Five free QGIS courses (self-taught at your own pace) - more information about the curriculum and content at the FOSS4G Geoacademy Curriculum.

Open-Source Interactive Web Mapping

And it all happens inside your browser = no software to download and to install. From Paper Maps to the Web: A DIY Digital Maps Primer is a great tutorial and you will be using all the cool tools, for example:

• Map Warper
• GeoJSON.io
• Leaflet
• Mapbox.js
• JSFIDDLE

Dubline

Cool and simple story map: Dubline

Population Viz

Here's India vs. China and Nigeria vs. the USA.

The Data Journalism Handbook

The Data Journalism Handbook is an open-source community-based effort. Pretty cool!

Web Scraper and Data Scraper

Two Chrome extensions / apps to 'scrape' data off websites: Web Scraper and Data Scraper.

World Population Growth

World Population Growth by Max Roser is intense: lot's of text, lot's of charts, lot's of maps, and lot's of data. Speaking of the data - all are available for download as CSV files.

Why People Don't Believe In Climate Science

Mapping History!

These visualization of history are just cool!

• Histography provides an interactive timeline of history (based on Wikipedia) for the last 13.8 Billion years.
• The Museum of the World is an interactive experience mapping time, continents, and cultures.

Tornado Tracks 1950 to 2014

Tornado Tracks 1950 to 2014 is a nice interactive web map (using Esri ArcGIS Online) showing tornado tracks between 1950 and 2014: clean, simple, and useful.

The Dreaded Non-Zero Y-Axis

Climate Change Mitigation Policies

Tree Canopy Assessment Tool

Could be useful: Tree Canopy Assessment Tool

Drought Mapping using CartoDB

This is a great tutorial: Make a Thematic Map of Current Drought Conditions (using CartoDB)

D3.js and R

Better Data Visualization with Python, D3.js, MapReduce and R has some nice information and links related to those four data analysis and visualization tools, for example:

• D3 Tutorials (by Scott Murray)
• 20 D3 Video Tutorials (by d3Vienno)
• Introduction to Data Science with R - Part 1 (David Langer)
• Introduction to Data Science with R - Part 2 (David Langer)
• Data Visualization Using R (23:45 minutes)
• Combing R and D3.js

The Breathing Earth

Non-Esri Story Maps

Esri Story Maps is pretty great, but how about some alternatives?

• Odyssey.js
• MapStory
• StoryMapJS (including SnapMap)
• StoryMap for Images
• ThingLink
• TimeMapper
• MapStory and Data Basin
• Mapme Stories

Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic

Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic is the person behind the awesome blog Storytelling with data, the new book storytelling with data.

Walmart!

ThingLink

ThingLink is fun and basically a simpler version of StoryMap JS: upload an image and make it interactive by adding tags and linking to multimedia. In other words: make a story map from an image - be that of some natural feature, art, or whatever.

Here's a fun example: GPS Survey of the Quelccaya Ice Cap

Now That's A Map!

Well-written: Equal Area Cartograms and Multivariate Labels with several great examples, including this one:

Geocaching, GPS, and More

New webinar by JoeKerski on Geocaching, GPS, and Related Geo-Activities - should be fun and useful!

Windyty Weather Forecast

These types of visualizations have been around, but Windyty now includes the wind, temperature, pressure, cloud, and humidity forecast for the next few days. Plus, you can change the altitude to see how the winds change as you go up in the atmosphere. And you can change between 2D and 3D modes, plus choose different base maps.

Deforestation in Brazil

NPR Look At This has a powerful photographic journal of rain forest deforestation in Brazil (which includes a few maps). This is a nice example of story mapping without really any maps.

ArcGIS 10 Tutorial

This is pretty great: a hyper-texted and illustrated tutorial for ArcGIS 10 by the folks from Amherst College.

SHOW by Mapping Worlds

SHOW by Mapping Worlds makes interactive cartograms of countries, US states, or Japan prefectures and you can get the data as MS Excel spreadsheets - nice!

