Latest Contributions by JosephKerski

This week I had the honor of conducting a presentation at the Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections (SPNHC, pronounced "spinach").   My presentation, which includes links and live embedded web maps and apps, is here.  I chose to focus on 4 things that you can do in teaching and research with modern geotechnologies:  (1)  Use web maps and applications to teach skills and content.  (2)   Create and use multimedia story maps to teach, communicate research results, and assess student work.  (3) Collect and map your own data.  (4)  Analyze data.  Because the presentation is in Sway with maps and links, you could even use it 'as is' to teach specific units or sections of your own courses on ecoregions, tornadoes, plate tectonics,  field data collection, and story maps.  While the conference and the society is focused on the intersection between museum collections (animals, plants, fossils, rocks, and others), instruction, and research, with a particular emphasis on the digitization of those collections, it is my hope that this presentation will be useful for those inside as well as outside that community.  In so doing, I provide real world examples of how to use maps and apps, to examine demographic patterns in selected cities (via the Urban Observatory), world population density and ecoregions using ArcGIS Online, natural and human-caused change via the Change Matters Landsat viewer, local changes using the historical USGS topographic map viewer, demographics and behaviors from state to neighborhood level, and historical and current tornadoes and earthquakes in ArcGIS Online.   I explained how to create and use Story Maps, and showed examples of a crowdsourced one I set up as well as others on languages, oceans, extinctions, manuscript maps, and BioBlitz.  I showed how to collect and map your own data using crowdsource story maps, the Snap2Map app, a spreadsheeet, Collector for ArcGIS, and Survey123.  I demonstrated how to analyze data in ArcGIS Online, including human health and flood hazards.   I pointed out that all of these activities had several things in common:  1)  They all engage in the scientific and geographic inquiry process.  2)  They show a diversity of themes, scales, data, and ways of teaching with web maps and GIS. 3)  They all use ArcGIS Online as the fundamental platform for engagement and investigation.   I discussed key resources on how to go further with geotechnologies, including lesson libraries, and how to obtain an organizational subscription to ArcGIS Online.  I closed with these final thoughts:   1.  The technologies and tools will evolve--so embrace the attitude of being a lifelong learner.  2.  It is excellent that you learn these tools and techniques as the instructor, but don't forget to -- give the tools to the students.  3.  Don't focus too much on the lesson, but rather on the inquiry.  4.  Keep moving forward in your use of geotechnologies.   I look forward to your feedback.  ... View more

One of the most commonly used themes in GIS instruction over the past 20 years is the mapping and analysis of earthquake data.   There are many good reasons why many of us teach with earthquake data, including that one can easily obtain real time feeds from the USGS in addition to historical data, the fact that spatial patterns as well as those of magnitude and depth are fascinating to examine, and that the teaching of natural hazards touches on so many other pertinent themes and subject areas, including settlement, proximity to oceans, land use, slope, history, Earth Science, geography, and mathematics, and that GIS and spatial thinking skills can be fostered. Core to what many of us in the GIS education community hold dear is the message that "just because a tool exists, that alone is no reason to use it."  That message applies to the 3D Scene Viewer.  Yes, you and your students could make 3D maps of many of the variables you map and the themes you teach--whether it is natural hazards (earthquakes, as I have done for this essay, or tornadoes, hurricanes, wildfires, hailstorms, and others), population change (with population characteristics or changes in neighborhoods, counties, states, or countries shown as extruded polygons), field data (as in the 3D scenes I made recently of student weather balloon launches or paragliding), or many other types of data.  But only do it if it enhances your instruction and better enables you to meet your goals, whether those goals are content, theory, or skills. In the case of earthquake analysis, mapping the data in 3D adds value, and therefore, I do it.  I do similar work from time to time in examining population change, with extruding polygons showing growth or decline, and in other activities.  I don't use 3D in every lesson, but when I have done so in professional development sessions with faculty or teaching university or primary or secondary students, I have noted a greatly increased level of engagement in the content, an increased number of relevant questions being asked, and focused investigations.  Our world is a 3D world, and there is no reason to confine yourself to 2D maps when these tools are at your fingertips and viewable on any device.   Below is a static view of my 3D scene for 30 days of earthquakes, or you can interact with it here.  How did I create this? First, in ArcGIS Online, in "My Content", I added the USGS real-time earthquake feed CSV file showing all earthquakes over the past 30 days with a magnitude of 2.5 and above.  I created a feature service from this CSV file.  I then started a new 3D Scene and added my new feature service to it.  I then changed the style to map the variable "Mag" for magnitude, selected the thin cylinder, adjusted the size to be a range in meters from 75000 to 600000 on the ground (600 km "high" for the most severe earthquakes), used "absolute height" for the elevation mode, and turned the pop-ups, legend, and labels on (using "Mag" as the label field).  It should be noted that my feature service is no longer "the last 30 days" but static as of the time I created it (May-June 2017), but you can do this monthly and thereby analyze the pattern over time.  Use my interactive 3D scene for earthquakes in your own instruction.  You don't even have to log in to do some powerful things, such as examining aftershocks, turning on the shadow and changing the date and time for a quick lesson about seasonal change, or to navigate to specific areas around the world to analyze the number and the magnitudes of earthquakes.  Be sure to investigate those earthquakes shown "on the horizon" in the image below--what is the name of that island chain to the northwest, and why do so many earthquakes occur there?   If you do log in, you have even more power at your fingertips.  For example, you can add data to the scene, such as plate boundaries, volcanoes, fault lines, or world cities.  This will allow you to extend the inquiry to investigate the proximity of earthquakes to different types of plate boundaries (subduction zones versus mid-oceanic spreading ridges, for example), to specific types of volcanoes, to fault lines, to surficial geology, and to major population centers--which cities are most at risk?  Then, you can save the 3D scene with your added layers to your own ArcGIS Online account and re-use it in the future.  See my video of this essay here. To dig still deeper into the world of 3D, try Esri's CityEngine.  One month of earthquakes mapped by magnitude using the 3D Scene Viewer in ArcGIS Online.  How are you using 3D scenes in your instruction? ... View more

