Latest Contributions by JosephKerski

We’re excited to celebrate GIS Day 2018 with you here on GeoNet! Join in the worldwide geo-festivities and let us know how you’re celebrating this year by sharing your GIS Day stories and experiences (pictures, videos, comments or links to other content) and answering one of the questions below.     How have you helped others learn about and apply GIS in their work or lives this year? What personal GIS projects are you most proud of? What areas GIS would you like to explore more this year? What GIS skills would you like to improve in? What is one way you’d like to see GIS change the world? --Joseph Kerski   Spelling GIS Day in the sand on a beach! ... View more

A wonderful new web mapping service from our colleagues at NASA SEDAC (the Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center) and CIESIN (the Center for International Earth Science Information Network, a research center within the Earth Institute at Columbia University) provides the educator and researcher with an incredibly valuable, easy-to-use, and fascinating tool to examine the distribution and demographic characteristics of the world's population.  I have been a great admirer of the folks at SEDAC and CIESIN since my days at the US Census Bureau, and write about them frequently in our data blog, and this population service is the latest in a set of data and tools that can be used in multiple ways and at many educational levels and settings.  It also makes use of some innovative Esri technology. Once you access the web mapping application--(see my video for some guidance) - available without logging into anything, and available on any browser or device, you can examine global population distribution.   Through toggling the maps on the right between country boundaries, roadmap, and terrain, you can examine the relationship between the distribution of population at scales from local to global and the relationship of the population density and amounts to terrain, landforms, climate zones, river systems, coastlines, and more.  You can also view a layer called "settlement points" (which come from http://sedac.ciesin.columbia.edu/data/set/grump-v1-settlement-points-rev01).  You also have the option to dive deeper into the population data by accessing the polygon, circle, or point tools on the left side of the map, as shown below.  Note that for 2010, you have even more detail on the age breakdown.     The point buffering tool allows you to obtain population data for circular areas of the exact radius you choose, as I do below for Mumbai, India.  I obtained the latitude and longitude for Mumbai by accessing ArcGIS  > Map > and using the Measure--Point Location tool. The results of my point buffer are shown below. I can run the same procedure for other parts of the world, or simply use the polygon or circle tool, and the map holds all of my areas until I clear them.  With these areas, I can then compare the number of people, age of the population, and change over time.  Which areas of the world contain the fewest people? Is it southern Algeria in the Sahara, as I investigate below, or is it northern Siberia or central Australia?  Why are some areas experiencing a high rate of population, growth, while other areas are experiencing slower rates, and still others are decreasing?  What are the implications of growth and decline for those areas? There is still more!  One of my favorite tools as a geographer is population age pyramids.  This mapping service provides these as well.  For example, see the older population predominating on the Great Plains of Colorado.   This same pyramid is shown at right, below.  But at left is the data for roughly the same geographic area in the southeast part of the Denver metropolitan area.  The numbers in metro Denver are much higher (thousands in each age category vs. only a few dozen on the Great Plains), but also the age structure is much different--with 30- to 50-somethings raising kids, and not as many people over 65 or 20 year olds.  What do these neighborhoods look like?  You can change the base map to imagery, zoom in, and find out.  Where are the 20-somethings?  Look at neighborhoods near light rail lines in central cities, or college towns, or, in the case below, military bases. Here I am examining Fort Riley, Kansas, a large military base; note the age structure and also the slightly higher number of males than females (though they are fairly similar in number!)  One of the key concepts when teaching with web mapping applications such as this is helping researchers and students get into the habit of examining the metadata.  The values for this mapping service are calculated using Zonal Statistics on 1km rasters from the Gridded Population of the World (GPW4) data, described here: http://sedac.ciesin.columbia.edu/data/collection/gpw-v4   The GPW data has been refined, curated, and is updated with the highest attention to quality and detail with an expert staff of statisticians and rigorous methods.  The age data specifically references the Basic Demographic Characteristics Dataset here: http://sedac.ciesin.columbia.edu/data/set/gpw-v4-basic-demographic-characteristics-rev10.  Another way to focus attention on the data and methods is to examine the Mean Area of Geographic Units on the right side of the mapping service.  This clearly shows that the data collection units are different for central Kazakhstan than for, say, Vietnam.  Note that the settlement points layer referred to above are there for reference and are not used in the Zonal Stats Calculations. This web mapping application fits nicely into the other web mapping applications that I describe here.  Use these to teach about the key issues of our 21st Century world--population, natural hazards, oceans, climate, energy, water, and much more.  ... View more