TeachGIS.org

Teach GIS is a venue where expert and novice instructors of geographic information systems (GIS), and related geospatial technologies, could feel comfortable sharing ideas, asking and answering questions, and learning from one another. We are software neutral and very open-minded towards open source tools. We welcome any and all fellow GIS instructors from our wider global community to join the conversation.

The Lab Activities section hosts a nice searchable version of Esri's Spatial Labs.

Esri Spatial Labs

Esri Spatial Labs are standalone activities designed to promote spatial reasoning and analysis skills. In other words: they are boring. But, together with authentic place-based question they can serve as intellectual stimuli as well as opportunities to practice tools and techniques. Download the entire package as a 2.3 GB zipped ISO file.

MapWorks

MapWorks is fun and useful and allows you to style and annotate an OSM map and to download your map as a PNG or SVG file.

Ecological Land Units

Or: a new map of the global ecosystem - explore:

• Explore a Tapestry of World Ecosystems (Esri Story Map).
• Or, as an interactive and searchable web app as called Explore the Ecological Tapestry of the Word.
• Or, use as part of the Landscape Layers in ArcGIS.
• Or, download the original data from the USGS (2.4 GB zipped).

Africa Map

Africa Map is a comprehensive mash-up of many data layers from Africa (using Harvard's WorldMap web mapping tool).

The American Time Use Survey

I had no idea such a thing existed until I saw the The American Time Use Survey visualized at Counting the Hours on FlowingData. And there is even ATUS-X, a website by the University of Minnesota where you can easily download the data.

US Crime in 2013

Nicely-done in R Studio: US Crime in 2013

Evernote

I used to be an Evernote user and then switch to Trello for task management and Google Docs/Drive for everything else. Still, the speech-to-text feature in Evernote is appealing: in theory it transcribes your voice notes.

Esri Survey 123

Survey 123 for ArcGIS looks useful - a tool/app to facilitate field surveys and field data collection using tablets. There is more about it in the Survey123Community on GitHub and in ArcNews (Fall 2015).

Fun with GIS 191: Survey 123 helps you to get started and Charlie Fitzpatrick also created a nice sample activity with a sample spreadsheet.

SIGMA

The System for Integrated Geoscience MApping (SIGMA) by the British Geological Survey is a tool for field data collection, mapping, and visualization running on Windows and using ArcGIS 10 and MS Access 2007.

ASTER GEDv3

The ASTER GEDv3 offers TIR data from 2000 to 2008 at 3 arc sec (~100 m) resolution - cool!

NOAA Solar Calculator

Fun and useful: the NOAA Solar Calculator gives you sunrise, sunset, and solar noon.

Commons Lab

Commons Lab is (as they state on the website) a database of federal crowdsourcing and citizen science projects. Somehow I'm not impressed...am I missing something here?

Greenland Melting!

Greenland Is Melting Away is an incredible viz by the NYT, combining awesome drone footage and photographs with cool interactive annotated satellite images.

Sunny Cities

Sunshine on my Shoulders is a great data viz using Tableau, basically the book end to the great Why does it always rain on me?

Mapping the Uninsured

Another nice interactive map by the TheUpshot: We Mapped the Uninsured. You'll Notice a Pattern.

The Growth of the US

Seen on FlowingData: the territorial evolution of the US between 1629 and 2000 as a YouTube video. Even better: the data files are available for download!

Student Debt and Income

Here are two interesting data viz related to student debt and income:

1. This app / data viz (using R) allows you to compare several colleges and universities side-by-side in terms of student debt, cost, and other variables.
2. More mundane (maybe) is the most recent college ranking by the Economist comparing actual vs. expected income after graduation.

Both seem to be inspired and driven by a large data set released recently under the auspices of the College Scorecard initiative.

