How Machines Learn

Some interesting and scary similarities to the trends we see in Higher Education right now!

Multivariate Maps

Maps are great, but usually only 'map' one variable. And for good reason: mapping multivariate data is difficult and the resultant maps are often too confusing and complex to read. Jim Vallandingham offers a nice compilation of different styles of such maps in his Multivariate Map Collection.

Acts of God and the Anthropocene

Baba Brinkman – "Make It Hot"

Course Syllabus Make

This is fun and maybe even useful: the Automatic Course Syllabus Maker.

NASA Aerosol Simulation 2017

What is geoengineering anyways?

Digital Life in 3D

This is pretty cool: http://digitallife3d.org/

Model 4 - Emperor Scorpion by Digital Life on Sketchfab

Solar Panels

Be sure to look at the Alt Text on xkcd!

Interactive Geologic Map of the World

This is super-cool: Macrostrat's Geologic Map of the World (seen on Maps Mania).

The Global Solar Atlas

The Global Solar Atlas maps-out solar energy resources around the globe and allows you to calculate how much electricity you could generate with typical PV installations, for example in Boston.

Now we have the matching Global Wind Atlas.

The Qualitative Chart Chooser

This is quite useful: The Qualitative Chart Chooser 3.0

Here's an oldie!

Cutting-edge (in 1999): the website for my dissertation, complete with pictures. Note: those are all scans off 35 mm slides.

Street Tours

Seen on Maps Mania: Street Tours is a quick way to combine Google Street View and Maps into an interactive and annotated tour. It's not the most elegant of interfaces, but it is simple, quick, and does what it is supposed to do.

2017 Hurricanes and Aerosols Simulation

Instructional Moves (IM)

Instructional Moves (IM) is pretty cool, especially the videos that show the 'moves' in-action.

Social Media Update 2016

Here's the 2016 Pew Research Center survey of social media use in the USA: Social Media Update 2016. It is interesting to see some of the difference between 'perceived' importance (aka. noise) and 'real' importance of social media platforms, for example: only 25 percent of Americans use Twitter and only 10 percent of those use it on a daily basis.

Here's an interesting table:

Cape Cod 1984 to 2017

This is nice: changes to the beaches, spits, and barrier island location at southeastern tip of Cape Cod between 1984 and 2017.

Silly, but fun: Outline Maps

Silly, but fun: Outline Maps - try it!

R you sure?

Here's a nice piece: R vs. Python - which one should you learn?

Spatial Analysis via Story Maps

Look: Story Maps are great, but perhaps not the best way to visualize and perform spatial analysis. Still, it can be done and Speaking the “Language” of Spatial Analysis via Story Maps provides a nice and updated list of such examples.

The Geoengineering Map

https://map.geoengineeringmonitor.org/

2017 NMC Horizon Report

The 2017 NMC Horizon Report is out. From their website: "...an ongoing research project designed to identify and describe emerging technologies likely to have an impact on learning, teaching, and creative inquiry in education".

Laura Guertin has a nice summary of the key trends, significant challenges, and important developments as identified in the report.

Here's what I took away from it after reading the summary preview:

• University classrooms should look like real-world work and social environments to "facilitate organic interactions and cross-disciplinary problem solving" - that's considered a mid-term trend (3 to 5 years adoption). I have a suggestion: have a look at an elementary school classroom...it's not that difficult.
• It's all about measured and and personalized adaptive learning with learning analytics in an online setting - this is supposed to empower the student to take-charge of their learning. Here the online platform (aka Big Brother) adapts itself to the student and aggregates the data across a large student sample to adapt the broader curriculum. All this is controlled by the Next-Generation LMS or Next-Generation Digital Learning Environments (NGDLE).
• Engage in teaching and learning beyond the traditional school day = a Trojan Horse for online education.
• Mobile learning - good: pen and paper are mobile.

This is so trite and obvious...

2017 Survey of Faculty Attitudes on Technology

In case you are interested: 2017 Survey of Faculty Attitudes on Technology.

Seismic Illumination

Seismic Illumination is a richly-illustrated Story Map.

Strava Global Heatmap

Very cool and useful for finding new trails: Strava Global Heatmap

The Anthropocene

This looks promising: An Anthropocene Primer

WXshift

This is pretty nice: WXshift allows you to select your region, state, or zip code of interest and then plot climatic trends (similar to the NOAA Climate Explorer).

Mapping Oral Histories

Placing Oral Histories - A Visualization of Four Syrian Refugees' Narratives of Displacement is a nice application of a Story Map and Oral History Mapping with ArcGIS Online explains the mapping and design process.

USGS Global Mountain Explorer

The USGS Global Mountain Explorer sounds pretty neat, but I'm not clear what it is...but there is a Tutorial Video.