Many educators, researchers, students, and analysts regularly want to examine changes-over-space-and-time with imagery and GIS.   Recently, 81 different dates of historical imagery for the past 5 years were placed inside ArcGIS via the World Imagery Wayback service.  For more information, see this essay. This imagery is accessible in ArcGIS , ArcMap, and ArcGIS Pro.  The best place to start is the World Imagery Wayback app.  This app, available simply through a web browser – https://livingatlas.arcgis.com/wayback/  - can be used by way of introduction in a university or community college course, or all by itself in a primary or secondary school.  A fascinating and an incredible resource for examining land use and land cover change, the wayback image service covers the entire globe.  That means you can examine coastal erosion in England, deforestation in Indonesia, urban sprawl just about anywhere, reclamation of mine lands, changes in water levels in reservoirs, agricultural expansion in Saudi Arabia, glacial retreat in Alaska, and much more.  Plus, in keeping with the theme of being critical of the data in GIS in education, and the focus of our book and blog The GIS Guide to Public Domain Data, this app and imagery create a useful "teachable moment."  The dates shown on the left side of the app represent the update of the Esri World Imagery service, fed by multiple sources, private and public, from local and global sources.  Thus, the date shown does not mean that every location that you examine on the image is current as of that date.  I verified this where my own observations in my local area show construction as of June 2018, for example, but that construction does not appear on the image.  In addition, several other places I examined from wintertime in the Northern Hemisphere were clearly “leaf-on” and taken during the summer before.  Therefore, as always, get familiar with what you are working with.  Despite these cautions, the imagery still represents an amazingly useful resource. Sample from this imagery set for 30 July 2014 (top) and four years later, 27 June 2018 (bottom) for an area outside Denver, Colorado USA.  How can the use of the Wayback image service be extended for education and research purposes?  One way to do so is by creating a web map in ArcGIS  from the Wayback app.  Doing this will thus enable the user to use all of the functions in ArcGIS  with the imagery, such as adding additional map layers (such as hydrography, land use, ecoregions), saving and sharing, using the measurement tools, and creating web mapping applications from the map.  To do this:  Go to the app:  https://livingatlas.arcgis.com/wayback/ Navigate to an area of interest. Check on Only updates with local changes.(shown below) Click the cloud icon to “add to cart." (shown below at right). Click the clear all icon top left to create a web map (shown below at top left). Save the web map.   Done!  Open your web map.  Now you can add layers to your map, including additional Wayback layers.  To add the historical wayback imagery to this existing web map, you cannot at the moment add it from a URL as a WMTS layer, but you can use ADD DATA and search in ArcGIS  (not Living Atlas), as follows:     The default sort order is relevance, but you can change it to sort by title or by oldest/newest.   See my resulting map with 3 historical layers in it, along with the current image as a basemap, below. Another way to dig deeper into change-over-space-and-time analysis with the Wayback image service is to create a swipe map.  A swipe map is a type of story map application that is perfect for examining change, because it allows the map user to swipe across a map that has, in our study, images with 2 different dates.  To create a swipe map, in ArcGIS  > Share  > Create a web mapping application > choose Swipe map.  Select one of the historical image layers for your swipe map, and make sure the basemap is Imagery or Imagery with Labels.  The swipe layer (the historical image) will appear on the right with the more recent image on the left.  But let's say your goal is to have the left side be the older imagery, and the right side be the newer imagery.  Is that possible?  Yes!  The swipe map template only allows you to swipe one layer, which by default is the right side.  So, you need to make the left side, the basemap, a historical image rather than the default new imagery basemap.  To do this, go back to your ArcGIS  map and Add > Add from ArcGIS  > enter "Wayback" > choose a historical image (in my case, I chose 2014) > Add as basemap.  Save your map.  In the configuration panel for your story map, change the settings so that you are swiping one of your newer image layers.  I did so, and my swipe map is shown below.  Here is the URL of the swipe map. Many other possibilities exist for the use of the Wayback imagery, including using it in 3D scene for a historical perspective on the landscape, using them in a tabbed series story map, using them as a base for advanced analytics in ArcGIS Pro (see my colleague's blog post here about bringing the data into Pro), and in many other ways.   I hope that these ways I describe above encourage you to use and think creatively and spatially with this amazing set of images. ... View more

I would like to announce a poster session and competition for the 2019 American Association of Geographers annual meeting focused on: Innovative Applications of Esri GIS Technology For more information, and for the 5 categories that will serve as criteria, see: https://aag.secure-abstracts.com/AAG%20Annual%20Meeting%202019/sessions-gallery/23055   Cash prizes will be awarded, but even more importantly, this is an opportunity for your students and colleagues to showcase the innovative things they are doing with Esri GIS technology to help understand and solve the most pressing local-to-global problems of our time. Please consider entering a poster, or encouraging a student or colleague to do so.    --Joseph Kerski ... View more