Food Access Mashup

Here's a simple mashup of data layers relevant to the issue of food access - nothing fancy in terms of analytics, but nevertheless a nice and simple way to tell the story. Maybe more interesting is Community Commons and the online mapping tools included.

Using CartoDB

CartoDB is one of these hip new online mapping environments and here is a selection of useful resources:

• Using different projections (i.e. no Web Mercator)
• More about projections
• Visualize 2015 Urban Populations with Proportional Symbols (tutorial)

Mapping Runs

Where People Run in Major Cities is nothing new, but the resultant maps are beautiful. Here's RunKeeper and Strava - these are actually quite useful when looking to discover new areas for trail running and mountain biking.

Of course, you can also have fun with this, for example Running Drawing by Claire Wykoff.

Mapping James Bond

This Esri story map got a lot of attention: The James Bond Travel Map.

Be An Astronaut!

Very Cool! http://bl.ocks.org/maartenzam/raw/1dfc9de0c61eee127b22/

Math!

Refugees in Europe

The flow towards Europe is a pretty amazing map / animation visualizing the origins and destinations of refugees in Europe since 2012. Now combine this detached birds-eye view with a personal narrative illustrated here as a story map in Fleeing Syria for Europe: Safaa's fatal journey and you have a compelling story.

Greenland Is Melting Away

Greenland Is Melting Away is nothing new in terms of science, but a great multi-media viz by the New York Times. Here are the direct links to the two videos:

• Video 1
• Video 2

There is also a nice side story about collecting drone footage over the Greenland Ice Sheet at A Drone’s Vantage Point of a Melting Greenland with this video:

Climate Science: What You Need To Know

Why Leaves Change Color Each Fall

DSCOVR:EPIC

DSCOVR:EPIC are daily full images of our Earth from space using the EPIC camera flying aboard the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) satellite (read more about it here).

Climate Change is here.

Climate Change is here. is an online special by National Geographic organized into three sections: science, mitigation, and adaptation. As you would expect, the visuals are stunning.

Climate Change Calculator

Just in-time for the December UN meeting in Paris comes a nice and simple Climate Change Calculator.

Awesome Data Viz

15 Stunning Data Visualizations is a) a great compilation and b) includes a nice explanation of why a particular data viz is stunning.

The Seasonal Cycle

Nice and simple - just click the Play button and watch the seasons change on County Climate.

Dropchop

Dropchop.io is a browser-based GIS based on Mapbox and Turf.js (according to Maps Mania). There - that's all I know about it. But it seems pretty cool playing around with it - you can actually perform some pretty sophisticated geospatial analysis.

Global Air Quality in Real-Time

The World Air Quality Index Project provides just that: a global map of air quality in real-time:

• Global map
• Local map

Sea Level Rise

The folks @ Climate Central are producing some great interactive maps visualizing the impacts of sea level rise on coastal communities in the USA with their Surging Seas analysis. Here is a simplified version as an interactive and embeddable map:

Urban Sprawl Manila 1988 to 2014

NASA produced an interesting image comparison showing urban sprawl around Manila between 1988 and 2014 using Landsat images. Nothing new here, but a nice example of the benefits of a long satellite image archive,

3D World Elevation

If nothing else: cool! 3D World Elevation

El Nino!

File Conversions

Getting things (i.e. data) from one software to the next used to be much more of an issue...nowadays most software programs have pretty comprehensive import/export options. If all failed - at least for GIS data, there is GPSBabel and now a new online file conversion tool from Golden Software (also free, but requires registration).

Earthquakes in 3D

Nothing really new here, except the earthquake data for the last 100 years is now draped over a 3D globle: One Hundred Years of Seismic Activity. Cool? Yes! Necessary? No!

Landslides!

This is pretty good - except for the title: When Nature Strikes: Landslides

Fleeing Syria for Europe

A beautifully-designed and narrated story map: Fleeing Syria for Europe: Safaa's fatal journey

Diabetes and Immigration

Here are two recent interactive data infographics that combine it all: maps, charts, tables, spark lines, etc. - impressive!