Storyboarder

Storyboarder makes it easy to visualize a story as fast you can draw stick figures. Quickly draw to test if a story idea works. Create and show animatics to others. Express your story idea without making a movie. (straight from their website)

Annual Vegetation Cycle

The RAMMB Slider

Seen on Maps Mania: The RAMMB Slider uses the latest available imagery from both satellites to allow you to create small animated movies of the Earth.

360°: Why Is Greenland Melting?

The History of Infographics

The History of Infographics is a super-cool interactive infographic on its own and they include a great summary of their project and design choices.

Minard and Napoleon

Here's a great interactive overlay of Minard's map combined with a matching interactive chart: Minard and Napoleon

Santa Rosa: Before and After

This is incredible: Santa Rosa: Before and After - try http://bit.ly/2hDEccy to see an image comparison.

State Borders

Gerrymandering

Found on FlowingData: Changing the Math on Gerrymandering (brilliant illustrations) and District - A Game about Representation & Redistricting.

Mapped: How the US generates electricity

Mapped: How the US generates electricity (by CarbonBrief) is a nice interactive map, zoomable to different states. This would go well with The Solutions Project and their 100 percent renewable energy portfolios for the different states.

Then there is the North American Power Plants map with a nice feature: it updates the summary legend as you zoom-in, zoom-out, or pan.

Data USA

Data USA is pretty great: tons of downloadable data, interactive maps, and shareable as image files.

Get Started with Story Maps

Get Started with Story Maps is a nice 2-hour introduction to Esri Story Maps, including the Story Map Tour, the Story Map Cascade, and the Story Map Journal.

Irma and Maria

Here are two crowd-sourced photo story maps:

• Hurricane Irma Photo Story Map
• Hurricane Maria Photo Story Map

This is all just a part of a natural cycle, right?

Renewable energy is way too expensive, right?

Disappearing Gaciers

Here are two nice Esri story maps of disappearing glaciers:

1. Alaska Ice
2. Glaciers in Alaska's National Parks: Monitoring Change
3. Disappearing Glaciers

Climate Ready Boston Map Explorer

Climate Ready Boston Map Explorer is a new way to look at the same data - here using the Esri ArcGIS Online platform. Coastlines of Boston is a nice supplement! (found on Maps Mania)

Alternatives to Google Docs

Here are two alternatives to Google Docs.

• Slack
• Sandstorm

I'm not sure any of those fundamentally address the issues and concerns that one might have with Google Docs.

Timemap

Timemap is a new take on network analysis and simplifies the visual display as a series of concentric circles as a function of time from your location (turn-by-turn directions are still available).

Nukemap and Misslemap

Here are two interactive web maps: Nukemap and Misslemap. I have no idea how accurate these simulations are, but sobering nevertheless.

StorylineJS

StorylineJS looks great - a simple way to create an annotated and interactive chart (just point to your data in Google Sheets).

Kilauea: Fountains of Fire

Kilauea: Fountains of Fire is a pretty neat Esri Story Map and the creator explains the process of making here at The Making of Kilauea: Fountains of Fire. Here's a pretty cool animated GIF:

https://blogs.esri.com/esri/arcgis/2017/09/13/the-making-of-kilauea-fountains-of-fire/

Rising Seas

Here we have a web map with the actual sea level measurement station data: Rising Seas. This shows the actual measured values, not predicted ones say for the 21st century.

Sparklines as Fonts

This looks really interesting: a font that creates sparklines called AtF Spark.

Landsat Viewer

New from Esri: Landsat Viewer. This looks promising and useful.

Irma and the Islands

Pretty impressive images of the Caribbean Islands before and after Irma:

https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=90952&src=iotdrss

Finally: a clear and calm Irma forecast!

ArduPilot Autopilot Suite

The ArduPilot Autopilot Suite is everything and more you need for any kind of autonomous vehicle. More also here.

Harvey Sediment Plume

Source: NASA

Harvey Before and After

This is a great use of the Swipe Story Map: Hurricane Harvey Post Event Imagery - Houston.

Sentinel-2 Cloudless Earth

Pretty cool @ https://s2maps.eu/ and more information here.

The Last Glacier of Venezuela

Matthew Wills actually read the paper and wrote a nice summary for JSTOR Daily (29 August 2017): The Last Glacier of Venezuela.

Why Do India And China Have So Many People?

Pipeline Spills

Here's an interesting interactive map showing pipelines, pipeline operators, and spills. That's about it. The map is not very professional, for example: use aliases for the field names and include a link to the data. This would have been better in Tableau in my opinion.

Is the American Dream Still Affordable?

Nice Esri Story Map: Is the American Dream Still Affordable?

Harvey does Texas

More here: Hurricane Harvey Approaches Texas

Drone Training

https://xkcd.com/1881/

Every Road in North America

https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/6vpnkp/all_the_roads_and_nothing_but_the_roads_oc/

Estimating economic damage from climate change in the United States

Or: How Much Climate Change Will Cost Each U.S. County. Now you can see the numbers in a few ways:

1. Read the scientific paper and get the data directly from Science.
2. Read a summary by Paul Voosen in Science with a large non-interactive map.
3. Read a longer article about the study in The Atlantic.
4. Explore this interactive map.

