Category Archives: Resource

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How are you celebrating the Landsat’s Golden Jubilee?

This image is from the Camp Landsat website: https://landsat.gsfc.nasa.gov/outreach/camp-landsat/

To celebrate the Landsat Golden Jubilee, consider taking a virtual visit to Camp Landsat! This summer Camp Landsat is celebrating this exciting anniversary with 5 weeks of programming, celebrating the 5 decades of Landsat’s continuous mission. This week the theme is People and Places.

Enjoy and explore many activities from Camp Landsat including:

Graphic from GLOBE Program Website: https://observer.globe.gov/do-globe-observer/challenges/land-cover-challenge-2022

Stay Cool and Keep Observing!


Traveling Way Back – Landsat Images From Aprils Gone By

Welcome to another Throwback Thursday. Today we are going back into the archives to compare imagery from the first five Landsat satellites (all images are featured in natural color). Click on each image for a closer view.

  • Try to notice the differences in resolution and image quality between the different years.
  • Another thing to note is the wide seasonal variation between the images. All the images were from the same three week period in April. Some images are have snow while other years are very green.
  • Observe that the Des Moines River is swollen in the Landsat 4 -1983 image.
Landsat 1 – April 5, 1976
Landsat 2 – April 3, 1975

Landsat 3 – April 21, 1980
Landsat 4 – April 15, 1983
Landsat 5 – April 12, 1985

You can explore the raw images using this web app: https://arcg.is/0XrG4f. Happy exploring.


This year we are celebrating 50 years of the Landsat earth observing satellite mission. Landsat data helps us observe changes in our communities and environment over time.


Thanks for stopping by and keep observing the world around you!

Ladies of Landsat – Many Pathways to becoming Remote Sensing Scientists

The Ladies of Landsat have shared some great USGS case study videos showcasing the paths women and girls can take to become remote sensing scientists. Three scientists stories are highlighted: Jill Deines, Africa Ixmucane Flores-Anderson, and Nikki Tulley. Read more and enjoy their stories below:

Africa Ixmucane Flores-Anderson: Using Landsat to Connect Pace to Village – Africa was inspired to help her local community in Guatemala by mapping water quality with Landsat and is now at monitoring deforestation.

Jill Deines: Using Landsat to Map Agriculture Yields and Irrigation Use – Dr. Jill Deines was was drawn to the bird’s eye view of agriculture plots growing up in the Midwest. Now she uses Landsat to monitor water resources and crop yield.

Nikki Tulley: Speaking a New Language of Landsat – Nikki grew up in the Navajo Nation without running water in her household. As PhD student at University of Arizona and Indigenous scientist, she uses Landsat to track drought conditions in her home community.

Championing Women and GIS on International Women’s Day

Today is International Women’s Day. Esri Press has a 3-book series Women and GIS, each book highlights stories and contributions of 30 women doing awesome things with geospatial technology. An exciting companion to the books is a series of 3 webinars in which women highlighted in the books are able to present about their projects. Take some time today to celebrate and explore the achievements of women in GIS.

Here’s more information about the Women and GIS webinar series:

Investigate these great Story Maps related to the books:

Celebrating Women: Start of Spatial Science

Women and GIS, Volume 3: Champions of a Sustainable World

A Guide To Putting Your Research On the Map

Are you interested in learning more about ArcGIS Story Maps? Iowa State University’s Parks Library has a great introductory library guide to get you started.

https://instr.iastate.libguides.com/storymaps

Remembering Black History: Mapping the Black ISC Student Housing Experience

February is Black History month, and as part of that celebration IowaView would like to highlight a new story map that was recently released by the Tracing Race at Iowa State University. The Tracing Race project funds digital projects that reveal the under-documented history of accomplishment and experience of people of color, and engage with the history of race, inequality, racism, and student, faculty and staff activism at Iowa State University.

The Tracing Race project recently released a Story Map by Gloria Betcher, Ph.D.; Ted Grevstad-Nordbrock, Ph.D. & Jeanne Beck, Ed.S. called Mapping the Black ISC (Iowa State College) Student Housing Experience. It shares the stories of black students as they overcame challenges to find housing in Ames in order to pursue their education at Iowa State College.

“Since its founding in 1858 as Iowa Agricultural College & Model Farm, Iowa State University has allowed Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) to enroll as students. Iowa State’s first Black student, George Washington Carver, enrolled in classes in 1891. At that time, the question of where Black students could live while enrolled at the college became a concern, but it was left largely unaddressed by the institution until after World War II. Prior to that time, BIPOC students at Iowa State College (ISC) were kept from rooming on campus by an unwritten policy that required Black students to room together. This requirement was difficult to meet when so few Black students attended the college at any given time. As late as 1926, ISC had only 13 Black students and had just graduated its first Black woman, Willa Juanita Ewing, according to The Crisis: A Record of the Darker Races (“A Record,” 1926).

The housing situation of most BIPOC students at Iowa State in the years before it became a university remains unstudied in any systematic way. This ESRI Story Map project is an initial step toward addressing that research gap. It is also intended as a means of illuminating just who the Black students at ISC were and what contributions they made after leaving Iowa State.”

– From the Project Introduction: Mapping the Black ISC Student Housing Experience

This story map is a treasure. It explains the challenges of Black students in the early days of Iowa State College in finding housing and how they overcame those challenges. It provides a map showing many of the early residences of the students around Ames, many of the homes are still there today.

Another exciting feature of this story map is how the authors pay tribute to each of the Black students enrolled in at Iowa State College during this period of history. The authors provide a biography of each of the students and information about their time at the college and life after school as well as picture of the students. This is a great way to remember these students.

Take time to explore this wonderful Story Map: https://storymaps.arcgis.com/collections/8c704f644e3f46a3b6b7442f702aa586?item=1