• Diabetes in the United States
• America’s Source of Immigrants

But - what's missing: a link to download the data!

30 Years of MS Excel

Urban Density

There is no such thing as a city that has run out of room is a nice and simple data viz by the Washington Post: scroll-down a bit and compare different urban areas around the world.

Rising and Descending Air

Rising and Descending Air

Undercast Timelapse 10-06-15
Good Wednesday morning! Summit intern Adam Gill captured this timelapse footage yesterday afternoon of clouds rising up over the Northern Presidentials, before descending into the Great Gulf and dissipating.
Posted by Mount Washington Observatory on Wednesday, October 7, 2015

Mars!

Lot's of Mars maps recently - for good reason!

1. Discovering Liquid Water on Mars
2. Where on Mars?
3. The Martian Map
4. Bing Watney Home!

Mapping the USPS

Mapping the USPS Facility Network is pretty disturbing: enter an origin and a destination and see how and where your mail travels as it moves through the USPS network of facilities. I tried, as an example, sending a letter from my home to my office and it traveled 130 miles (compared to the shortest route of 47 miles).

Scale model of the Solar System

Wikipedia's Climate Data on an Interactive Map

This map/visualization was quite popular this week: Wikipedia's Climate Data on an Interactive Map. I still think these Voronoi maps are ugly and the map seems a bit wonky - I can't figure-out the month wheel. The animated GIFs are fun:

Arctic Ocean Sea Ice 1979 to 2014

Here's another nice animated map with embedded chart: Arctic Ocean Sea Ice 1979 to 2014

Water on Mars!

Cool Story Map: Discovering Liquid Water on Mars

Naomi and Francis

Naomi Oreskes always has interesting things to say about the nexus between climate science and its political, social, and economic implications. Have a look at the recent piece As Pope Francis Meets America, a Climate Science Scholar Offers a Fresh View of the Encyclical for her thoughts on that.

Years You Have Left to Live, Probably

Very cool from FlowingData: Years You Have Left to Live, Probably is a life-expectancy simulator.

The Us of Energy

This is pretty nice: the US of ENERGY (I especially like the Compare option).

Sustainable Growth and Resilience Data Gateway

Talk about packing buzz words into a title: Gateway Supports Sustainable Growth and Resilience. Unfortunately, the actual data gateway is far less impressive in terms of design, functionality, and available data.

Theory vs. Hypothesis vs. Law… Explained!

Visualizing Map Distortion

Very cool: Visualizing Map Distortion
More details here.

Public and Scientists’ Views on Science and Society

What America will look like in 2050, in 4 charts

Excellent data viz - simple and thus powerful: What America will look like in 2050, in 4 charts

AIDSVu

AIDSVu is impressive: interactive mapping of HIV/AIDS data at the city, county, and state level. Plus, all the data are available for download and you can even create your own maps as PDFs or PPTs.

Fall Hard / Stand Tall

Here we have the total opposite: Fall Hard / Stand Tall is a rich and interactive data viz of NFL player height and weight created with Tableau.

How Your State Generates Power

Subtle, clean, and simple: Coal, Gas, Nuclear, Hydro? How Your State Generates Power

MS Excel and ArcGIS

The source of many frustrations - how do you best take data from MS Excel into ArcGIS? Formatting a table for use in ArcGIS includes useful tips and tricks!

Atomic

Atomic is a brand-new web-based interactive and collaborative design tool - read a review by John Brownlee over at Co.DESIGN. According to him Atomic is free for education and academic use, although their pricing information is pretty vague at this point.

Overview of Atomic from Atomic on Vimeo.

And - But - Therefore

Houston, We Have A Narrative is a new book by Randy Olson that helps scientists tell their stories in a compelling way using the _____ and ______, but ______, therefore _____ framework. Andy Revkin offers his review over at Dot Earth and you can listen to a Randy Olson podcast over at The Prism.