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/06/here-s-how-much-climate-change-going-cost-your-county

6 Charts to Understand U.S. State Greenhouse Gas Emissions

6 Charts to Understand U.S. State Greenhouse Gas Emissions

C’est la vis: Visualization Literacy at Elementary School

C’est la vis: Visualization Literacy at Elementary School is super-cute an online platform to teach and learn data viz in grades K and 2. The video explains it nicely.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/project/cest-la-vis-visualization-literacy-elementary-school/

AMOS

Need a webcam images? AMOS, the Archive of Many Outdoor Scenes, can help with that. AMOS is a collection of long-term time lapse imagery from publicly accessible outdoor webcams around the world. Images like that are increasingly used, in combination with AI/machine learning, to derive quantitative data.

Tiles for Zoom Levels

MapTiler includes a nice demo to give you the coordinates, tile bounds, and IDs for all tiles for all zoom levels. Nice.

Smart Mapping

Or is it Artificial Intelligence? First Draft GIS creates a draft map for you - all you need to do is provide the data. That does not sound all that impressive, but it can map from news articles, Word Documents, PDFs, Excel Spreadsheets, or any type of webpage - just copy/paste the URL. Try this data set for example.

NYC in 1609, Today, and Tomorrow

This has been around for a while, but the reconstruction of Mannahatta (Manhattan in 1609) is always worth exploring. Visionmaker nyc lets you now go into the future and create quantitative visions for a sustainable city.

Mars over the last 3.8 Billion Years

Rewind the Red Planet (by National Geographic) is a great scrollable story map of the history of Mars over the last 3.8 billion years. If you are really interested have a read at How We Made “Rewind the Red Planet”.

Planet.com

Planet.com offers a bunch of high-resolution satellite data from several satellite constellations that they own. I'm not sure what the free account actually gets you, but their Education/Research Programs seems quite generous. Certainly much higher-resolution than Landsat/ASTER and more accessible than the other commercial products.

OpenAerialMap

OpenAerialMap is an open service to provide access to a commons of openly licensed imagery and map layer services. Download or contribute imagery to the growing commons of openly licensed imagery.

Seems like the available imagery is either standard satellite images that you could get from many sites or UAV images for specific places around the world.

The Choropleth Sandbox

The Choropleth Sandbox is pretty useful to 'test' how various classification settings have a big impact on the story that your map is telling.

Correlation CAN imply Causation

Good stuff as usual from Minute Physics:


Also look at the short footnotes video.

Between Two Cities

Between Two Cities sounds like a fun and useful game to learn about urban planning.

Dams!

Big Dams: Boon or Bane? is a richly-illustrated Esri Story Map.

Game On!

Here is a nice article in Nature (Game on, 20 July 2017) summarizing some of the available games that teach scientific concepts.

• XTRONAUT let's you explore space.
• Go Extinct! is a simple card game about, well, extinctions.
• Keep Cool let's you 'gamble' with climate change. There is also a multi-player online version Keep Cool mobil (sadly only in German at this time).

MindMode

MindMode looks like a great idea/mind/concept-mapping tool. Unfortunately, it only runs on Mac and iOS (and costs $$$).

Campus Technology 2017

Here's their annual survey: 2017 Teaching With Technology Survey. Now, these surveys are a bit biased from the start and so its is important to parse the results keeping that in mind. Still, a few things are interesting:

• Faculty and students agree: ed-tech is good for teaching and learning (Page 29). This result is not surprising given the biased source.
• Students do not have/use tablets (Page 29).
• Faculty feel confident in their ed-tech abilities (Page 34). Again, not a surprise result given the biased source.
• Top-10 Technologies that will be dead and gone within 10 years (Page 36), for example clickers, non-interactive projectors, traditional LMS, and computer labs.
• Top-10 Technologies that will become important over the next 10 years (Page 37), for example VR/AR, 3D everything, next-get LMS (?), and the Internet of Things.

Population.io

Population.io is an interactive data viz by the World Data Lab: just enter your birthday, country of birth, and sex at birth to see how you fit (statistically) into everybody on the planet.

The ArcGIS Book

Esri released a new version (I think) The ArcGIS Book in-time for the annual Esri UC in San Diego. It contains 10 chapters organized around 10 'big ideas' related to spatial science (aka. Geography!).

Mapping Cities with AI

Here are three interesting examples of using Google Street View and crowdsourcing to train AI algorithms to 'map' conditions in cities.

• Seen on Maps Mania: Project Sidewalk is a classic example of crowdsourcing, now used for training machine learning algorithms. Cool and also somewhat scary.
• Place Pulse has been around for a while and aims to quantitatively recognize which areas of a city are perceived as wealthy, modern, safe, lively, active, unique, central, adaptable or family friendly.
• StreetChange takes a similar approach, albeit focused to detecting urban change from Street View photos taken several years part. 

