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

Greg Bonynge from the University of Rhode Island joins us to talk about working on a Alpaca farm in Pennsylvania, an internship with the USDA forest service, modeling the spread of the southern pine beetle, spatial statistics, working at a neuroscience lab, being a beta-tester for ModelBuilder, land cover change in Tanzania, SSEER (Scientific Support for Environmental Emergency Response), ingesting GIS data and documenting metadata, GIS data archiving, ArcGIS Indoors, indoor scanning with lidar for creating 3D building models, and hurricane response and modeling potential flood and wind impacts. Show notes and photos are available at: https://americaview.substack.com

Carter Wang from Towson University joins us to talk about his introduction to Google Earth in high school in China, urban heat islands in Arizona, MarylandView, the AmericaView Journal of Earth Observation and Geospatial Applications, the annual Geospatial Technology Summer Camp at Towson University, urban forestry analysis, land cover change related to tree loss, NAIP imagery, and the AAG remote sensing specialty group. Show notes are available at: https://americaview.substack.com

Scott Powell from Montana State University joins us to talk about Scott’s work at the Guadalupe Mountains National Park in Texas, mapping cave openings in the Carlsbad Caverns area, Scott’s time as a firefighter fighting wildfires, Landsat imagery time series printouts, the Oregon Cascades. geologic carbon sequestration, using aerial hyperspectral sensors for detecting leaking carbon emissions, drone applications and imagery acquisition, CART decision trees, MontanaView, and much more. Show notes are available at: https://americaview.substack.com

Larry Biehl from Purdue University joins us to talk about a prophetic high school paper about computer applications in farming, the Laboratory for Applications of Remote Sensing (LARS), Skylab, the development of MultiSpec, the vision to keep MultiSpec free and available, the Terrestrial Observatory, the birth of IndianaView, Useful 2 Usable, remote sensing agricultural applications, spectrometers and radiometers, and the importance of data calibration. Show notes are available at: https://americaview.substack.com

Tom Mueller from the Massachusetts Bureau of Geographic Information (MassGIS) joins us to talk about Pchem ending Tom’s time as a Chemistry major, building an atlas of nursing homes, the importance of service learning for students, the GeoTech Center, Humanitarian OpenStreetMap, Mapathons, mapping and analysis of water samples and contamination, MassGIS, the Massachusetts Spatial Data Infrastructure, the birth of MassachusettsView, the Cohasset Center for Coastal Student Research and much more. Show notes are available at: https://americaview.substack.com