If the future of GIS is 3D, that future is now.  As I described a few weeks ago in mapping weather balloon data that students had collected, a number of 3D tools make it possible for educators and their students to map, visualize, and analyze data in three dimensions, or four dimension if one considers time.  Certainly, 3D tools have been with us for at least 15 years in the desktop GIS environment, but the advent of web GIS makes these tools easier to use, with the added advantage of sharing them online so that anyone can engage with your 3D data.   One of these tools is the 3D scene viewer in ArcGIS Online.  What if you were to use an adventure or experience that you or your students have had to help them to think in these dimensions? For example, one of my colleagues likes to go paragliding.  He gave me the data he collected on a few of his paragliding runs, and since the data was in an Excel spreadsheet, I could easily bring it in as a CSV file into ArcGIS Online.  From there, I created a service and added that service to the 3D Scene Viewer, shown below, with a link to 3D Scene Viewer so that you can interact with it.  This is on Mount Herman along the Colorado Front Range, and that mountain in the distance is Pikes Peak.   I used the 3D cylinders on altitude to map my colleague's position.  You can adjust the style, color, and size, and the elevation mode (relative to ground, on the ground, absolute height) as needed to make your 3D scene as realistic as possible and to meet your educational goals.  For example, here are the symbols I chose for my colleague's run down the ski slope at Alyeska, Alaska: The results are shown below.   You can see that I also labeled the cylinders by elevation and color-coded them with the same variable.  The URL is here so that you can interact with it. Here are a few images of my colleague as he started off and as he sailed down the valley: I also brought the Mt Herman data into ArcGIS Earth, shown below: My colleague likes to go paragliding and collect data during these adventures.  What are you or your students passionate about doing in the field?  It could be scuba diving, hang gliding, sky diving, caving, downhill or cross country skiing, hiking, bicycling, motorcycling, kayaking, canoeing, or something else.  Whatever it is, consider using those interesting and personal experiences to help your students think in spatial and temporal dimensions, and to start them on their journey in using GIS tools. ... View more

There are many options for using images in ArcGIS Online and in apps such as story maps. Choose a method that works best for your situation and needs. The methods in this set of guidelines are intended to help you be successful in using Flickr, Twitter, and other methods.   I have just updated these guidelines - August 2018.  ... View more

