Al Gore, The Digital Earth speech, California Science Center, Los Angeles, January 31,1998

Imagine a young child going to a Digital Earth exhibit at a local museum. After donning a head-mounted display, she sees Earth as it appears from space. Using a data glove, she zooms in, using higher and higher levels of resolution, to see continents, then regions, countries, cities, and finally individual houses, trees, and other natural and man-made objects. Having found an area of the planet she is interested in exploring, she takes the equivalent of a "magic carpet ride" through a 3-D visualization of the terrain. Of course, terrain is only one of the many kinds of data with which she can interact. Using the systems' voice recognition capabilities, she is able to request information on land cover, distribution of plant and animal species, realtime weather, roads, political boundaries, and population. She can also visualize the environmental information that she and other students all over the world have collected as part of the GLOBE project. This information can be seamlessly fused with the digital map or terrain data. She can get more information on many of the objects she sees by using her data glove to click on a hyperlink. To prepare for her family's vacation to Yellowstone National Park, for example, she plans the perfect hike to the geysers, bison, and bighorn sheep that she has just read about. In fact, she can follow the trail visually from start to finish before she ever leaves the museum in her hometown. She is not limited to moving through space, but can also travel through time. After taking a virtual field-trip to Paris to visit the Louvre, she moves backward in time to learn about French history, perusing digitized maps overlaid on the surface of the Digital Earth, newsreel footage, oral history, newspapers and other primary sources. She sends some of this information to her personal e-mail address to study later. The timeline, which stretches off in the distance, can be set for days, years, centuries, or even geological epochs, for those occasions when she wants to learn more about dinosaurs, (or forward in time to view scenarios for those occasions when she wants to see what the future may hold and what she can do about it).

The Geospatial Revolution

http://geospatialrevolution.psu.edu/

Considerations and Pitfalls in Use of Data and Information

Form Scale Accuracy Coverage Completeness Age Confidentiality Maintenance Paper trail to sources Appropriateness Communication

Form of Data

Accuracy of Data

Age of Data

Confidentiality of Data

Tax parcel boundaries change often

Geologic maps rarely change

Maps
Maps are graphic descriptions of the surface features of the land drawn to scale. Map scale is the relationship of distance on the map to distance on the land

Large scale (larger ratio) maps show less area and more detail

Small scale (smaller ratio) maps show more area and less detail

Remote Sensing Information: Aerial Photos and Satellite Imagery

Remote sensing is the observation or measurement of data from a distance. Remote sensing technologies detect electromagnetic radiant energy reflected or emitted from objects and land surfaces, which can be interpreted and analyzed to reveal characteristics about the objects.

Aerial Photos: Oblique and Vertical

Orthophotoquad

Wavelength of Reflected Solar Radiation Varies depending on the Type of Surface

Color Infrared DOQQ

Thematic Map: Land Use-Land Cover

Revolution in Satellite Remote Sensing

Enhanced resolution pixel size to 1 meter square Larger number of wavelength bands Increased frequency - return time to 1 day Data compression capabilities Availability of images and data online Analytical capabilities: GIS

Data Compression
See www.Vargis.com

Sensors in the satellite measure radiation data in different Spectral Bands and those data can be combined to reveal the land cover

ASTER Sensor Terra Satellite

Subsets from the National Land Use Change Retrofit Product: Mountaintop mining area near Beckley (WV) changed from forest to barren and grass/shrub.

Development area in suburban Las Vegas changed from grass/shrub and barren to urban

Interactive maps online

Web Soil Survey (USDA, NRCS)

http://websoilsurvey.nrcs.usda.gov/app/HomePage.htm
http://msc.fema.gov/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/FemaWelcomeView?storeId=10001&catalogId=10001&langId=-1

Flood Map Service (FEMA)

Topo maps/Aerial photos (USGS)

http://www.usgs.gov/pubprod/aerial.html; http://nationalmap.gov/gio/viewonline.html

Google Earth (http://earth.google.com/) Wetlands Online Mapper (USFWS)

http://www.fws.gov/wetlands/Data/Mapper.html

EnviroMapper (EPA) (http://www.epa.gov/enviro/html/em/) Local government parcel and planning maps

http://arcims2.webgis.net/blacksburg/default.asp

How GIS works

Links map features to tables of attributes

Access the attributes for any map feature Locate any feature from its attributes

Manage sets of features & attributes as themes

Components

Data Software Hardware Methods People

The Rise of GIS

Software advances: ESRI, other software Computer power, speed, affordability Plotting and printing advances Data quality, availability, affordability

The Power of GIS

Visualization and Presentation Data Integration: existing maps, remote sensing, GPS field data Analysis of data layers: query, proximity, composite GIS as a participation tool

Vector

Points (manhole, hydrants) Lines (roads, rivers) Polygons/areas (watershed, counties) Advantage

Precise Visual appeal

Raster

Grid cells Rows + columns (like image) Topology is inherent Advantage

Fast overlay and spatial analysis

Integrate Data Sources

Spatial Data Analysis

Overlay, Proximity, 3-D, Spatial modeling, Visualization

Spatial modeling

Example: Historic and projected Urban Edge in Phoenix

Portland

Mash-ups: Integrating data sources

Integrating Social Networks and Geospatial Data

http://www.esri.com/services/disaster-response/gulf-oil-spill-2010/index.html

Geospatial Revolution

Episode 2: http://geospatialrevolution.psu.edu/