Geothermal!

Racism, Redlining, and Global Warming

 Great mapping by the NYT: How Decades of Racist Housing Policy Left Neighborhoods Sweltering

These are cool!

 https://www.ericknightmaps.com/panoramas

Stats are easy!

Classic xkcd: https://xkcd.com/2400/

Fluff You 2020!

Land Below Sealevel

Nothing new here, but a nice map: Land projected to be below the annual flood level in 2050 (here: Boston). Zoom, pan, and change the settings: our choices matter!

Data Organization in Spreadsheets

Data Organization in Spreadsheets is a great little (open-access, thanks!) paper with all kinds of useful tips - perfect for helping students get better with MS Excel.

Why TV Comedies Get Climate Change So Wrong

Science Games

This is by no means a comprehensive list or an endorsement, but here are three science-related games:

1. The Climate Trail (https://www.theclimatetrail.com/) has gotten good reviews from fellow educators.
2. The Cranky Uncle Game (https://crankyuncle.com/game/) looks great and I like John Cook's work.
3. Plague Inc: The Cure lets you save the world from a global pandemic.

The Best Projection?

Choropleth maps (also called thematic maps) visualize data as a function of geographic areas and, as with every map, you need a projection to convert the 3D shape of the earth to the 2D shape of your screen or piece of paper. This is not really an issue when mapping a small area (say census tracts in Massachusetts), but becomes an issue when mapping at the scale of the plant.

Designing choropleth maps: What projection to choose? tries to figure-out what map projection is the best. Obviously it has to be an equal-area projection, but which one?

For me: Equal Earth or Mollweide.

Esri Field Maps

Esri Field Maps is the new field mapping app - basically the 'new' version of Collector for ArcGIS. Unfortunately my old iPhone / iOS cannot run it...but here are 5 things to try in Field Maps 

Reconstructing Land Use LiDAR

Reconstructing Land Use LiDAR is a great example of using an Esri Story Map to create a tutorial.

COVID Precaution Level

 Brilliant: https://xkcd.com/2395/

Earth - Sun Relations

This is brilliant: https://drajmarsh.bitbucket.io/earthsun.html

Esri Story Map: Map Tours.

 Quick test of the new block option: The White Mountains

Living Nations, Living Words

 Living Nations, Living Words is a nice Story Map of First Peoples Poetry.

Clean Energy

Here are a few recent videos:

• Electrify Everything Basics - How to run your life on clean energy (especially your home)
• How a Heat Pump Works (This Old House)
• What Is Green Hydrogen And Will It Power The Future? (CNBC)

The Datafication of Society

Great article here: The sensor desert quandary: What does it mean (not) to count in the smart city? (Robinson and Franklin, 2020).

Interesting issues of data justice: sensor deserts mean that you are not counted, but also not under surveillance. In other words: is a (white) privilege to live in a neighborhood not covered by surveillance sensors in the city?

Political sectarianism in America

Great article:  Political sectarianism in America

This really explains a lot about what we are seeing the US these days. Political sectarianism really accelerated after the fall of the Soviet Union that eliminated the shared nemesis. On the other, our current nemesis COVID-19 seems to have only increased our sectarianism.

Mappy Gifts

This is a great holiday shopping / gift list: https://somethingaboutmaps.wordpress.com/2020/11/23/a-holiday-shopping-list/

Smartphones Kill Spatial Thinking

This is a great article: Smartphones and the Uncertain Future of 'Spatial Thinking'. Smartphones and the associated navigation apps prevent you from creating a mental map of your environment by giving you the perfect path on a tiny screen. But, perfect for whom? How you get from A to B is of great interest to someone!

So, basically, precisely what we think of generating this renewed interest spatial 'things' may ultimately kill spatial thinking and awareness.

Great quote: "Isn't it ironic: the easier it is for me to get where I'm going, the less I remember how I got there. As a conscious consumer of geographic information, should I be rationing my access to navigation tools—the mental equivalent of taking the stairs instead of taking the elevator?"

Great quote: "With their small screens and egocentric perspectives, mobile navigation systems function like blinders, reducing the landscape to the width of a street. They narrow the world."