When I arrive on a university or community college campus to conduct a series of invited workshops or presentations, I typically create a story map or web map on my way to the building in which I am speaking.  I create some of these on a tablet or laptop before my presentation begins, and I use photos and videos I took on my phone with the location services "on".  I have compiled some of these maps into a gallery shown here.  I call these "introductory" story maps because the purpose of these maps are to help my audiences realize that these web maps can be created in very little time and yet can tell a compelling story.  Because I want to demonstrate that each took me just 10 to 30 minutes to create, I resist the temptation to edit them later and improve their cartography or content.  It is my hope that in so doing, those I show these maps to when I am on those campuses can think of the issues or themes that they would like to gather data on, to map, and to study.  By the way, you can find out how to create a gallery of your own maps here like the one I created.      An example of one of a map I created while I was on a campus is shown below (Texas A&M University - Gig' em Aggies!) and is linked here.     A set of maps for a different purpose that focus on college and school campuses is this set.  This set was compiled to show different uses of story maps at educational institutions, for example, to feature webcams or 3D scenes, to show how campus administrators are using mapping tools for managing campus safety and infrastructure, and to help new students to find their way around campus. As such, they typically require more time to create and maintain than my simple examples above, but even these do not require massive investments of time.     Whatever your goals are in your research, instruction, or administration on a campus, I encourage you to explore the many options available using ArcGIS Online web mapping applications such as story maps. ... View more

An increasing number of citizen science apps and projects are becoming geo-enabled:  That means that the data within these projects can be mapped and analyzed.  Furthermore, participating in these projects often contributes to a worthy global cause.  Mapillary is one such toolset and project.  It allows anyone to create their own street level photographs, map them, and share them via web GIS technology.  The idea behind Mapillary is a simple but powerful one:  Take photos of your campus or your community or another place of interest as you walk along using the Mapillary mobile app.  These photos will be combined into a street level photo view, which you can explore along with thousands of other places from users around the world.  Mapillary is helping local governments map their city's infrastructure, call attention to land use practices, and much more.   A year ago, I described how you might use Mapillary as a viable part of your course's field component.  On the simplest level, you can use the Mapillary app and see your resulting track and photographs in the Mapillary mapping interface online.  More recently, I extended that with a discussion of how to bring a Mapillary track into ArcGIS Online for further mapping and analysis, with the resulting map shown here.   You can display any Mapillary data on an ArcGIS Online base map, such as my recent collected track, here.  Do this by appending "&mapStyle=esri" at the end of a Mapillary URL, such as this: "https://www.mapillary.com/app/?lat=20&lng=0&z=1.5&mapStyle=esri".    Now, I want to extend my investigation and learning still further, by including my photographs into ArcGIS Online in addition to the track I brought in earlier.  I accomplished this, with the help of the Mapillary staff, as follows:  First, I created a ClientID, by registering an app, inputting my own data for the callback URL, website, app name, and other information, via https://www.mapillary.com/app/settings/developers.  Then, I ran another call to obtain the userkey for my account. I took the USERNAME and replaced it with my own, along with the CLIENTID generated in the first call, here: https://a.mapillary.com/v3/users/?usernames=USERNAME&client_id=CLIENTID.  The userkey was called "key" in the returned GeoJSON file, which I saved with a .geojson extension to my computer.  I also noted the userkey at this point.  Next, to obtain my tracks as line string data, I ran a third API call to search all sequences belonging to the user, replacing USERKEY and CLIENTID with my own userkey and clientid:  https://a.mapillary.com/v3/sequences?client_id=CLIENTID&userkeys=USERKEY.  This returned a second GeoJSON file, which I also saved with the extension .geojson for loading it later into ArcGIS Online.  I then ran one more call to obtain the images as point data:  https://a.mapillary.com/v3/images?client_id=CLIENTID&userkeys=USERKEY.   One of the most exciting things about this is that my over 1,200 points all are linked to photographs that I took while in the field.  These photos are taken automatically with the Mapillary app each second or so--I did not have to touch "take photo" on my phone 1,200 times.  This ensured a safer experience and also an experience where I was free to observe my surroundings instead of concentrating on the technology, which is one of the things we are always encouraging in rich and meaningful field experiences.  The resulting experience in ArcGIS Online is a seamless hike up the trail, looking to each side, forward, and backward as I so chose while I was on my trek.  Next, in ArcGIS Online, I used "Add Data" to add my two GeoJSON files.  I then configured a popup for the point layer. With each point, the image key is inserted into the URL, and a small image is generated in the popup that corresponds to the point where I took the photo.  The idea here is to let the photo key be a variable. The resulting map is linked here  and shown below.  I then ran a viewshed analysis on my track so I could determine the areas I could see from this beautiful trail that wound up into the chaparral hills of southern California.    And since my track is a feature layer I could now easily bring it into the 3D Scene Viewer, shown below and shared here  so you can interact with it.  Mapillary is a business partner with Esri, and it is exciting to explore these and other new developments.  There is even a Mapillary for ArcGIS Online app, which allows you to view, create, and edit GIS data with the aid of Mapillary photographs.  To go still further, there is also a Mapillary web app builder template widget on GitHub, here. ... View more