Other books by Randy Olson include Don't Be Such A Scientist and Connection: Hollywood Storytelling meets Critical Thinking (also available as an app for Android and iOS).

Satellite Surfer

Seen on Maps Mania: The Satellite Surfer tracks 88 satellites live and in real-time. Plus, the pass predication option allows you to - well - predict satellite overpasses based on a location and time. It loads a bit slow, but is worth the wait.

The Living Wage Map

Nothing super-special here: The Living Wage Map is simply a nice and clean implementation of a story map.

Tableau Public 9.1

Tableau Public 9.1 was just launched - a great way to tell web-based data stories.

The Carbon Map

Simple and clean: The Carbon Map is a series of cartograms telling the story of global climate change

Smart Charting

This is super-hip right now: smart mapping or smart charting where the software looks at your data and automatically suggests appropriate visualizations and analytical steps. Convenient? Yes! But also scary for a teacher...students have to think even less now.

Anyways, here is what Nathan Yau had to say about Google's new Explore option: Automatic charts and insights in Google Sheets.

WorldClim

WorldClim provides global gridded climate data at various resolutions: observed (1950 to 2000), future (CMIP5 data), and past conditions. What's nice here is that the data are provided in file formats easily used in a GIS, for example GeoTIFF or Esri GRID.

Classic!

Green Roofs

Green roofs are pretty hip these days and the GRITLAB at the University of Toronto is clearly the place to learn about them (and green walls).

Need MS Excel?

Let's be honest: all the cool stuff is nice, but in reality we all still need to use (and understand) a basic spreadsheet software, for example MS Excel. Here are some great links in case you need a refresher or want to see some more advanced applications:

1. The Absolute Beginner's Guide to Spreadsheets (Ann K. Emery)
2. Learn Excel: An In-Depth, Thorough Tutorial (With GIFs) (Ann K. Emery)
3. MS Excel on Steroids!
4. Excel Map Hack (John Nelson)
5. More assorted good stuff
6. Excel Mini Tutorials on YouTube (Barb Henderson)

EarthViewer

How about using 3D virtual globes to look at the Earth millions of years ago? EarthViewer (by HHMI) is great, especially as you can download and run it locally (great for schools with slow Internet). HHMI also offers great resources, classroom activities, and more for EarthViewer.

What Did the World Look Like is a simpler, fully-online implementation.

Fall Foliage Map 2015

It's that time of the year: The 2015 Fall Foliage Map

Map & Globe

Seen on Maps Mania: Map & Globe. Simple.

The Everything Machine

Super-cool from the folks at Tinybop: The Everything Machine allows to to program your own apps that use all the components of an iPhone or iPad (e.g. camera, microphone, etc.) in a fun, lego-style interface. Here's a review on Co.DESIGN.

Also really cool: Simple Machines and Robot Factory.

Piktochart

Piktochart has been around for a while as a web-based tool for designing infographics. Julie Platt on ProfHacker recently provided a review and discussion of how she uses Piktochart for creating visually-appealing course materials such as course syllabi, etc.

I agree with her basic argument: we live in a visual world and therefore the visual design of our course materials is important and sets an example for what we expect from our students.

Statistical Jargon

Good tips and explanations here: Plain Languaging Statistical Jargon. Her main argument: don't add confidence intervals, etc. to your charts unless you can explain them in a concise text box or sub-title.

Dot Maps

Dot maps are pretty cool - you use 1 dot to represent say 1 job or 1 person or 25 renters/owners or 20 immigrants. The problem is really performance...these maps tend to take a long time to load.

• The Racial Dot Map
• Where the renters are
• Where are the jobs?
• Mapping Immigrant America

Pixel Map Generator

Via Maps Mania: The Pixel Map Generator enables you to create highly-stylized (i.e. pixelated) maps which may be useful for illustrative purposes or as base layers.