Virtual Labs

Virtual labs is pretty much the polar opposite of what labs are supposed to be, but in the days of COVID-19 they may offer the best option. Here's a nice review article with a lot of examples and links (all obviously focused on STEM):

Potkonjak et al (2016): Virtual laboratories for education in science, technology, and engineering: A review

Mapipedia

Mapipedia is a new interactive map which can help you map and share your geotagged photos. That's all: funs and even a little useful. Here's a demo: https://mapipedia.com/s/u/drdave/demo.html

Aris and Palladio

Two great apps/tools related to mapping and DH:

• ARIS: create location-based games and stories.
• Palladio: visualize data, including location-based data.

Geothermal Energy

To me, this is one of great mysteries of sustainable energy: why is nobody talking about geothermal energy? We hear about solar, wind, cool new nuke plants, wave, etc. and that's all fine, but what about geothermal? To me the potential is huge, it is scalable, it is safe, and the issues and concerns with it are less than say nuclear. Here are a couple of interesting sources.

• Geothermal energy is poised for a big breakout (great piece on Vox)
• Eavor (let's make money with geothermal!)

Teaching and Learning with Green Screens

This may be of interest: What’s Possible with Green Screens in the Classroom

Scientific Color Maps

When it comes to color (in maps, charts, etc.), ColorBrewer 2.0 has always been one of the go-to-resources. Now there's a new one: scientific color maps.

• The misuse of colour in science communication (Crameri et al. 2020)
• Scientific Colour Maps (website)
• Colour Maps (YouTube)

The Climate Explorer

The Climate Explorer is nothing new, but the interactive map with slider is I think.

The PYPL

 The PYPL Index is the PopularitY of Programming Language Index and comes with a cool interactive chart and the data are visualized here in a video: https://youtu.be/DL37toLMCJ8.

What does all that mean? Well, in my opinion, if you have a choice: learn on of the Top-10 languages (unless you have a very specific reason to learn Lua or Haskell or Dart.

The Blame Pie

We talk a lot about carbon emission today (total vs per-capita) in terms of 'assigning blame' to global warming. But what really matters there are not the current emissions, but the cumulative emissions since the start of the Industrial Revolution. This simple pie chart shows it well, but here are two interactive options:

• Global Historical Emissions Map
• Who has contributed most to global CO2 emissions?

Interactive Data Viz into PPT

How to embed visualizations in PowerPoint presentations tells you how. Nice.

Area vs Population

This is one of these maps that will help (hopefully) the upcoming election results: 50 percent of the US population lives in only 4.6 percent of all counties (see below). County counting to specified proportion let's you adjust the percentage of population - nice!

Vulcan 3.0

The Vulcan Version 3.0 High‐Resolution Fossil Fuel CO2 Emissions for the United States is now available as an open-access paper and for download. 

The figure below shows total CO2 emissions which are of course to a large extent a function of population. The per-capita CO2 emissions would probably show an almost inverted spatial pattern across the USA.

Birds-Eye View from Mount Washington

This Birds-eye view from summit of Mt. Washington, White Mountains, New-Hampshire was pretty cool already and the Library of Congress makes it accessible in a variety of formats.

But now there's a online version that you can rotate like you are standing on the summit: https://vannizhang.github.io/birdeye-view/dist/

The Climate Issue

The Climate Issue (by Parametric Press) includes five interactive data-driven stories. Here's what they are trying to do (in their own words):

The Parametric Press is an experiment, a born-digital magazine dedicated to showcasing the expository power that’s possible when the audio, visual, and interactive capabilities of dynamic media are effectively combined.

This is very-well done. Here's my one issue: We are already looking too much into too many screens and all this slick interactivity is just too much for our brains to deal with. Sorry. Give me an analog book.

CAD and GIS

CAD and GIS: Everything you need to know is a nice overview of the fundamental differences between CAD and GIS.

Data Visceralization

Is this the future of good old data viz: Data Visceralization?

Learning ArcGIS Pro 2: A beginner's guide to creating 2D and 3D maps and editing geospatial data with ArcGIS Pro, 2nd Edition

Learning ArcGIS Pro 2: A beginner's guide to creating 2D and 3D maps and editing geospatial data with ArcGIS Pro, 2nd Edition seems like a great book to use for teaching and learning.