Histograms

Histograms are easy...in-theory. But things can easily get a lot more complex and all that is nicely illustrated and discussed in What's so hard about histograms?

Need a Chart? Need a Tool?

The Chartmaker Directory is an attempt to connect types of charts with the most appropriate tools to make them. More about the effort here.

Sea Level Rise: Hard Choices Ahead

When Rising Seas Hit Home: Hard Choices Ahead for Hundreds of US Coastal Communities (2017) is a comprehensive report from the UCS that you can explore in different ways: as a traditional report, as an interactive story map, as the underlying data (as MS Excel files), or a podcast. Or, just view the fact sheet for the affected states.

EJSCREEN

EJSCREEN is the Environmental Justice Screening and Mapping Tool from the EPA. The website offers an interactive mapping tool, tutorials, technical data, and the underlying data for download.

But, what can I do?

That's the question: what can I do as an individual to slow/stop global warming? Well, the infographic below can help with that. This is based on a recent paper in Environmental Research Letters (summary here).

Why Python is the Future of Web GIS?

Well, there you have it: some arguments as to Why Python is the Future of Web GIS?

Drone Resources

A simple compilation of papers and other resources related to drones and their applications.

• Rossini et al. (2018): Rapid melting dynamics of an alpine glacier with repeated UAV photogrammetry. Geomorphology, 304, 159-172. UAVs and SfM.
• 8 tips that will let you achieve survey-grade accuracy of your drone survey.
• Wigmore and Mark (2017): Monitoring tropical debris-covered glacier dynamics from high-resolution unmanned aerial vehicle photogrammetry, Cordillera Blanca, Peru. The Cryosphere, 11, 2463-2480.
• Ryan et al. (2017): Derivation of High Spatial Resolution Albedo from UAV Digital Imagery: Application over the Greenland Ice Sheet. Frontiers in Earth Science, May 2017. Using a basic consumer grade camera to measure albedo. Not quite as simple as it sounds, but very cool!
• Dabski et al. (2017): UAV-based detection and spatial analysis of periglacial landforms on Demay Point (King George Island, South Shetland Islands, Antarctica. Geomorphology, 290, 29-38. Home-made professional fixed-wing drone paired with a Canon 700D DSLR.
• O'Connor et al. (2017): Cameras and settings for aerial surveys in the geosciences: Optimising image data. Progress in Physical Geography, 41(3), 325-344. Lot's of details about cameras and lenses.
• Krsak et al. (2016): Use of low-cost UAV photogrammetry to analyze the accuracy of a digital elevation model in a case study. Measurement, 91, 276-287. Using a DJI Phantom 2 Vision+ to create a high-quality DEM.

Prezi is better than PPT

Prezi offers a so-called zoomable interface = an infinite canvas that is navigated = animated by zooming and panning. And that's the key - it forces you the presenter and the audience to process information spatially (in addition to sequentially). The linear slide decks of PPT cannot do that.

That's at least the theory. A linear sequence is at least one thing: simple. Prezis can easily get messy and confusing in my experience.

But, Prezis are cool and the coolness translates to a cooler and more knowledgeable presenter in the minds of the audience.

More here: Scientifically Speaking, Your PowerPoint Sucks

Must have Drone Apps for every Drone Pilot

There are plenty of these compilations out there, so here's one of them: Must have Drone Apps for every Drone Pilot.

How accurate is your drone survey?

Nice and informative post: How accurate is your drone survey?

RapidMiner

Big Data Data Mining - here's your tool: RapidMiner

Mapping Extreme Weather

The folks at Carbon Brief created a nice interactive web map attributing weather extremes to climate change - here's their conclusion: "Carbon Brief's analysis suggests 63% of all extreme weather events studied to date were made more likely or more severe by human-caused climate change. Heatwaves account for nearly half of such events (46%), droughts make up 21% and heavy rainfall or floods account for 14%."

Showing Topography

C-ROADS World Climate

The C-ROADS World Climate Simulator has been around for a while, but now comes with a new and nice-looking interface.

Our World in Data

Our World in Data produces some of the best data viz I have seen, for example Life expectancy:

• As an interactive map (with time-animation)
• As a customizable chart
• As various graphics formats
• As link and embed code (see below)
• As the underlying data

How to spot a misleading graph

Can You Draw The States?

Give it a try at Quiz: See How Well You Can Draw All 50 States and see what 'your' USA would look like!

Google Blocks

I don't know anything about it, but Google Blocks seems to be the thing to do for the VR/AR 'world' - see more at Google Is Becoming The Adobe Of VR.

Geography = The Macroscope

Geography = a macroscope for dealing with complex human and natural systems. Read more about it here: http://www.appreciatingsystems.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/The-Macroscope.pdf

The Animated GIF

What Makes The GIF Great is a nice history of the GIF, invented 30 years ago!

https://www.fastcodesign.com/90129895/what-makes-the-gif-great

Worldmap Generator

Choose your projection, zoom, center, etc. with Worldmap Generator and see that indeed the world in 2D can look however you want it to look!

