Scientists at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center have been experimenting with a new data product to assess groundwater and soil moisture drought indicators. The maps produced are used by the U.S. Drought Monitor and use data from NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellites. In 2002, the GRACE satellites were launched […]
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GIS Data
First Landsat Spacecraft Launched – Today in Geospatial – July 23
On July 23, 1972, the first Landsat spacecraft was launched. At the time it was known as the Earth Resources Technology Satellite and it was the first satellite launched to study the earth’s landmasses. In 1975, the name was changed to Landsat. Since then, this program has been continuously monitoring changes […]
GIS Data
Mapping Soil Moisture from Space
Soil moisture might not be considered a critical factor to the health of our planet but a series of satellite missions are proving otherwise. Scientists recently created maps from NASA’s Aquarius satellite of soil moisture, or the amount of water contained within soil particles, across the globe. These maps have […]
GIS Data
NASA’s Global Precipitation Measurement
Water is essential for life on the Earth, and the supply of this precious liquid is constantly being recycled through energy from the sun. This process is known as the hydrologic cycle, and through it water is continuously exchanged between the land, the atmosphere, and the oceans. Precipitation in its […]
GIS Data
Mapping Ship Logs
Ship logs contain a wealth of geographic data within them. The Old Weather Project is building a database of historical weather information extracted through crowdsourced efforts. Now, Ben Schmidt, who is an assistant professor of history at Northeastern University, has mapped out historical shipping routes. The resulting visualization looks like a jumbled […]
GIS Data
Mapping Our World: Interactive Poster Showing Forty Years of NASA Data
Forty years representing over a dozen of Earth observation missions by NASA has led to an invaluable archive of satellite imagery and remote sensing data. These mission have gathered data about the Earth including its atmosphere, vegetation, ice, land surface, salinity levels, geology, and temperature. The highlight the datasets developed by […]
GIS Data
NASA Earth Observations (NEO) – Updated Web Site for GIS Data
NASA Earth Observations (NEO) has overhauled the look of its web site: “NASA Earth Observations (NEO), has a new look and we invite you to try it out! Over 50 different global datasets are represented with daily, weekly, and monthly snapshots, and images are available in a variety of formats […]
GIS Learning
Map of the Earth’s Vegetation
NASA and NOAA have released a map of the earth’s vegetation. The map was created with NDVI data from VIIRS (Visible-Infrared Imager/Radiometer Suite) sensor aboard the Suomi NPP (National Polar-orbiting Partnership) satellite.
GIS Data
Mapping Antarctica’s Bedrock with Bedmap2
The map, called Bedmap2, provides a detailed look at Antarctica from its surface of ice all the way down to the bedrock. The map was compiled by the British Antarctic Survey using data from other research organizations around the globe including NASA
GIS Data
Mapping the Salinity of the Ocean
The European Space Agency (ESA) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) are mapping the salinity of the ocean to understand how the ocean helps recycle of our planet’s water resources and our climate.