And, yes, it may sound weird to use a traditional tutorial book when there are 100s of digital options, videos, etc. But, trust me, there is just a comfort and convenience of having a book open next to you to serve as a trusted tour guide / travel guide.

This may be useful!

Not that I do this a lot, but the Optimal Social Media Image Sizes for 2020: The Complete Guide may be useful some day.

Eruptions, Earthquakes, and Emissions

 Eruptions, Earthquakes, and Emissions checks all the 'coolness' boxes:

• Animated over time vs. static.
• 2D map vs. 3D earth.
• Interactive.
• Data available for easy download.

How The Coronavirus Has Spread Across The U.S.

 

Lithium Mining in the Salar Uyuni

 

Face masks: what the data say

Face masks: what the data say is a great summary article about face masks and the pandemic. Read and also watch this great video: Why Masks Work BETTER Than You'd Think. That about covers it.

Masks work better than you think!

 

The Ozone Layer

 Great photograph from the ISS: Airglow Over the Indian Ocean (= the ozone layer).

Colour Controversy

 Colour Controversy is fun and a good way to find-out which colors are better to use than others - try it!

Renewables are cheaper.

 

Landsat8.earth

 Landsat8.earth is basically a Landsat 8 viewer that can do 'normal' (2D), but also 3D - pretty cool.

Aspectum

Aspectum is a new cloud-based GIS mapping software (YouTube Channel). Good luck!

Everybody Is Dead!

Cool data viz from the Washington Post: What if all covid‑19 deaths in the United States had happened in your neighborhood? The result is basically a circle around your location in which everybody is dead assuming 202,329 deaths - a sobering way to help us 'see' what 202,239 deaths actually would look like.

Data Viz Tools

 Here are some useful resources.

MySQL.

• SQL Tutorial / SQL Zoo
• Using MAMP and Sequel Pro (8:26 minutes)

Python.

• First Python Notebook: A step-by-step guide to analyzing data with Python and the Jupyter notebook
• Lists
• Dictionaries / Web APIs
• Regular Expressions

Rewiring America

Rewiring America is a good study and a good read: yet another reasonable approach to solve climate change via clean energy. I especially like the call for a shift in mindset from 1970s thinking (efficiency, scarcity, sacrifices) to 2020 thinking (abundance, prosperity). This may be what is really standing in our way (and the special interests of the fossil fuel world).

• It’s Time To Rewire America And Electrify Everything
• Decarbonize Your Home

Five maps you (and your team) should see

These compilations are always tricky, but these are solid choices: Five maps you (and your team) should see.

Is that a promise?

 Awesome - make it happen: Best Biden Ad Ever

Tesla Supercharger Network

The Tesla Supercharger Network is a nice interactive map rendered in Tableau Public. Yep, Tableau Public can do interactive maps and spatial analysis and this may be a good option in certain situations. For all else: use a proper Web GIS!

MS Excel / Google Sheets Tutorial Videos

There are 1,000s of such videos, but I like Vertex42 a lot.

• They are short and complete.
• They often use the same data set for both MS Excel and Google Sheets so it's easy to compare how these two different tools work.
• The data sets are available for download or just require some quick tying and you can follow along step-by-step.

Earth Now!

This is pretty cool: Earth Now (by NASA). Shows the most-current satellite images and the path of the earth-orbiting satellites, all in 3D.

Don't Mess With Smokey!

 

Data Journalism and Visualization with Free Tools

 Free self-directed MOOC: Data Journalism and Visualization with Free Tools

Ed-Tech

 

How America can leave fossil fuels behind, in one chart

Well - here's yet a third plan to get us away from fossil fuels (in addition to The Solutions Project and the recent UC Berkeley Study):

• Rewiring America (book)
• The Chart (Energy Literacy)

To get started, watch this video: How America can leave fossil fuels behind, in one chart (11:10-minutes)

Joe Biden on Climate Change (and Wildfires)

 

The Math of Masks

This is great: https://aatishb.com/maskmath/. Watch the video, then play around with the simulations.

90 Percent By 2035

The Solutions Project is a plan to get to 100 percent carbon-free energy by 2050 and now we have a new study out of UC Berkeley with a pathway to 90 percent carbon-free by 2035. Cool, let's do it!

