Happy Earth Observation Day, everyone! Our guests for this special Earth Science Week episode are Rebecca Dodge of Midwestern State University and Tom Mueller from the Massachusetts Bureau of Geographic Information (MassGIS), the founding parents of Earth Observation Day which is celebrated this week. We delve into how Earth Observation Day came about, how it's grown, materials that have been developed over the years, and what’s happening around the country with it. We also touch on current EOD activities such as the NASA Aerokats, Mapathons, Landsat imagery, data collection with your phone, and much more. Show notes and photos are available at: https://americaview.substack.com

Forrest Bowlick from University of Massachusetts-Amherst joins us to talk about finding Svalbard on a globe at two years old, National Geographic Bees, a life-changing locked door, the McNair Scholars Program, taking Introduction to GIS three different times, the scholarship of teaching and learning, Forrest giving a TED talk on GIS, the development of MassachusettsView, the Geographer’s Craft, strategies for teaching GIS and incorporating new developments, teaching projections in a GIS course, a Roger Tomlinson documentary, the Impossible Map from 1947, and much more. Show notes and photos are available at: https://americaview.substack.com

Joe Ortiz from Kent State University joins us to talk about using micro-fossils to learn about how climate changes over time, the Beaver-SCAT instrumentation, spending two months at sea in the North Atlantic, remote sensing and collecting sediment cores at sea, research at the Bering Strait, spending 3 days stuck in the ice, strategies for avoiding polar bears, identifying algae from space, harmful algal blooms, machine learning techniques, the benefits of open-source software for remote sensing and analysis, and multispectral UAS imagery analysis. Show notes and photos are available at: https://americaview.substack.com