Arctic Ocean Sea Ice 2006 to Current

Arctic Sea Ice by mastermaps is a really nice and subtle viz of Arctic Ocean sea ice conditions - combining daily and annual data as a line graph and a polar-projection map.

Playground Physics

And other fun and educational apps for the iPad - introducing Noticing Tools by the New York Hall of Science. Read more over at Co.DESIGN or risk $9.99 to try them.

A Hurricane 3-Some!

More from NASA

Mapping Segregation

Mapping Segregation (by the NYT) is basically the interactive version of the famous Racial Dot Map by Dustin Cable.

Remote Sensing and Water Resources

This is not new: remote sensing is a great tool to monitor water resources such as lake levels, flooding, etc. Less known is the application of GRACE - a satellite mission that effectively weighs the Earth - and how it can be used to monitor groundwater resources. Read more here.

This image below is a nice example using the ongoing drought in California as an example:

Greenland Mass Balance 2004 to 2014

Cyber Attacks

I have no idea how trustworthy this is, but it looks damn cool and scary: The Norse Real-Time Cyber Attack Map. (seen on FlowingData)

Katrina +10

Esri just released a new story map called Katrina +10 visualizing the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and what has happened over the last 10 years.

Don't move to Texas (or the Dakotas...)

Here's the interactive version: How Texas Could Set National Template for Limiting Abortion Access

Energy in the US (1776 to 2014)

I wish this chart was available at higher-resolution or as an interactive. The data are buried somewhere in the EIA website...

Why get excited about web maps?

Public Health Data

The CDC is a pretty impressive source of public health data, but (as usual...) it's difficult to find what you are looking for. The Diabetes section, however, is an example of a well-organized data portal, nicely organized at the national, state, and county level.

The 10 Largest Cities in the US

Mapping the westward-shifting center of the US population is nothing new, see for example Population Drift from 2011. But how about the changing spatial distribution of the 10 largest US cities (by population) over time? Keir Clarke has a nice post on that over at Maps Mania and created Shifting Cities. A Historical Look At America's Largest Cities is a similar interactive map (using Tableau) and below is a simpler version as an animated GIF.

http://imgur.com/tWE7i

Mapping drought and precipitation

Two interactive maps by EcoWest:

1. Tracking U.S. Drought Severity
2. Rain and Snow in the U.S. Since 1981

I don't know...something does not work with this data viz for me...

Science is really hard!

Excellent piece by Christie Aschwanden Science Isn't Broken -  It’s just a hell of a lot harder than we give it credit for. Good and easy to digest illustrations of one of the most basic statistic concepts used in science: the (dreaded) p-value and the 0.05 value. The interactive data cruncher is great!

Science, even if it appears simple, requires a lot of choices that can shape the results down the road. P-hacking is less of an issue in the physical and natural sciences. But, yes, we do practice HARKing (at times) = hypothesizing after the data have been collected. Why? We all want to a) find cool results and b) prove something. That's a) human nature and b) needed for a successful career.

Still, science remains the most rigorous path to knowledge that we know of - and that really means 'getting less wrong' over time. Our current state of knowledge is only our best estimate of 'the truth'.

And that we don't teach well. We pretend science is easy as long as you follow the regiment of the scientific method and then make a poster for your school science fair. Science = done! In reality you ask a question, do a study, and get a partial / ambiguous answer. And then it continues.

The true size of...

The true size of... is pretty clever: enter the name of a country and see its size change as you drag it around the Mercator map. Read about it here. My favorite: Brazil vs. the USA:

100 Percent?

I have seen this as an image, but here is the associated video:

Mapping the Arctic (1999 to 2014)

This has gotten a bit too much news relative to its relevance: National Geographic had to revise their maps of the Arctic as sea ice is disappearing due to global warming.

1999 to 2014

Teen Birth Rates 1990 - 2013

U.S. and State Trends on Teen Births, 1990–2013 as an interactive map and charts created using Tableau.