THE TERRAINATOR

THE TERRAINATOR gives you 3D-printable terrain models. Well, you can have them 3D printed for a price or buy the STL file for yourself.

Anthony Leiserowitz talks climate communication

 

Historic Streetview

 Streetview is great, but what about the past? Here are two options:

1. Chronobook is great - make sure that you zoom-in enough as photographs and entire collections may pop-up.
2. Historypin is a similar approach.

Obviously you will get a lot more results in populated urban areas.

Thunderstorms over Lake Victoria

Nice example of convection within the Trade Winds: Watching Thunderstorms March Across Lake Victoria.

Wakelet

So Wakelet is pretty hip: basically an easy and fun way to curate things that you find on the Internet. Nothing that you could not do with a blog or a Google Doc, but with a fun and intuitive interface. Here are a couple of good resources:

• Wakelet (UMass Educ Class review)
• Using Wakelet In The Classroom For Curation And Research

As with all tools like this you need to ask yourself: how do they make their money and what does that mean for my privacy and the content that I'm creating?

The Four Laws of Learning

 All the usual caveats apply, but the 4 Laws of Learning (and How to Follow Them) is very helpful, for example for new college/university faculty who may have never had any training in pedagogy.

University COVID Models

 Yep - common sense seems to be missing from many of these 'Safe' Opening Plans...

Turnitin = Evil

 That's the synopsis - more details here: A Guide for Resisting Edtech: the Case against Turnitin

Would you upload your paper to a commercial website with these terms of service:

"Any communications or material of any kind that you e-mail, post, or transmit through the Site (excluding personally identifiable information of students and any papers submitted to the Site), including, questions, comments, suggestions, and other data and information (your “Communications”) will be treated as non-confidential and nonproprietary. You grant Turnitin a non-exclusive, royalty-free, perpetual, world-wide, irrevocable license to reproduce, transmit, display, disclose, and otherwise use your Communications on the Site or elsewhere for our business purposes. We are free to use any ideas, concepts, techniques, know-how in your Communications for any purpose, including, but not limited to, the development and use of products and services based on the Communications."

NASA EO Explorer

Very cool: NASA's new EO Explorer has a simple and intuitive interface - just pick a spot and zoom in to find great images. Noting fancy, but it works. 

COVID Pulses

Great idea: let's make sparklines for each county in an interactive web map. Read more about it here and see it here: Esri COVIDPulse. Or: watch the CovidPulse Video and take a narrated tour!

The Mirror Cam

This is cool: a simple 'mirror cam' to act as a doc cam: IPEVO Mirror-Cam. Read more about it here. $40 for 6 of them, so the idea is to buy them / mail them to all your students.

COVID-19 Explorers

 These Explorer Tools are all ArcGIS Online dashboards:

• Europe
• USA
• Global

IPCC Communication Fail

 This is a great example of communication fail in the world of climate change:

• Take a look at the IPCC AR5 WG1 SPM with its 10 figures - can you figure-out what is going on?
• Try ranking them in terms of their visual complexity and ease of comprehension.
• Then compare your thoughts with this recent paper: Communication of IPCC visuals: IPCC authors’ views and assessments of visual complexity (Harold et al. 2020, Climatic Change).

This is a striking demonstration of a real problem: how can we (the scientific experts) anyone to care about what we are saying if we are giving them charts like that?

Jeopardy

https://jeopardylabs.com/ is awesome - a great way to create a simple and quick way to test facts and specific knowledge.

Climate Insights 2020

Climate Insights 2020 is (yet another) survey of the usual: what Americans think about climate change. The report is available as a PDF, but they also offer a cool interactive Data Tool to view the responses to specific questions. It would be great to be able to a) grab the charts as JPGs and b) grab the underlying data.

Texas A&M GeoServices

 I forgot about the Texas A&M GeoServices, but they offer free and excellent geocoding / reverse geocoding services - a great alternative to Esri with their cumbersome credit-charging system.

Hurricanes

 Here are two great geo apps by Esri related to hurricane tracks:

• Hurricane Aware
• Hurricane and Cyclone App

Poop!