Making Air Visible!

Excellent video by Veritasium: Seeing the Invisible (embedded below). The NPR Skunk Bear showed something similar a couple of years ago: Seeing Thin Air (showing work by RIT students).

One Year In The Life of Earth

One Year In The Life of Earth (by NASA) offers some nice videos from the EPIC camera on NOAA's DSCOVR satellite. Below is the simple animated GIF.

2016 Election by Precinct

Below is the MA map: this would be so much better with town lines as context! And: as an interactive map. Maps of the other states and the USA as a whole are at 2016 Presidential General Election Maps.

http://rynerohla.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/16-MA-Inverted.png

1850 - 2013

What Do Your Country's Emissions Look Like?

Here's nice (albeit complicated) interactive infographic breaking-down GHG emissions in 2012: Global Top 10 Greenhouse Gas Emitters (here are the data).

Video to GIF

The GIPHY GIF Maker works great!

Most Used Word

https://xkcd.com/1845/

SLR by NOAA

NOAA has a nice SLR Viewer with all the usual features, including an easy  download link to the underlying data.

A 1.4-Billion-Pixel Map of the Gulf of Mexico Seafloor

Who knew that we have a federal agency called the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management? I'm not quite sure what they do, but they just released a stunning bathymetry grid for the Gulf of Mexico. Read more about in EOS: A 1.4-Billion-Pixel Map of the Gulf of Mexico Seafloor.

Tsunami Travel Times

NOAA's Tsunami Travel Times to Coastal Locations is pretty simple, but does what it is supposed to do.

Reality vs. Perception

Here's the Boston MBTA map vs. the actual geography:

https://imgur.com/gallery/e2CTc

Silly, but fun!

https://www.facebook.com/AmazingGeologist/

Libra and landsat-util

Seen on Spatial Reserves: Libra work really well - a quick and effective 'browser' and 'downloader' for Landsat 8 images. Landsat-util is a command line utility to search, download, and process Landsat imagery.

Tripline and ArcGIS Online

Tripline is one thing: simple and uncluttered. Here an example: Road Trip to Yosemite (also embedded below). And here's Tripline embedded into a Story Map Journal.

400 Million Years

Source: https://www.axios.com/supercontinent-breakup-drove-evolution-2407903317.html

Iceflow in Antarctica

Very nice animated iceflow map of Antarctica as part of Antarctic Dispatches - Part 1 (NYT).

Mapjunction

Mapjunction lets you swipe between all kinds of maps, aerials, and atlas images for Boston (MA). Plus you can export and download.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to d3.js

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to d3.js is a pretty nice compilation of all things d3.js.

Why You Don't Believe In Facts, And How To Fix It

Why You Don't Believe In Facts, And How To Fix It is a talk by Lisa Charlotte Rost. There is nothing terribly new here, but her illustrations are brilliant.

Op-Ed: If you want to BREW, you should not study abroad

The Op-Ed: If you want to BREW, you should not study abroad spells is out rather nicely: study abroad trips perpetuate imperialism and classism.

This is the best section:

"The argument about getting outside one’s comfort zone is directly rooted in classism. I have been uncomfortable here because Bangalore, India is different than Moorhead, Minn. However, to suggest that discomfort is necessary for learning is something only comfortable people can afford to say. For those who have grown up facing class inequality, this claim would be considered incomprehensible. But those who have never faced significant difficulties in life can make this claim because they will eventually return to comfort with a fake story of overcoming adversity."

And:

"The last two reasons, traveling and fun, are often dismissed by those solely concerned about education, but to deny these as motivating factors is naïve. Plenty of students study abroad at least in part to experience popular tourist destinations, natural landmarks, partying and other privileged activities that most people (including exploited workers in tourist industries) will never have the opportunity to do."

PrecisionMapper, DroneDeploy, and Pix4D

PrecisionMapper is online software to process UAV imagery into 2D or 3D maps. Apparently it is now available for free and here is the step-by-step workflow.

DroneDeploy also offers a free version of their mapping solution.

Pix4D not yet, but that may change.

For a free and open-source alternative, consider OpenDroneMap.

Food Insecurity in The United States

Map The Meal Gap offers a nice interactive map of food insecurity across the U.S. at the county level. The data are available as PDF tables.

Global Trade

Resourcetrade.Earth is a pretty slick interactive data viz of global trade flows with all the cool cutting-edge data viz gadgets. However, the best part of this 'map' is also the simplest: a simple data download as MS Excel.

Deforestation in Borneo

There is a lot going on in the ATLAS OF DEFORESTATION AND INDUSTRIAL PLANTATIONS IN BORNEO - maybe too much. I do like the sliders for forest, palm oil, and pulpwood.