Many web mapping applications provide an excellent teaching and research resource, because they are easy to use, quick to display, rich with data, and powerful.  One of the newest and most useful web mapping applications is the Landsat Lens.  The Landsat Lens is so named because it provides a "lens" of a series of Landsat images by year, by theme, and by region, selectable by the user.  In other words, it is the perfect tool to investigate changes over space and time.  Hence, it can be used in courses in geography, environmental science, hydrology, civil engineering, biology, GIS, and remote sensing, just to name a few. Upon opening, the app shows a lens (Landsat image) dated 2017 located near the Palm Jebel Ali in Dubai.  A set of preset locations are available from the Bookmarks dropdown menu, or you can pan or zoom to any area of interest. For one of the preset locations, or for your own area of interest, you may want to view changes over time. To do so, use the Windows dropdown menu to add a window showing 2002, 2005, 2010, 2015 or 2017 imagery. By swiping lenses over the basemap and one another you can easily see changes from natural or human causes, in vegetation cover, agricultural expansion or contraction, urbanization, coastline erosion or modification, river dams or meanders, volcanic activity, or from other causes.  Use the last option in the dropdown menu to remove all lenses from the map.  You can also select themes such as Agriculture, Color Infrared, Natural Color, Moisture Index, or Vegetation Index, each of which focuses on specific bands in the electromagnetic spectrum to highlight these themes.  You can change the scale and even change the size of the "lenses" themselves. Landsat Lens web mapping application for an area southeast of Las Vegas, Nevada, USA. For more information, see the blog post of my colleague who developed this amazing tool, his handy help file, and my video guiding you through some of this app's features.  Give Landsat Lens a try and I look forward to your comments below. ... View more

The Cherry Creek School District in Colorado has been using GIS in the curriculum and in administration for many years now. When the STEM coordinators of the district told me that their students were launching weather balloons and recording atmospheric data from them, I jumped at the opportunity to show them how easy and powerful it is to map the data in ArcGIS Online. The data from just one of the many balloons they had launched was stored in a standard spreadsheet and contained latitude and longitude coordinates, and therefore it was straightforward to map it in ArcGIS Online.  I simply added the spreadsheet saved as a CSV file to ArcGIS Online's "My Content" to create a layer file out of it.  This particular balloon, launched on 1 May 2015, flew over 56 miles (100 km) in 3 hours and 6 minutes, reaching a maximum altitude of 30.7 km, recording a minimum temperature of -59.3 C,  and achieving a maximum speed of 114 km/hour. I mapped the balloon based on its height on a satellite image base, which you can examine in ArcGIS Online by clicking here or on the map below.  Since balloons fly in 3D space, a natural next step was to map the data as a 3D Web Scene.  Until recently, you needed to use ArcGIS Pro to extrude the balloon points to cylinders, but with the announcement that the 3D Scene viewer includes 3D symbols, you can render the symbols in the Viewer itself.  You can examine the data in the interactive 3D Scene viewer here or by clicking on the image below. What excites me not only is the ability of these tools to quickly map the data that the students are collecting, but the power that they offer in terms of helping students understand the relationships among all of these variables. The variables in this case included altitude, speed, heading, and temperature, but other data that the students have collected include atmospheric quality characteristics.  Visualizing and analyzing in these 2D and 3D tools allows students to uncover the relationships between these variables, and why they vary the way they do.  In so doing, GIS provides a fundamental component of the district’s STEM goals, perspectives, content knowledge, and skills. Another thing about this project that excites me is that Grade 5 students are the ones engaged in this project.  Yes, they are only 11 years old, collecting and analyzing data!  Think about the kinds of data that you and your students work with. It may not be weather balloon data, but say you have another data set that you occurs over space and time that you are interested in mapping and analyzing. How could you use ArcGIS Online and the 3D scene viewer using the procedures described here to map and understand your data? ... View more

--by Diana Stuart Sinton, PhD   Belize is a small country, about the size of Massachusetts. But its GIS activity is large, thanks in part to their energetic and enthusiastic Esri distributor, Loretta Palacios. For several years, the company that Ms. Palacio runs, TBSL Inc., has organized and hosted both a country-wide GIS Conference as well as a large Expo on GIS Day. In November 2016, over 900 students from across Belize attended the GIS Day activities, to learn about the role of GIS in their education and to interact with organizations from the private and public sectors, who were demonstrating diverse GIS applications.   Figure 1. Students from dozens of Belizean schools experience GIS at GIS Day 2016   Figure 2. Multiple stations set up around the room offered students that chance to see how GIS helps people understand problems that are both local and global.   TBSL took it one step further in 2016 by coordinating with Esri to bring an Esri Educational Ambassador to visit. Diana Sinton, of UCGIS and Cornell University, is well-known for her commitment to the role that GIS&T can play in teaching and learning. While she was in Belize, she delivered two workshops for teachers and teacher educators to demonstrate how GIS can be incorporated into Belize’s education curricula.  They began with a simple hands-on activity for a site suitability task, using plastic sheets that represented data layers, to explain the notion of overlay and demonstrate how the features of the natural and social world are represented through a GIS. The participants then used ArcGIS Online activities, such as ones from the GeoInquiries collection, to explore how student audiences could learn through digital mapping. Additionally, several exercises were modified to include Belizean data sets and local contexts. TBSL produced a video about the workshops that can be viewed online.   Figure 3. Teachers used both analog and digital tools to learn about GIS. The workshop participants appreciated having greater awareness of the available resources and were inspired to see how their learning objectives and standards could be linked with and supported by these mapping activities. One particularly exciting ideas was to imagine how GIS content could be developed to target needs of broad sectors of students. For example, students from many Caribbean countries must take a qualifying exam (similar to the SATs) to be considered for entrance to a regional university. The teachers appreciated how GIS could be used – by a teacher and by the students – to practice and reinforce the relevant curricular content in preparation for that exam. Educators in countries such as Belize are increasingly aware of the opportunities that GIS presents as a tool for teaching and learning. They are also realistic about the challenges that accompany integration of the technologies, such as inconsistent and unreliable internet access and shortfalls in access to computers themselves. Significant amounts of inequality exist across the schools, towns and cities, and students’ households. Teachers expressed concerns about developing data or exercises that some of their students couldn’t access or complete. But they also know that such situations are likely to improve over time and their students are eager to learn, now and later. ... View more

I wrote an essay and created a video connecting GIS, environmental education, and environmental science with a goal that these resources would be useful not just on Earth Day, but far beyond.  In the essay, I explore 10 linkages.  The essay and video could be used with students, in a professional development workshop for educators, or with administrators at the primary, secondary, or university levels.  The essay and video begin with the tenet that every environmental issue has a geographic component, and hence can be effectively analyzed using GIS and spatial thinking.  The resources go on to say that not only are environmental studies enhanced by GIS, but conversely, the use of GIS is enhanced by a firm grounding in environmental studies. One of environmental studies’ central themes is examining the interaction between humans and the environment, which can be examined effectively using GIS--urbanization, biodiversity loss, coastal erosion, energy production, access to water, human health, and a host of other issues.  Studying environmental issues with GIS lends relevancy and real-world contexts to these issues, from local to global scales. Teaching about sustainable practices in agriculture, urban development, ecotourism, energy, or any other field using GIS requires a grounding in core concepts in ecology and geography.   Students who use GIS in tandem with environmental studies develop key critical thinking skills. Students immersed in environmental studies at all levels of education can apply geotechnologies to understand environmental issues. Students who are well grounded in the spatial perspective through GIS are better able to, upon graduation, use data at a variety of scales, in a variety of contexts, think systematically and holistically, use quantitative and qualitative approaches to solve problems. In short, these graduates are better decision makers.  GIS through environmental studies adheres to the tenet that learning is often most effective when it takes place outdoors. Fieldwork has such a long and rich history within environmental studies that it is almost like stating the obvious. However, in a world where outdoor education is often cut due to budgetary constraints, and when a frighteningly large proportion of the population has almost no connection with the outdoors, it bears emphasizing.  Esri offers a variety of tools that students can use to collect and analyze field based data, including those mentioned here.  Given the widespread environmental concerns faced by the modern world, it is imperative that students study and understand about these issues not only to equip them for life in the 21 st Century, but to ensure that we emerge at the end of the 21 st Century in a sustainable way.  The document includes a resources section that details the maps, tools, web mapping applications, lessons, and other resources that can be effectively used in environmental education.  ... View more