On November 1st, IowaView staff participated the “meet-a-scientist” at the annual Reiman GardensSpirits in the Gardens event featuring a self guided pathway with hundreds of carved pumpkins as well as scientists to meet along the way. During our shift, there were over 250 visitors of all ages. We were able to share posters featuring remote sensing and GIS, which included aerial imagery of Ames and Reiman Gardens dating from the 1930s to 2019. Participants enjoyed seeing change over time as Ames has urbanize over the last ninety years. Staff gave out goodie bags with AmericaView poster, USGS trading cards, and Earth as Art bookmarks and booklets.
The USGS has produced an amazing collection of images (also available as trading cards!) that show Earth’s change over time. The Earthshot collection has a wide variety of examples of change over time including: – natural phenomena changes (glaciers, deserts,) – social change (city growth,) – human interaction with the natural world (mining, deforestation, agriculture,) – natural disasters (hurricanes, tornado damage, flooding.)
Below are two examples of the trading cards, Mount St. Helens pre/post volcanic explosion and Las Vegas, Nevada population growth over time.
The cards provide side by side comparison images and also context about the images on the opposite side including information about the date of the images, satellites, bands used to create the images and location data.
If you view a location on through the browser you will get about 5 images you can review as well as context about the images.