Wolfram|Alpha

I will admit: Wolfram|Alpha is cool, but I'm not sure what I would do with it. Wolfram|Alpha comes as mobile apps, course-assistant apps (even for geography), reference apps, and (of course) as Wolfram|Alpha Pro for a monthly fee.

Comparing SfM and LiDAR

Nice paper by Cawood et al. (2017) comparing the accuracy of outcrop mapping using traditional methods, terrestrial LiDAR, terrestrial SfM, and airborne SfM.

• Terrestrial SfM: 446 images from 20 camera positions, issues with occlusion = parts of the outcrop are not visible
• Airborne SfM: 202 images, 6.24 mm resolution, no issues with occlusion.

Overall, SfM worked better than LiDAR (and of course does not require any specialized hardware). Issues arise from occlusion, different lighting, and low-contrast surfaces.

So True!

Los Angeles GeoHub

The Los Angeles GeoHub is great (more about it from Joe Kerski).

SocScape

The SocScape Racial Diversity map is visually not all that exciting, but has a few interesting features: 1) it's a 30 by 30 m raster, 2) it's interactive, c) you can compare 1990, 2000, 2010 and d) you can download the data as GeoTIFFs.

World Ecoregions

Simple and effective: http://ecoregions2017.appspot.com/

Drones at High-Altitude

Drones are being used extensively for scientific research these days, but there are only a few examples from high-elevation areas (e.g. 4,000 m and higher). The main challenge seems to be dilemma of battery power, flight time, and the thin air. This seems to more of an issues for multi-rotor drones as opposed to fixed-wing drones. The thinner air means that the UAV has to fly faster and is therefore less stable. In addition it can be difficult for a fixed-wing UAV to get enough lift for take-off - thus a stronger engine and/or larger wings would be helpful.

The basic workflow is simple: the UAV takes overlapping images that include their location based on internal GPS. Those are then converted in combination with GCPs into high-resolution DEMs (via SFM) and ortho-mosaics.

• Monitoring Tropical Debris Covered Glacier Dynamics from High Resolution Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Photogrammetry, Cordillera Blanca, Peru (Wigmore and Mark, 2017).
• Seasonal surface velocities of a Himalayan glacier derived by automated correlation of unmanned aerial vehicle imagery (Kraaijenbrink et al. 2016). Some of their flights reached 5,900 m.
• USING UNMANNED AERIAL VEHICLES FOR GLACIER MONITORING IN THE HIMALAYAS (Immerzeel et al. 2016).
• High-resolution monitoring of Himalayan glacier dynamics using unmanned aerial vehicles (Immerzeel et al. 2014).

Fieldwork and Mobile Technology

Enhancing Fieldwork Learning Using Mobile Technologies is a new book that shows you how mobile technology can enhance fieldwork. I have to say: a book is probably the least-suitable medium for such a topic as the technology is changing so rapidly that the printed book will always be outdated.

EpiCollect is one example of an app you can use for smartphone data collection

ArcGIS 360 VR

Start with City Engine, host it on ArcGIS Online, and immerse yourself with ArcGIS 360 VR.

Snow and Climate Model Data

Here are two nice sources for data:

• The CCAFS provides down-scaled global climate model data in convenient GIS grid formats.
• The Global Snow Lab at Rutgers University provides, well, snow extent data.

Model My Watershed

I'll have to try this and maybe create a student project around it: Model My Watershed by the Stroud Water Research Center.

Walk [Your] City

I like this: Walk [Your] City lets you create simple signage to promote walking and biking in your city.

Its not too hard... from Walk [Your City] on Vimeo.

Kinght Lab Storytelling Tools

Northwestern University Knight Lab has created a series of simple web-based tools for storytelling, including timelines, story maps, simple image comparisons, and more. Below is an example of their Juxtapose tool:

Georeferencer V4

Seen on Maps Mania: Comparing Old Maps using Georeferencer Compare, used nicely here at the David Rumsey Map Collection.

UAV Mapping of Greenland Glacier

Here's another great example of a UAV used in glaciological research - all for under $2,000 and the authors provide a detailed description of their methods.

• Ryan et al. (2015): UAV photogrammetry and structure from motion to assess calving dynamics at Store Glacier, a large outlet draining the Greenland Ice Sheet.
• Skywalker X8 UAV airframe
• Ardupilot APM autopilot (open-source)
• Agisoft Photoscan Pro (for the 3D generation)

Jouvet et al. (2017) provided a more recent example using the same system and workflow to generate 10 cm orthoimages of the Bowdoin Glacier in Greenland.

Ryan et al. (2014, their Figure 2)

Precious Ozone - The Climate Connection

The Sound of CO2 Rising

NYC Carbon Emissions

Alice, the Zeta Cat and Climate Change

This sounds cute: Alice, the Zeta Cat and Climate Change is a fairy tale written by a scientists about climate change and (ultimately) truth (available here).

The New Urban Crisis

Mapping the New Urban Crisis maps-out the 'back-to-the-city' movement and resultant issues around inequality, economic segregation, and unaffordable housing.