I worked with our fabulous Urban Observatory team here at Esri to add another theme that will be very useful in teaching geography, geology, environmental science – the Ecology theme.  This data comes from the amazing Ecological Land Units data set (another excellent teaching and research tool) and allows you to compare the bioclimate, landform type, lithology, and land cover for any city you would like to examine, thus providing a very useful land connection for each urban area. Having it in the Urban Observatory provides the interface to compare the ecoregions for over 100 cities, which can be compared to the other variables provided, all  with nothing to install.    To access this new theme, go to the Urban Observatory:  http://www.urbanobservatory.org/compare/ On the left side, you will now see the ECOLOGY theme.  Select it, and choose from the cities listed at the top.  In which ecoregions do cities tend to be the largest?  How does the ecoregion influence the land cover in and around that city?  Name the chief environmental challenges for the cities you are investigating, based on the ecoregion they are in.  How do you think the landforms and lithology impact construction in the area, or traffic patterns?     Another feature that is very helpful about the Urban Observatory:  If you copy the URL while examining a specific theme and send it to someone (or yourself to access it later), then the application will open with those themes and cities that you were examining, just as you left it:  For example, this URL opens with 3 cities and the ecology for each, as I had been examining the last time I taught this content:  Rotterdam, Rio de Janeiro, and Delhi.  Rotterdam is in the cold wet bioclimate, while Rio is hot wet and Delhi hot semi-dry.  The landforms are hills, plains, and plains, respectively, while the lithology is mixed sedimentary for Rotterdam and unconsolidated sediment for the last two.  The land cover is grassland, shrub, or scrub for Rotterdam but mostly cropland for Rio and Delhi.     See the graphic below.  The Urban Observatory, in my opinion, is still one of the best examples of a web mapping application that is ready-to-go for teaching and learning.   Teaching note:  You might need to click outside the urban area when you are examining the cities.  If you just click on the urban area itself, everything comes up as Cold Wet hills.  Therefore, click outside or zoom out once and click outside and you will be fine.     ... View more

Maps as Space-Time Investigative Tools.  In this activity, let's use a GIS web mapping application and a wonderful data set at different scales to investigate changes over space and time.  Keep in mind that many additional tools and data sets exist.  The tool I focus on in this lesson is the Change Matters viewer; it is dependable, I have tested it with teachers and students, it performs well in classroom settings, it uses rigorous methods and a fascinating data set, and using it invites questions, investigation, and problem-solving. Examining the Earth using different parts of the electromagnetic spectrum. Geotechnologies include Remote Sensing, which involves taking images of the Earth from a distance, via a satellite, aircraft, Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (or drone), or via other platform.  Sensors on the wide variety of satellites orbiting the Earth and even on aircraft or UAVs are sensitive to different parts of the electromagnetic spectrum.  Using imagery in remote sensing taken in different parts of the spectrum has many advantages in education, including bridging geography, technology, and science, as well as helping students to understand the utility of remote sensing to understand the Earth in a deeper and more complete way.  Similar to how the dentist sees through your cheek to image your teeth using film sensitive to the x-ray wavelengths in the spectrum, we can examine the Earth using different wavelengths.   Investigating change using the Change Matters Viewer The Change Matters viewer is based largely on Landsat data.  Landsat is a series of satellites that have been operated by NASA and the US Geological Survey since 1972.  As the name implies, these satellites' mission is to record images not of outer space but of the land—the Earth's surface.  They do so in a series of specific bands in the electromagnetic spectrum, many of which feature a combination that results in an infrared image.  In an infrared image, healthy vegetation appears red.  The infrared imagery also allows for changes to be detected easily on the landscape.  As one preface to using the Change Matters viewer, consider spending some time discussing the electromagnetic spectrum with this resource from NASA (https://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/science/toolbox/emspectrum1.html) as well as with other resources. Access the Esri Change Matters site:   http://changematters.esri.com/comparehttp://changematters.esri.com/compare Investigating Mt St Helens.  At the time of this writing, the first change matters set of scenes that appears is that of Mt St Helens 1975 and 2000.   Using your skills in spatial thinking, your content knowledge, the information provided in the link at the lower right in the "how to interpret a change image" link, and additional research if you need to, in order to consider the following questions:  What type of landform is this?  How do you know? What substance is represented by the white area that covered the summit of Mt St Helens in 1975? What year did the first modern-day major eruption occur? Describe the primary cardinal direction from the volcano’s summit from which the blast occurred.  Make sure your students actively use cardinal directions and other spatial terms in their discussions. Name 2 changes to the landscape between 1975 and 2000 and the reason for those changes. Change the dates to compare between 1990 and 2010.  Note the vegetation increase in the area particularly in the “blast zone” north, northeast, and northwest of the volcano.  Under “Select Image Map”, notice that you can change the image from infrared to four other choices.  In the classroom, use these other choices in conjunction with your discussion on the electromagnetic spectrum. Investigating the Aral Sea. Landsat coverage is global.  Using the search box above the images, enter "Aral Sea."  Then select Aral Sea as follows: Once the Aral Sea is in your view, zoom to it with the + and – tools or by pressing the shift key while simultaneously dragging a box over the sea.  The map will zoom to the area that you define with that box.  The Aral Sea was once the fifth largest lake in the world.  Describe 2 changes in the Aral Sea that have occurred over time.   Think about our framework of what is there, why is it there, and why should we care:  Why should we care if the Aral Sea disappears? Global attention on the Aral Sea over the past 20 years has increased.  Change the dates analyzed to compare 2000 to 2010.  Based on the imagery and this tool, would you say that the global attention has slowed the rate of the Aral Sea’s disappearance? This phrase, “according to this data set” is key when using GIS Technology.  Remember, all maps are imperfect—and some are very useful.  All of your analysis depends on the data you are using, and thus, repeating this phrase with every new analysis will encourage your students to be critical of and mindful of the data.  If time permits, analyze a few additional resources and compare them to whatever data you are analyzing using Spatial Technology.    Zoom out to examine the region covering the Aral Sea.  Speculate on the influence that the fact that the Aral Sea lies in two different countries might have on effectively managing it as a resource and to remediate the rate at which it is drying. Consider asking your students to name one positive impact from human alteration of the Aral Sea, and one negative impact.  Why?  The Aral Sea’s changes, like so many other issues in geography, is complex:  Decisions were made on the landscape, with positive and negative impacts.  Explore Further using the Change Matters viewer.  Feel free to examine other places around the world using this Change Matters viewer resource, such as Lake Chad on the Chad-Nigeria-Cameroon border, Las Vegas Nevada USA, development along the Gold Coast of Australia, and elsewhere.  As with other Spatial Technologies, the advantage to the Change Matters viewer is that you can investigate a wide variety of issues, themes, and places—all with the same tool. ... View more

