This is another important week for geography and GIS.
November 11-16, 2019 is Geography Awareness Week. It was started over 25 years ago by National Geographic society as a way to raise awareness about the dangerous dificiency of geography in American education and to excite people about geography as a discipline and as part of everyday life. Learn more about Geography Awareness Week from the National Geographic website.
Did you miss our mapathon or weren’t able to attend because you aren’t in the area? You can still contribute to the effort. 🙂
The second part of Earth Observation Day was dedicated to using OpenStreetMap to remotely map Wayland, Iowa and Mindanao region of the Philippines.
Amy Logan, an IowaView staff member, gave a brief introduction to remote sensing and OpenStreetMap. Then mappers began working on a TeachOSM task – Improving the Iowa OSM Basemap: Wayland, Iowa (https://tasks.teachosm.org/project/981). Beverly Conrad, the city clerk of Wayland came for the mapathon and was able to provide local knowledge about the areas participants were mapping. New mappers were encouraged to do the OSM iD Editor Walk-through before they began mapping. It provides users with a nice hands-on introduction of the OpenStreetMap interface and how to create data.
Wayland is a small town (population: 966) in southeast Iowa that has wanted to move towards a GIS asset management system, yet much of their city needed to be mapped. As a result of the volunteer efforts of our 22 mappers during the Earth Observation Day mapathon event, partcipants mapped over 70% of the city, including over 470 buildings as well as sidewalks, alleys, parks, and other points of interest. Below is a before and after screenshot of the OpenStreetMap basemap for the City of Wayland, Iowa.
Thank you, Mappers!
The second project was a Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Task improving the basemap in the Philippines to promote food security. This project added details to the basemap such as minor roads and path, buildings, and farmland.
Earth Observation Day 2019 was super.
First, Professor Peter Wolter shared with us several projects he has worked on in northern forests of Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan. He explained how he has used multiple satellites/sensors to identify specific traits in trees (wavelength, height, temporal change, etc.) which allowed him to classify different regions of the forest by species. Below are some pictures from his presentation. Thank you, Peter!
Obscured from view by vegetation and built structures, Iowa’s often subtle landforms are revealed through a LiDAR-derived bare earth digital elevation model in a Geographic Information System. Geological and human made features can be seen in this series of LiDAR color hillshade maps from across the State.
Loess
Deep deposits of wind-blown silt define the Loess Hills region of western Iowa. Intricate drainage networks and agricultural terraces are visible in this map from along the West Nishnabotna River near Hamburg.
Obscured from view by vegetation and built structures, Iowa’s often subtle landforms are revealed through a LiDAR-derived bare earth digital elevation model in a Geographic Information System. Geological and human made features can be seen in this series of LiDAR color hillshade maps from across the State.
Algona
The elevated curved features in this map are glacial moraines deposited during the most recent period of glaciation in north-central Iowa. The largest in this view is called the Algona Moraine.
Obscured from view by vegetation and built structures, Iowa’s often subtle landforms are revealed through a LiDAR-derived bare earth digital elevation model in a Geographic Information System. Geological and human made features can be seen in this series of LiDAR color hillshade maps from across the State.
Oneota
Originally called the Oneota, the central river feature in this map is the Upper Iowa River. The well-defined drainage features are characteristic of the Driftless area of northeast Iowa.
