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

Mapping Power Plants

Here is a nice map / data viz by the Washington Post: Mapping how the United States generates its electricity. The interactive map is nice, but suffers from the classic problem associated with graduated symbols maps - the symbols overlay and all you see is a bunch of colored 'blobs' - this would be much better as a zoomable map. Plus, why not make every point symbol (= power plant) clickable?

The simpler maps further down the page are interesting - why is there such a lack of solar power plants in the mid-west? They have plenty of space and sun!

Better than addresses?

Here's a new way to locate yourself on the face of the Earth - using three words or three emojis. The problem with traditional street addresses are well-known: they are not consistent, even within countries. The mathematical coordinate systems such as latitude/longitude, UTM, etc. are great for GIS professionals, but too complex for the general public.

How about we divide the Earth into 3 by 3 m squares and identify each square with a unique combination of words or emojis? Give it a try!

• what3words (read about how it works here)
• what3emojis
• what3pictures
• what3fucks

This is actually useful: How 3 word addresses helped to combat the cholera outbreak in Tanzania

Global Air Pollution

Global air pollution mapped by Yale University between 2000 and 2012 for countries and cities using CartoDB. Visually not all that impressive in my opinion, but they provide a nice description of the mapping process.

A slightly-different version can display cities, satellite data, and dirty power plants.

Global Permafrost Mapping in Google Earth

This is a nice example of using Google Earth to share a global mapping effort: Global Permafrost Mapping (download the KMZ and open in Google Earth).

Apps for Field Data Collection

Interested? Have a look at my post Apps for Outdoor Labs and Fieldwork over at the WSU Academic Technology Blog.

The History of Everything