NASA Earth @ Night 2016

NASA Earth @ Night 2016

Lights On Lights Out is a nice zoomable version showing changes in light between 2012 and 2016 and then there is the matching Esri Story Map LIGHTS ON | LIGHTS OUT.

Map Projections

Two useful websites to learn more about map projections and how they impact what  we 'think' the Earth looks like:

1. Select two projections in Compare Map Projections and do just that. There is also a Single View option.
2. Need a suitable projection for a given area and scale? Try the Projection Wizard!

Need a short summary? Try: Which is the best map projection?

Flourish

Seems like I have seems these before: Flourish makes it easy to turn your spreadsheets into world-class responsive visualisations, maps, interactives and presentations. Not sure what's special or different about this one, but you can read more about it here.

Mapping in R

This should be good: Introducing a Course for Mapping in R

The Bayesian Theorem

Dam Nation

Dam Nation is an impressive data viz / infographic showing, well, the almost 80,000 dams across the USA based on their hazard potential and the author provides a nice discussion on how he created it on his blog DustyData.

I think the top map with all the 80,000 points and clickable information would be better realized in an environment specifically designed to handle spatial data such as ArcGIS Online, Leaflet, Carto, etc. Scroll-down a little for the awesome pie chart cartogram.

Software Carpentry

Need basic skills in research computing? Software Carpentry can help!

Peaks and Valleys

Peaks and Valleys is an impressive new Esri Story map with 3D scenes of the world's highest and lowest locations.

Cartographies of Disease: Maps, Mapping, and Medicine

Now for a happy topic: Cartographies of Disease: Maps, Mapping, and Medicine (now available in the 2nd edition). Still, it could be argued that John Snow's disease mapping in 1854 was the start of modern quantitative cartography and ultimately of GIS. This book, combined with the GIS Tutorial for Health, fifth edition, would make a applied GIS course.

Snagit

Snagit (by TechSmith) is a great screen capture and screen recording software and will make your life as an educator so much easier (especially if you teach online or flipped classes). $29.95 for educators.

Daniel’s XL Toolbox

Daniel’s XL Toolbox is a free, open-source add-in for the Microsoft® Excel® spreadsheet software that helps you to analyze and present data and increases your productivity. Its primary target audience are life scientists, but it has proven useful for humanities and industry as well.

For example: you can export MS Excel into PNGs or TIFFs (awesome!).

Pie Chart Makeover

Timeline Creation

Timelines can be useful visualization tools and can make useful teaching and learning projects (similar to infographics, etc.). A recent ProfHacker post introduced TimeLineCurator and also includes links to other overviews and tools such as TimelineJS.

TimeLineCuractor video or slide deck.

Old Weather

Old Weather is a classic citizen-science effort - transcribing reams of old ship logs to better quantify past environmental conditions. And: the past is the key to the future! More about it on over on FiveThirtyEight.

An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power

ArcticDEM

ArcticDEM is an NGA-NSF public-private initiative to automatically produce a high-resolution, high quality, digital surface model (DSM) of the Arctic using optical stereo imagery, high-performance computing, and open source photogrammetry software.

So, if you a) work in the Arctic and b) need a DEM, this may be a great option for you.

Very cool: the Arctic DEM Explorer (running on Esri ArcGIS Online).

The Paleobiology Database

The Paleobiology Database (PBDB) is a great effort: interactive web maps and all the data available for download.

Loopy

Loopy is a really cool interactive tool for systems modeling - think concepts maps, but with quantitative interactions (think Stella, but free).

Mapping the Meandering Mississippi

This is very cool: hand-drawn maps of the meandering Mississippi - beautiful and insightful.

How about an artificial sun?

Seems crazy at first, but makes sense: to best use the real Sun to make sustainable energy it is beneficial to have a fake sun in the controlled environment of the lab. More here.

Highlights of Global Climate 2016

Highlights of Global Climate 2016 (by the WMO) presents, well, the climate of 2016 as an Esri Story Map.

Good one!

Yale Climate Opinion Maps – U.S. 2016

The Yale Climate Opinion Maps – U.S. 2016 show what people think across the country (by county) about aspects of climate change. The map for 'Global Warming is happening' gives some hope, but then the map 'Global Warming is caused mostly by human activities' is much more sobering.

National Transportation Noise Map

The National Transportation Noise Map shows, well, noise levels from roads and aviation. It's neat to see the takeoff and landing noise patterns around airports.

Esri’s new Landsat Explorer web app

Esri’s new Landsat Explorer web app is great and adds some nice new features: you can compare different dates, you can download the layer as raster file, and you define your band indexes.

The Hemispheres, Toilet Swirls, and the Coriolis Force

Smarter Every Day and Veritasium combine to find the definitive answer.

