Reality Mapping vs Digital Twins

This Esri article sounds like a lot of marketing word salad, but the animated GIF is cool!

True Orthos vs Trad Orthos & ArcGIS Reality

First, what is ArcGIS Reality?

I'm not entirely sure, here's what Esri says: ArcGIS Reality is a suite of photogrammetry software products designed to enable reality capture workflows for sites, cities, and countries.

One main feature seems to be the abilaity to create & use so-capped True Orthophotos as opposed to Traditional Orthophotos.

• True Orthophotos vs. Traditional Orthophotos: Why do pixels matter in the age of AI?
• The Different Types of Ortho Images Created in ArcGIS

The animated GIF below demonsrates the main difference between true orthos & trad orthos. 

Ozone Pollution From Space

Air Pollution’s Daily Pulse Over the Northeast is a cool example of how we can now monitor air pollutions from space & how it changes over the course of the day! You start with the NO2 plumes from car exhaust & how they dissipate over the course of the day. Then you can look at the plumes of ground-level ozone created from the NO2 & their spatial patterns which are impacted by wind patters.

Recent Land Use Changes: USA

This is interesting: A Shift in What’s Shaping U.S. Landscapes

The three main types of land use changes are urban sprawl, logging, and agriculture & here the New England has remained pretty stable over the last 40+ years or so. Why? The main land use changes had already occurred by 1988.

Your Name in Landsat!

Silly, but fun: Your Name in Landsat

Maybe even a good way to explore landforms in a Physical Geography class!

Cracking Ice!

Cool satellite image animation shared by NASA!

Landsat Surface Temperature

This seems cool, but I have no idea what to do with it: Landsat Surface Temperature Web Mapping Application and Data. Joe Kerski has some ideas here.

3D model of Sutro Tower in San Francisco

This is super-slick: https://vincentwoo.com/3d/sutro_tower/

Google Alpha Earth

Google Alpha Earth is a new geospatial AI model that acts as a virtual satellite: it assimilates all kinds of geospatial data & does the processing for you. Then, you just ask & get ready-to-use AI-generated 'maps' of whatever you want. No more working with dozens of raw datasets!

Example: glacier mapping. In thed old days you would have spent considerable time finding useful cloud-free images, do some kind of processing, and then run some kind of index or band-ratio calculations. Now you can just ask: give me the size of the Humboldt Glacier over the last 10 years.

For now the focus seems to be on physical data collected by sensors, but I would assume that human data from will be included in the future.

More here: AlphaEarth Foundations helps map our planet in unprecedented detail

The End of GIS: AI!

The AI Revolution is Coming for GIS: What You Need to Know About Microsoft’s Latest Warning is a pretty dire read...but you probably should add 5-10 years to this timeline. Here are a few take-home messages for me:

• The impact will be most-significant on the entry-level jobs.
• But, field work and basic project management will still be around for a while.
• Coding is still a key skill, but it will be all about AI-assisted coding in the very near future. But, you will need to have a good understanding of coding and how AI 'thinks' in-order to effectively prompt the AI.
• Take an online class in maschine learning for geospatial applications.
• Combine GIS expertise with complementary skills such as urban planning, environmental science, and more.

Historical Aerial Photos

Remember when air photos were a thing? Well, they still are! This place https://e-topo.com/mapv2.aspx offers the low-res 300 dpi versions for free somehow.

Pickleball vs. Tennis

Pickleball wins...it's not even close: How Pickleball Took Over Thousands of Tennis Courts, as Seen From the Sky

I Got a Drone!

Fun series from John Nelson!

1. I Got a Drone, part 1: Unboxing & Goals

The Rwenzoris

Cool (almost) cloud-free Landsat 9 image from 13 March 2024: Mountains of the Moon

• Full-size image
• A New 3D Map Shows Precipitous Decline of Ugandan Glaciers (EOS, 3 April 2025)

The Milky Way Map

This is apparently the largest map of the Milky Way: https://archive.eso.org/scienceportal/home. Very cool, but I'm not sure what anyone can do with this...here's a little more beta from Joe Kerski.

NAIP 2023 Imagery

I always forget about the NAIP Imagery - a great source for free satellite data at pretty decent resolution (30 cm / 60 cm).

More here:

• NAIP Annual Coverage
• USA NAIP Imagery: Natural Color

SAR 'Images' in ArcGIS Pro

Good stuff here in-case you need to process SAR imagery in ArcGIS Pro: Getting to Know the SAR Analysis Toolset.

Camp Century Found (again!)

Cool story here about Camp Century & how it was 'found' again by-accident during GPR airborne survey: New View of the “City Under the Ice”

Landsat Explorer & Sentinel-1 Explorer.

Landsat Explorer has been aroud & Esri just released a nice tutorial for it: Learn to explore Landsat imagery using Landsat Explorer.

Also available: The Sentinel-1 Explorer.

Animated Winds

These three are not new, but worth emphasizing:

• https://earth.nullschool.net/
• Windy
• Windfinder