 Poop is always a good topic...more specifically: Why Sewers Around the World Keep Overflowing

Glacier Collapse in Switzerland

 I'm not sure I would call this a glacier collapse, but the video is cool:

How to prepare your data for analysis and charting in Excel & Google Sheets

Good stuff: How to prepare your data for analysis and charting in Excel & Google Sheets. Too often I find that students have no sense of basic data formatting in a table and this is a nice and concise tutorial. And that's our problem: our students tend to be incapable of the basics and therefore we never get to the 'advanced' = the dumbing-down on higher education. Thanks K-12!

Add this: How to split and extract text from data columns in Excel & Google Sheets

Smart Cities & ArcGIS Urban

This sounds like a great course to add to any GIS curriculum: Geodesign for Smart Cities. This class covers all the current buzz-words and hot topics.

URCA

Nice post and figure by Laura Guertin on her GeoEd Trek blog: Revisiting the continua of undergraduate research. I remember reading the Beckman and Hensel (2009) paper several years ago when I was more engaged in URCA and I created this figure back then:

The Landsat Explorer Web Mapping Application

The Landsat Explorer Web Mapping Application is not new, but a great tool to explore and analyze satellite data. This would work well with students. First they can try some of these tools 'on-the-fly' and then download the actual data for processing in a specialized software package. Or, in ArcGIS Pro.

Here's a quick summary of the app by Joe Kerski.

DIY Satellite Ground Station

 This looks like a fun project: DIY Satellite Ground Station

Critical Digital Pedagogy

This book looks great: Critical Digital Pedagogy. Yep, online teaching and learning is NOT just Blackboard, Zoom, etc.

Esri BAO, Demographics, and COVID-19

 Esri BAO is a pretty neat tool: simply define a site and then access all kinds of demographic information formatted either as reports or as infographics. You can design your own, or just use the existing templates (e.g. Coronavirus Impact Planning).

Here's the workflow: Creating a Coronavirus Impact Planning Infographic in the ArcGIS Business Analyst Mobile App

USGS Topographic Maps

Still one of the best sources for that: https://ngmdb.usgs.gov/topoview/ I especially like the various formats (high-res JPG, GeoTIFF, PDF, and KMZ).

Energy by State

Great chart from the Washington Post: How each state generated electricity in 2019. Show the total consumption as width (see VT vs TX) and then the split renewable vs fossil fuel. It would be interesting to add the coal vs natural split similar to the nuclear vs rest of clean.

Republicans hate science!

Yes, this is a cherry-picked compilation, but the statements at 1:06 and 1:12 really illustrate the fundamental disrespect of science by these people. That being said: this is a general pattern all across every political flavor all across the USA - we have just seen similar attitudes from our administration at Westfield State University.

Cool and Scary!

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/07/29/us/schools-reopening-coronavirus.html

COVID-19 & Mask Myths DEBUNKED!

How risky do you like it?

This is pretty interesting: COVID-19 Event Risk Assessment Planning Tool. Here you can adjust your 'event' size and then see, county-by-county, the probability that a COVID-19 positive individual will attend. Let's see: for Westfield State (assume 1,000 people in Hampden County) we get 96 percent or higher.

13,000 years or earlier?

I find this scientific question fascinating: when did people reach the Americas? 13,000 years ago is the 'accepted' date, based on the opening of a land passage between the Cordilleran and Laurentide Ice Sheets. But that date is not as certain as it may sound, plus the formation of an ice-free corridor does not mean people immediately followed it. Then there's the idea that people traveling via boats along the shore maybe as early as 16,000 years ago.

Below a map from Source 1 below showing the current evidence - interesting!

1. Evidence grows that peopling of the Americas began more than 20,000 years ago (Nature, 222 July 2020).
2. Tools suggest people reached Americas early (Science, 24 July 2020)

The USA: Locals vs Tourists

Or, rather, by attractions listed on Tripadvisor and split between what Local vs Tourists think of these attractions: Travel-Like-A-Local.

ArcGIS Experience Builder

Imagine a story map and a web app combined themselves somehow and you get the ArcGIS Experience Builder (I think). Details are a bit fuzzy, but there are several tutorials to get you started: Try ArcGIS Experience Builder.

NCSE Climate Change Summits

The NCSE Climate Change Summits are well-designed role-playing games. The 2019 edition revolved around dam renovation and the 2020 edition is called: How would you use $100,000 to mitigate climate change?

Two good videos on nuclear energy

Here are two short videos worth watching:

• Dan Kammen and the new nukes
• Should 'green new nukes' be part of the Green New Deal?

Look, here's the thing about nukes and energy: a) tell me how you are going to finance it to make it affordable and b) tell me what you are going to do with the waste. Then you will realize that there much better options already available.

UN FAO Data Portal

Have a look: https://data.apps.fao.org/

I'm just not into these map-based (or now 3D) search interfaces: too complicated, too slow, too much. Give me a nice scrollable list and a well-developed text-based search tool.

It is that complicated.

It's not that complicated.

More at https://flowingdata.com/2020/07/21/understanding-covid-19-statistics/

Meanders on the Mississippi

Nice image: Meandering Mississippi River

Chart Chooser / Chart Types

FlowingData cataloged all the chart types - not really a chart chooser, but a nice way to find information and resources about specific chart types: Cataloging All the Charts

Flooding

Two great interactive data viz related to flooding:

• How is flooding affecting your community? gives all kinds of cool embedded maps comparing flood risk in 2020, 2035, and 2050. Many you can embed in your website or create an animated GIF (see below).
• Flood Factor is simple: just enter your address and see your flood risk.

Land Cover: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow

And - finally - here is a nice compilation of land cover data as part of Esri's Living Atlas of the World:

• 1992 - 2018 (measured)
• 2050 (predicted)

The SDGs Today

Nice website (sponsored by Esri): The SDGs Today @ http://sdgstoday.org/. Here you can see and download the data related to the 17 SDGs.

Related to that: Esri also compiled the  ArcGIS Living Atlas Indicators of the Planet (same basic idea).

Climate Change Communication: Art & Science

Risky Business!

I'm not an expert, but I think I would put 'going to school' somewhere in the orange zone of this chart. For context, here's the xkcd version: https://xkcd.com/2333/

https://informationisbeautiful.net/

Wishful Thinking vs Science

This is pretty good, especially the COVID-19 section starting ~2:00-minutes.

Anti-Racism Pedagogy

This is not my expertise, but here are some useful resources:

• Robin DiAngelo: How 'white fragility' supports racism and how whites can stop it. At the end of this interview she gives white people five specific tasks.
• Take the 21-Day Racial Equity Habit Building Challenge
• Read the Me and White Supremacy Workbook 
• Why White Students Need Multicultural and Social Justice Education

Geography Games

Seen on Maps Mania: How Well Do You Know the World?

Honestly, Guess Where? is just dumb and not useful in any way: recognizing a capital city based on a Google Maps close-up is just silly and has nothing to do with geographic knowledge or insights. This is in-essence the 21st-century version of memorizing river names and has nothing to do with what we think of as the 'geographic perspective'. At least show the satellite image and scale bar - that way you can begin to use deductive reasoning and practice 'thinking like a geographer'.

Boston's Black Heritage Trail

Boston's Black Heritage Trail is a really nice 'story map', created in Tableau.

But, I'm torn. On one hand it shows-off what you can do with Tableau in terms of geography-based mapping and data viz, but on the other hand this would look so much better, especially on smartphones, using a tool such as Esri Story Maps that is specifically-designed for such a purpose.

21 Arguments

It's not that complicated: The 21 best arguments for wearing a mask

https://www.lavision.de/en/news/2020/4302/

The 2020 Environmental Performance Index

The 2020 Environmental Performance Index, a scorecard ranking 180 countries on how well they are managing natural resources, pursuing sustainability, and protecting public health.

Got it? Like any global metric, this is not perfect, but rather offers a general view on which countries are best dealing with environmental issues.

• Esri Living Atlas feature layer
• ArcGIS Dashboard

How Well Do Masks Work?

This really says it all

Great side-by-side maps showing climate and energy views of Democrats and Republicans. Great work as always from the Yale Forum on Climate Change Communication (includes the data and the survey questions): Democratic and Republican Views of Climate Change (2018)

Cranky Uncle vs. Climate Change

This sounds great: Cranky Uncle vs. Climate Change. There's a book, game app, and more. Here's a review on the NCSE website. Even better: the Cranky Uncle cartoons available as PPT slides!

And then we have the complete compilation of Myths, Facts, and Fallacies - all matched by a great video. Well-done!

https://crankyuncle.com/book/

https://crankyuncle.com/book/

The Sun between 2011 and 2019

This is fun: View the sun on this day every year between 2011 and 2019

COVID by County

Nice interactive map here: COVID Risk Levels Dashboard

Deconstructing White Privilege with Dr. Robin DiAngelo

Chart Fail

https://flowingdata.com/2020/06/24/bad-bar-chart/

Kilembe Flooding (May 2020)

I was there last summer - this is devastating for this community. Here's the JustGiving crowd-funding link by Andrew Wielochowski.

The WebPlotDigitizer

The WebPlotDigitizer is awesome: a) add a chart, b) 'georeference' it, c) get the data. Way back in the 1990s there was a PC-based tool like that.

Mrs. Brainmocker

http://hackeducation.com/2020/06/21/imaginary

Push-Button Education

This is not new, but timely right now: The Ed-Tech Imaginary

Making Music with MS Excel

This is awesome at some many levels:

The Trade Winds

Climate Extremes: Rainfall / Flooding

Everest From Above

This could be cool: Everest From Above. Alas, hidden behind the pay wall. Lame.

(Glacier) Timelines

Cool science-art project visualizing glacier recession in the Swiss Alps: Timelines. I really like the dual drone footage (see example below). For more 'traditional' data viz approach, see this: So schmolzen die Schweizer Gletscher in 160 Jahren weg.

Getting to Know Web GIS, fourth edition

Getting to Know Web GIS, fourth edition is out today. This is a good book, really. And I like books. And I think tutorial books are very useful. But - still - actually printing a book like that for something like as dynamic as Web GIS feels a little too-retro perhaps in 2020.

Morphcode Explorer

Morphcode Explorer looks super-cool: it's basically an urban analysis tool to access location information based on any geography. Of course, there's a catch: it is currently only available for NYC and will probably only be available for major cities around the world. Until then: use Esri's BAO and CAO.

Look: A Plotter!

This is just fun to watch: Boom & Bust: A History of Oil Prices and Consumption

The Rise and Fall of Coronavirus Cases

Great chart and animation by ProPublica: States Are Reopening: See How Coronavirus Cases Rise or Fall (embedded as an animated GIF below).

The Conspiracy Theory Handbook

Here's something that connects climate change and COVID-19: conspiracy theories! The Conspiracy Theory Handbook by Stephan Lewandowsky and John Cook explains how to identify and deal with those.

Blast from the past!

Now what for white people like me?

Want to do something - here are a few options:

1. Sign this: Call for a Robust Anti-Racism Plan for The Geosciences
2. Robin DiAngelo: 5 Tasks for white people
3. 21-Day Racial Equity Habit Building Challenge
4. Institutionalized Racism: A Syllabus

May 2020

Yep, May 2020 was a warm one. Just not in central/eastern Europe, Australia, and much of the eastern USA.

Black Lives Matter from Space!

Most Americans Still Trust Scientists

Climate Deniers

Python Scripting and ArcGIS Pro

Looks like Esri Press is releasing two new books: Python Scripting for ArcGIS Pro and Advanced Python Scripting for ArcGIS Pro.

'Mapping' Art

Here are a few recent example of 'mapping' art in the broadest sense:

• Matthew Paris' 13-Century Map of Great Britain
• The Drawing Lesson
• The Gross Clinic (NYT)
• Duerer Self-Portrait (NYT)

Mapping under the forest canopy

This is not new at all, but a nice example what you can do with Lidar: Large-scale early Maya sites in Mexico revealed by lidar mapping technology.

Publishing a Scientific Paper

This is great: The Scientific Publishing Process ($20 on Etsy). You can also look at the individual panels on Flickr.

DataWorthSeeing on Etsy

Space Station Docking Sim

What an awesome waste of time: ISS Docking Sim

Bending Lines

Bending Lines is a great exhibit by the Boston Public Library about maps and the stories they are telling. Here's the description: Because they seem to show the world how it “really is,” maps produce a powerful sense of trust and belief. But maps and data visualizations can never communicate a truth without any perspective at all. They are social objects whose meaning and power are produced by written and symbolic language and whose authority is determined by the institutions and contexts in which they circulate.

Better Jet Fuel?

The Past Climate Explorer

The Past Climate Explorer is a great way to explore, well, the 'normal' climate (1981-2010). Now...if you could only download the data that are being displayed!

Online Talking

Here are some good tips and resources on how to give an online talk. Or simply an online lecture:

• http://www.katharinehayhoe.com/wp2016/faqs/#video-setup
• https://twitter.com/KHayhoe/status/1245761110948622336

Collaborative Scientific Writing

Think Google Docs and add features such as citation management, embed/run code, interactive charts, and line-by-line text contribution tracing and you get apps such as Manubot, Overleaf, Authorea, Fidus Writer, and Manuscripts.io.

More here: Synchronized editing: the future of collaborative writing

Corona Virus Tracing Apps

Interesting: these apps are using the Bluetooth signals between two smartphones (similar to indoor 'GPS'). More here:

• Coronavirus contact-tracing apps: can they slow the spread of COVID-19?
• COVID-19 contact tracing apps are coming to a phone near you. How will we know whether they work?

Michigan Dam Failure

Here some useful resources:

• Great work as usual by NASA: Muddy Flooding in Michigan
• Good video analyzing the dam failure: Michigan Dam(s) Fail! Tittabawassee River
• More footage: https://youtu.be/SF0c1eyuiJs

The Electoral College

Spoiler alert: votes are not equal across the country!

Mapping Art

Here are two great examples (seen on Maps Mania):

• Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum Walking Tour
• Rembrandt's The Night Watch in hyper-resolution

Deforestation

Yet another example of deforestation in the Amazon: Deforestation in Argentina’s Gran Chaco

Digital Bloom

More Mount St. Helens

Source: the Internet

Boston Coastline: Future Past

Boston Coastline: Future Past is a great art-science project = a walking data visualization (nice video as well!). But, what's really neat are the comparisons between past and future coastlines:

• 1630 vs 2100
• 1788 vs 2100

http://www.kanarinka.com/project/boston-coastline-future-past/

Glacial Erosion

Mount St. Helens - 40 years ago

Nice images from NASA: Mount St. Helens

Beer vs Food

Or, is beer a food? Regardless, Where Bars Outnumber Grocery Stores is a great mapping effort. The pattern in the US is obvious, but what does it mean? Some of the other countries are interesting too: the UK, France, and Spain seem to have a lot of bars, whereas grocery stores dominate in Poland and Germany. I should 'test' this for my hometown!

The US Font Map

The United Fonts of America is silly, but fun.

EJ Atlas

The EJAtlas - Global Atlas of Environmental Justice - check it out!

This reminds of these great Code Green cartoons by Stephanie McMillan. And this one:

Infographics in BAO/CAO

Infographics in BAO and CAO are nothing new, but the Coronavirus template is more here: Using the Coronavirus Infographic Template in Business/Community Analyst Web. The example for MA is below, exported as a static PNG.

10 New ArcGIS Pro Lesson Activities, Learn Paths, and Migration Reflections

Good stuff from Joe Kerski: 10 New ArcGIS Pro Lesson Activities, Learn Paths, and Migration Reflections.

• Introduction Video
• Solving problems with GIS and Public Domain Geospatial Data 1
• Solving problems with GIS and Public Domain Geospatial Data 2
• The GIS Guide to Public Domain Data Learn Path 3

That being said: we need a different approach to these types of things (and I don't know what that should be). First, these lessons are immediately outdated: software changes, data sources change, etc. and yes, those things should not be a problem, but they are. Second, we all have our own priorities and circumstances as GIS educators which makes adopting such a structure tempting (because it is easy), but ultimately not effective.

I don't know the solution, but a series of 50+ pages PDF docs is not it.

How a melting glacier could redefine the Alberta–B.C. border

Honestly: who cares? Go to any mountainous area between two countries and the actual 'demarcation line' is not always clear and obvious. But, How a melting glacier could redefine the Alberta–B.C. border is a cool 3D Story Map.

The New Suburbia

This is how the Danes do suburbia. Not sure I like any more than the way we do it.