Examine the following 2 videos: Watch this 3-minute video entitled, “Why get excited about web maps?”  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WpxgVJXwbk Think about:  Do all of the statements fit in with what you thought digital maps and spatial technologies would bring to education, or is there 1 or 2 that were surprising to you? Watch this 9-minute video entitled, “10 reasons for using GIS, or Spatial Technology, in education”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DbkHEqDbLz0  Think about:  Which of these 10 benefits is most appealing to you as an educator? Can you think of another benefit not described here? ... View more

Let’s explore some maps made with Spatial Technology! The Esri Map Book is an annual book featuring the work by Spatial Technology professionals from all over the world.  Think of the map book as an example of applied geography, to a wide variety of disciplines, issues, and themes.  Access the 2018 edition, on https://www.esri.com/en-us/esri-map-book/2017/maps/#/list  Go to the Filter tool and select a theme of interest to you, such as Conservation, Education, Natural Resources-Water, or something else.  Choose 1 map that interests you, and think about the following questions. Why does the map interest you? What problem(s) is identified? What fields or disciplines are home or central to the problem? What is the scale of this problem? What organization(s) or individual(s) are involved in solving this problem? How does seeing the data in map form and the geographic perspective help solve the problem? What transferrable skills, thinking skills, and content knowledge are required to use GIS to solve this problem? How can these transferrable skills, thinking skills, and content knowledge be obtained? On the job, via technical training, or at a school or university? What course(s) would need to be taken to gain the skills necessary to solve the problems in the way that is presented in this map? Extend this activity.  Consider using the above activity with your students as a way for them to see Spatial Technology in action, to see its real-world relevance, and to think about their own career pathway. Map books from other years also exist, on:  https://www.esri.com/en-us/esri-map-book/map-book-gallery. ... View more

GIS Day in the Classroom: An Implementation Guide for GIS Professionals and Teachers.  This resource is filled with activities and strategies that you can use on GIS Day and far beyond, to enable educators and students to effectively use GIS in a wide variety of subjects and levels of education: https://assets.esri.com/content/dam/esrisites/media/pdf/GIS%20Day%20in%20the%20Classroom%20-%20An%20Implementation%20Guide%202018-09-06.pdf ... View more