Earth at night (May 2014)

This is nice and simple - use the slider to fade-in or fade-out the VIIRS layer: Earth at night (May 2014)

How they get their news...

Interesting study, story, and graphic: how do Millenials get their political news (or any news for that matter): from Facebook!

Google Maps Games

I'm not a big fan of these, but if you are: Top 10 Google Maps games of all times

Landsat Lens

Landsat Lens is fun: search for a place and see how it changed from 1975, 1990, 2000, 2005, and 2010 using the public Landsat archive. A series of good (and well-known) examples are provided on the left.

I like the clean and simple interface, but there are two issues (none of which are the responsibility of the author). First, it's slow...it takes a long time for the Landsat scenes to load. Second, Landsat with its 15/30 m resolution since 1990 (worse in 1975) is just not cutting it anymore if you are used to seeing the awesome commercial high-res images and data from Airbus, GeoEye, DigitalGlobe, LiDAR, etc. Don't get me wrong: Landsat was (and is) great for what it was (and is) = a globally-consistent and free satellite image data set, but it is frustrating as a scientist to not have access to the commercial data (which are prohibitively expensive).

Killing the Colorado

Via Maps Mania: Killing the Colorado is an awesome interactive map-based web-based visualization...in other words what Esri calls  Story Map.

Here's one part: Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas showing the urban sprawl of Las Vegas since 1975 (= the start of the Landsat era).

The ocean floor in 3D (or 2D)

This is well-done: Seafloor Lithology 1.0 is a 3D (or 2D) interactive map of the ocean floor (I especially like the Columbus view). More information here.

What's across the ocean from you?

Fun! See more maps here.

Currents in the Air, Ocean, and Lakes

These have been around, but always awesome!

• NOAA WeatherView
• Windyty (global wind and weather forecasting)
• Wind: USA 
• Global Wind, Temperature, and more (click on earth in lower left to select your overlay - including the Misery Index)
• Ocean Currents (USA)
• Ocean Currents (Global)
• Great Lakes Currents
• Tokyo Winds

Here's Esri's version of the global wind map on GitHub.

Advancing the map in US 8th grade Earth Science

Something new from Esri: Earth Science GeoInquiries = new instructional resources designed for the US 8th grade Earth Science class. Read more about it here.

Infographics & Data Visualizations

If you can handle it: here are the 1715 best infographics & data visualizations as compiled by Visualloop.

Teachers as Sports Stars!

Very funny: Teaching Center

What is machine learning?

Here's a nice visual introduction, aptly called A Visual Introduction to Machine Learning. This is nothing new to those familiar with remote sensing and image analysis - machine learning is really just a new fancy word for image classification (both supervised and unsupervised).

Road Trip!

Well, at least in terms of literary classics: Atlas Obscura's Guide to Literary Road Trips. One quibble: the map is missing The Grapes of Wrath!

STD Cities

This map is a bit misleading - it only provides data for what appear to be the largest cities in each county, but interesting nonetheless.

This map about STD statistics was created and produced by RentApplication.com . You may share and embed this map with proper attribution.

Making new land...

What China Has Been Building in the South China Sea ran in the NYT on 31 July 2015 - the animation at the top is great. If only we could gain access to satellite images like that...

Below is an image from the Daily Overview showing one of the new islands ("Mischief Reef") connected to surrounding by dredgers pumping sediment from the ocean floor onto the reef to make it larger.

Why we need driver-less cars!

Via Mark Wilson @ Co.DESIGN: This Cute Simulation Proves Why We Need Driverless Cars

How brand-new words are spreading across America

Cool: How brand-new words are spreading across America

Elastic Topography

Seen on Maps Mania: Elastic Terrain Map by The Cartography and Geovisualization Group at Oregon State University. Pretty useless, but super-cool!

Textbooks

College Textbook Prices Have Risen 1,041 Percent Since 1977