• The Truth About Toilet Swirl - Northern Hemisphere
• The Truth About Toilet Swirl - Southern Hemisphere
• Watch both videos synchronized!
• The whole story in one video

Worldpop

From their website: The WorldPop project was initiated in October 2013 to combine the AfriPop, AsiaPop and AmeriPop population mapping projects. It aims to provide an open access archive of spatial demographic data sets for Central and South America, Africa and Asia to support development, disaster response and health applications.

Drone Delivery and what3words

what3words is a new global addressing system that divides the world into a grid of 3m x 3m squares and assigns each one a unique 3-word address. In other words it is much more consistent than street addresses and much easier to remember than latitude and longitude.

Drones use what3words addresses system to deliver packages gives examples how emerging drone delivery services are using what3words for navigation to customers and their landing sites.

Using Esri Business Analyst

Learn How To Use Business Analyst More Effectively compiles three nice and quick videos showing you what you can do with Esri's Business Analyst. The one about suitability analysis is embedded below.

Land Viewer

Land Viewer is great: select your Landsat or Sentinal image and then run you analysis on it - all online and fast - and you can even specify your own band combinations / band ratios.

Here's a great example: Quelccaya Ice Cap 10 May 2016

Climate Change Facts from NASA

Climate Change Facts from NASA: evidence, causes, effects, scientific consensus, vital signs, and FAQ.

Drive-Time Maps

Here are a couple of nice online examples:

• Isoscope
• Walkshed.js

The Most Average City

Lynchburg, Virginia: The Most Typical (aka Average) City in America

Planet Explorer

Planet Explorer lets you explore images from a fleet of 149 satellites - across the globe and back in time.

Richard Dawkins in Science

Hivemapper

Share your drone videos as 3D maps via https://hivemapper.com/. Or, explore some really cool drone footage.

NSIDC GoLIVE App

The Global Land Ice Velocity Extraction from Landsat 8 (GoLIVE) Map Application allows users to spatially search for and download land ice velocities derived from panchromatic imagery collected from May 2013 to present.

• Here's the data set.
• Here's the web app.
• Here's the User Guide.

How to make a globe!

This is interesting: Globe Making (1955). Makes you realize how easy is today to access free 3D maps from anywhere on any device and how special a globe was back in the days.

Let's Drone a Map

Step by step guide to complete your first drone mapping project is exactly what it says - give it a try!

The Two Americas of 2016

The Two Americas of 2016 shows some pretty stark numbers and patterns. Here's One America:

Web Literacy for Students (and Everybody)

Web Literacy for Student Fact-Checkers is a great OER 'textbook' on - well - how to be a responsible consumer of web information.

• Read it here as a web book.
• Or, find it here  or here in various formats (including PDF)

2016: One of the warmest two years on record

Climate Change Board Games

Okay, I admit: I'm a little skeptical when it comes to the use of games or role-playing in science education. Still, Game changers (Science, 10 February 2017) reviews two new board games that could be useful:

• Evolution: Climate
• Catan Scenarios: Oil Springs

Global Land Ice Measurements from Space

The book Global Land Ice Measurements from Space is now available for free download - nice!

ChartAccent

ChartAccent is very cool: simply upload your data as a CSV file, chart it, annotate it, and  export it - even as an animated GIF. Here's an example:

R and Tableau

Now that's being being hip: Using R and Tableau

R for Excel Users

Scared about making the leap? R for Excel Users might help!

The World's Largest Solar Plant

Here is a nice image comparison by NASA showing the expansion of the Longyangxia Dam Solar Park in China using a Landsat 8 image from 2013 and 2017.

Regression Analysis: R2

This is nice and simple: Regression Analysis: How Do I Interpret R-squared and Assess the Goodness-of-Fit?

How to Spot Visualization Lies

Excellent post by Nathan Yau: How to Spot Visualization Lies

Cmap Tools

Cmap Tools have been around for a while now - they provide a nice concept map-based itinerary to get started with concept mapping. Also availble for iPad and cloud-based.

Intermediate Python

Here's a review of ArcGIS Blueprints - seems like a great choice for ArcGIS users as the next step beyond learning the basics of Pyhton.

Sea Ice Death Sprial

This is great: Global, Arctic and Antarctic sea ice area

Information Visualization

Enrico Bertini's course materials for his Information Visualization class are all available online. Thanks!

Census Reporter

Census Reporter provides easy, fast tools to search for Census data about a place along with advanced tools for mapping, charting and comparing data at the state, county, and city levels.

Data Journalism: finding the stories inside the census. from NPR Training on Vimeo.

Data Science

Here are several good resources that I stumbled across:

• Data Science with Python & R: Exploratory Data Analysis
• EXPLORATORY DATA ANALYSIS (EDA) FOR TABLEAU
• A Complete Tutorial to Learn Data Science with Python from Scratch
• Data Science Guide

A Short History of Humans and Germs

A Short History of Humans and Germs (by Skunk Bear) is great (here's the video) - looking forward to the continuation.

• Episode 2
• Episode 3

Here's my favorite animated GIF: