Thursday, December 22, 2022

Urban vs Suburban

Great mapping / data viz from the NYT: The Climate Impact of Your Neighborhood, Mapped. Here's the summary:

Households in denser neighborhoods close to city centers tend to be responsible for fewer planet-warming greenhouse gases, on average, than households in the rest of the country. Residents in these areas typically drive less because jobs and stores are nearby and they can more easily walk, bike or take public transit. And they’re more likely to live in smaller homes or apartments that require less energy to heat and cool.

Moving further from city centers, average emissions per household typically increase as homes get bigger and residents tend to drive longer distances.

But density isn’t the only thing that matters. Wealth does, too.

Higher-income households generate more greenhouse gases, on average, because wealthy Americans tend to buy more stuff — appliances, cars, furnishings, electronic gadgets — and travel more by car and plane, all of which come with related emissions.

The Data Point

 

Saturday, December 3, 2022

Carbon Footprint Map

Nothing new here @ https://footprintmap.org/map, but a nice interactive data viz. Two things to improve: 1) add the total carbon emission as an option and 2) provide the data for easy download.

Simple Writer

De-jargonize your writuing using XKCD's Simple Writer @ https://xkcd.com/simplewriter/. Copy/paste your text and then iteratively edit until you are only using the 1,000 most-common words in the English langauge.

For the opposite: try the Edubabble Generator or play Edubabble Bingo.

Monday, November 21, 2022

Global Watersheds

Global Watersheds is great: delineate watersheds and downstream traces - downloadable in various geospatial formats & much faster than the corresponding Esri geoprocessing tools.

Sunday, November 13, 2022

River Runner

River Runner is fun - follow a drop of water as it travels downstream from whereever it falls.

Friday, October 21, 2022

Climate & Conflict

The connections between climate change impacts and violent conflict seem pretty intuitive, but of course climate change is only one factor of many. Here are two recent web maps trying to visualize the locations and connections:

Tuesday, October 18, 2022

The 15 Minute City

The 15 Minute City would be a city where every urban resident has access to basic services within a 15 minute walk. In the United States alone, more than 500 municipalities have implemented policies for the creation of socially inclusive communities with improved access to services, shops and recreation, healthy and active lifestyles, more walking and less driving, attractive public spaces, and improved economic vitality.

See if your city is a 15 Minute City @ https://www.cityaccessmap.com/

Wednesday, October 12, 2022

Monday, October 10, 2022

Dashboards in MS Excel

Well, maybe not exactly, but Anne Emery here shows some simple and effective way to quickly visualize a table using sparklines, data bars, color scales, and more: How to Make a Not-So-Scary Starter Dashboard in Excel.


Tuesday, September 13, 2022

Felt

 Felt claims that they are the best way to make maps on the internet - could be worth a try.

Thursday, September 8, 2022

Smart Charging for EVs

This has been talked about for a long time, but it seems like WeaveGrid is making this a reality:
  • Adjust the timing of when the EV charges to match supply and demand of the grid.
  • Bidirectional charing where the EV sends electricity back to the grid when needed.
The idea is that EVs will form a massive interconnected and dispersed battery that can either consume excess power or provide power to the grid when needed. Of course, this only works for EVs that are connected at-home or at-work for a long time.

Tuesday, September 6, 2022

Spinndle

Spinndle is yet another online learning environment that promises to solve all the problems that all the other ones have. 

Saturday, September 3, 2022

Data Design in ArcGIS Pro

Data Design in ArcGIS Pro shows an excellent case study that explains the differences and uses for attribute domains, subtypes, contingent values, and attribute rules. Plus a nice example of using a Story Map without any maps! 

Wednesday, August 31, 2022

The New Way To Publish!

This is great! First, you have an allroud excellent paper, published OPEN in Nature Medicine. Second, you get a cool animated data viz where you can drill into the data and results yourself. Now all you need to add is a simple Data Download button and this would be perfect. Have a look:

Kephart, J.L., Sánchez, B.N., Moore, J. et al. City-level impact of extreme temperatures and mortality in Latin America. Natire Medicine (2022).

Saturday, August 27, 2022

Thursday, August 25, 2022

Deforestation in Bolivia

Nothing new here, but a) the patterns are wild and b) the change between 1986 and 2022 is incredible: Patterns of Forest Change in Bolivia

ArcGIS StoryMaps Collections

That opens-up all kinds of good options: Recreate the classic Story Map Series template in ArcGIS StoryMaps with collections.

Now, if you could only add a basic and simple text 'tile' as part of your collection!

Survey123 inside a Story Map

This is pretty cool: How to add a self-check quiz into ArcGIS StoryMaps using Survey123

For example, you can create a Story Map to present an issue to your stakeholders (e.g. different development options for an empty parcel of land) and then embed a Survey123 survey to get feedback, preferences, and comments.

Wednesday, August 24, 2022

Carbon Offsets

Carbon offsets and the issues associated with them are old news, but here are two great recent videos about them:

Tuesday, August 23, 2022

Dangerous Heat

Good maps & you can enter your own zip code to see what will happen in your town: More dangerous heat waves are on the way: See the impact by Zip code

1990 - 2020 US Census Dot Density Dashboard

This is just cool: 1990 - 2020 US Census Dot Density Dashboard

The Health Effects of Climate Change

The Wellcome Trust has mapped out 120 years of climate data in order to explore the health effects of climate change: Tracking the health effects of climate change around the world

It's cool and technically-sophisticated, but lacks any kind of storytelling - it present the data, but does not illicite any emotions.

Meltsville

This is a 'cool' idea: let's create a fake city called Meltsville to explore the impacts of extreme heat on urban infrastructure and society: We built a fake metropolis to show how extreme heat could wreck cities

LiDAR Data Portal for Indiana

In case you need LiDAR data for Indiana: https://lidar.digitalforestry.org/

Data Basin

Data Basin is a great geoportal for free and open geospatial data with an emphasize of ecosystem data. Read more about it here: Data Basin as a source for free and open geospatial data

Ice Ages vs Volcanoes

 

Hurricanes and Climate Change

Lake Mead Keeps Dropping

Nothing new here: Lake Mead Keeps Dropping

Mining and the Green Revolution

This could be useful: Mining and the Green Revolution

The Atmosphere

This is such a great photograph from the ISS: Earth’s Limb with a Crescent Moon



And - why not?

I can't imagine that putting solar panels on lakes is a good idea in-general, but in specific situations it may be appropriate - see Solar Takes a Swim for an example from China.

Thursday, June 16, 2022

Desmos

Desmos offers some tool math tools: Graphing Calculator, Geometry Tool, etc. All that is seemingly free to use and share/export (see example below). There is also Desmos Classroom which requires a login, but the Math Tools seem to be available to all.


Wednesday, June 8, 2022

Six Thousand Years of Forests

Six Thousand Years of Forests is a cool 'scrolly map' and starts with a series of world-wide maps of so-called Anthromes over time before detailing forest changes in Great Britain over time with beautiful art work.

Las Vegas & Lake Mead

There's more going-on here, but the side-by-side view of an expanding Las Vegas and a shrinking Lake Mead is striking. Now, please make this available as an animated GIF!

Friday, June 3, 2022

Wind Direction & Airports

This all makes sense: you want to align your airport runways with the prevailing wind directions. In-general, that would be (from a) westerly direction, but there are interesting local and regional wind direction patterns across the USA.

  • Wind History shows the classic wind roses for weather stations across the country - many of which are of course located at airports.
  • Trails of Wind shows the direction of airport runways.
Interesting to note that a) the wind direction in Texas and Kansas is often north/south and b) you can see the effect of valleys, for example wind direction in the Connecticut River Valley.

Tuesday, May 31, 2022

GIS Helps!

GIS Helps! is a nice 10-part video series explaining how GIS can help with all kinds of things, including getting a job, bringing people together, and solving 21st century problems.

Sunday, April 10, 2022

Carbon Credits & Offsets


Energy Use by US States

Back in in 2015, NPR published a nice small-multipes slope chart showing how each state in the USA generated 'their' energy: Coal, Gas, Nuclear, Hydro? How Your State Generates Power. This approach is simple and effective.

More recently, the WSJ did the same thing, but instead used line charts arranged as a 'map' of the USA (embedded below): America’s Power Grid Is Increasingly Unreliable (behind paywall).





Tuesday, April 5, 2022

Mapping where the earth will become uninhabitable

Mapping where the earth will become uninhabitable is a cool 3D Data Viz / 'Scrolly' Map - scroll all the way down & you can select the interactive mode.

Cool? Yes! Fancy? Yes! Effective? No! This is a classic case of visual and technical fireworks that distract from the data and the message.

Sunday, April 3, 2022

Need Contours?

Try Axis Map: https://contours.axismaps.com/#13/42.6111/-72.5949 (here centered around Greenfield, MA). A few comments:
  • You need to set an appropriate contour interval for your overall topography.
  • I can 'see' the label or roads - not sure what's happening here.
  • Export as vector, image, or GeoJSON - great!


Current Wind & Weather

Fun web map by Esri: https://www.arcgis.com/apps/mapviewer/index.html?layers=cb1886ff0a9d4156ba4d2fadd7e8a139

What precision do you need?

Great simple table showing the distance represented by decimal degrees - obviously this works anywhere for latitude, but is only correct for longitude at the equator because the line of longitude conerge towards the poles.




Friday, April 1, 2022

Dihydrogen Monoxide FAQ

The Dihydrogen Monoxide FAQ is not new, but still relevant!

SAR Satellites

Everything you ever wanted to know about SAR satellite data and the ecosystem but were afraid to ask is worth a read if you are into that kind of stuff, especially the commercial side of SAR satellites.

Here's something I did not know: the current 'best' available optical satellite image data comes from the European Space Agencies Sentinel-2A and Sentinel-2B satellites and I always wondered what happend to 1A and 1B? Turns out, Sentinel-1A and Sentinel-1B are C-band SAR satellites.

Monday, March 28, 2022

Sea Level Rise: It's not that simple

Well, it is at the basic level: global warming = less glaciers & warmer oceans ==> sea level rise. But, there's more to that story.

Saturday, March 26, 2022

The Temperature Spiral (1880 - 2021)

Nice animation here: GISTEMP Climate Spiral. It's nice that they offer various ways to download the video - including an animated GIF would be nice & the underlying data as an easy-to-use table.

https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/details.cgi?aid=4975&button=recent#.Yi0W6SL5v6E.linkedin


Friday, March 18, 2022

Dollar Street

Dollar Street is pretty cool - a great addition to more 'objective' stats about human development and welfare. This - combined with something like Google StreetView - would make for great learning experiences in a World Regional Geography or Cultural Geography class.

Zonal Climate Anomalies

Nice animation by NASA, showing the so-called 'Arctic Amplification' of global warming: Zonal Climate Anomalies. However, this is a classic case of something that's too fancy, too complicated, and uses too much visual fireworks. It's cool from a technical point-of-view, but not effective in terms of communicating 'zonal climate anomalies' to the public.

Saturday, March 12, 2022

Socially-Relevant Stats Lessons

This could be useful: https://skewthescript.org/ap-stats-curriculum

The Legacy of Redlining

Not Even Past is a great data viz / web map comparing redlining in the 1930s to the CDCs Social Vulnerability Index (SVI) scores. The interactive diagram visualizes changes, e.g. cementing of privilege, decline of relative privilege, or gentrification.

Not Even Past: Social Vulnerability and the Legacy of Redlining explains how to use it and Downloads & Data provides, well, access to the data. Details for each city can also be accessed via Mapping Inequality.

For additional context and examples, read The Lasting Legacy Of Redlining.

Friday, March 11, 2022

1895 to 2021 Warming - US Counties

Nice & simple map by The Guardian: compare 1985 to 2021 and see if the warming in a given county has exceeded the 1.5 C warming: A third of Americans are already facing above-average warming.

Pumped Storage Hydropower

This is an old technology that's becoming popular again: pumped hydropower.
https://www.energy.gov/eere/water/pumped-storage-hydropower

Monday, February 21, 2022

Tuesday, February 1, 2022

Mentimeter

Mentimeter looks fun - basically a combination of Kahoot!, PowerPoint, and Padlet. The free version is very limited, but should be enough for a class when combined with a 'real' presentation software, especially when teaching online. The paid versions are too expensive for an educator.

LandsatLook 2.0

LandsatLook 2.0 is a nice way to explore the USGS Landsat archive. You can even do on-the-fly analysis and dispplay differents band combinations and band ratios. One issue I noticed: you cannot switch the basemap - the dark one looks cool, but swapping it for something like OSM would make it much easier to find your area of interest.

Monday, January 31, 2022

Climate Impacts in Africa

Klimawandel in Afrika is a nice 'scrolly map' with embedded interactive maps and 3D globes by the German newspaper Der Tagesspiegel. Unfortunately, it is in German and therefore not all that accessible - how about an English translation? (happy to help with that!)

Common Sense Education

Common Sense Education is a large non-profit 'dedicated to improving the lives of all kids and families by providing the trustworthy information, education, and independent voice they need to thrive in the 21st century.'

There are lot's of players in that space directly or indirectly promoting some kind of agenda, so be careful! That being said, they seem to offer good educational materials related to digital citizenship and Edtech.

Friday, January 28, 2022

How Cell Service Actually Works

EO Toolkit for Sustainable Cities and Human Settlements

The EO Toolkit for Sustainable Cities and Human Settlements aims to support local communities, cities and countries in understanding the value and usefulness of Earth observations for SDG 11 and the New Urban Agenda and to provide practical guidance and examples of EO data, tools, and use cases in support of sustainable urbanization and resilience.

This looks great, but may fall under the category: too much...TMI.

Mapping Textbooks / Libraries

These two 'maps' are pretty cool:

Tuesday, January 25, 2022

Watched By Aliens

How big was the Tonga eruption?

By now we all have seen the eruption, but what's missing in all these cool animations is a scale - how big was this eruption? Well, have a look at How big was the Tonga eruption? to see the eruption superimposed on different parts of the world (e.g. Florida, Egypt, Iberian Peninsula, etc.). One thing: Reuters, please, make these animations available as GIFs - that way we could actually use them for teaching. Thanks.

Saturday, January 15, 2022

The Mendenhall Couloir

Nice video of a route we climbed/hiked/scrambled last summer: https://youtu.be/xlGJFqfKu98. The techical crux @ ~5.2 is right down at the start & certainly a little spicey when wearing trail running shoes. The rest of the route never felt sketchy: mainly 3rd class with some short 5th sections here & there. We traversed right onto a ridge rather than slogging through the scree to the top - that probably is the better way to finish the route.

Monday, January 10, 2022

Population Forecasts with ArcGIS Pro

Here's nice tutorial introducing some of the time-series forecasting cools combined with space-time cubes using NetCDF data: Looking to the future: Using GIS to model and predict population. This example uses county-based population data, could be used just as well for grid-based climate model outputs or other gridded data.

Historical OSM

This is cool: OpenHistoricalMap. Let's put South America on this map!

Friday, January 7, 2022

Mapping Power Plants and Transmission Lines

Here are two great web maps showing the locations of power pants and the transmission lines (electricity, natural gas, oil, etc.) across the USA - interesting spatial patterns!