gis and remote sensing delaware geographic alliance university of delaware houston, tx; landsat-7
TRANSCRIPT
What is a GIS?
• GIS stands for Geographic Information System
• A tool people can use to map and analyze geographic data
• Organizes data by where it occurs
Why is Geography Important?
• Our activities and decisions involve location in some way
• Examples: – Where to buy bread on the way home from work– Where to build new roads or hospitals
What is Remote Sensing?
• Geographers use pictures taken from satellites and sensors to help solve everyday problems.
• Examples include aerial imagery, infrared (IR) and microwave sensors, and sonar, but there are many more!
• This is known as remote sensing
How can we use remote sensing?
Some of the ways (but not all!) we can use remote sensing:
• Weather• Land use• Populations of organisms in
the ocean• Monitoring sea ice
What agencies might use remote sensing?
• Weather forecasters• Foresters• Agriculture• Ocean researchers• Biologists• Polar researchers
Provided by the SeaWiFS Project, NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center, and ORBIMAGE
This is an aerial picture of the Christiana Mall as it looks today. But it didn’t always look that way!
Here is a picture of the mall from 1997. The changes between 2007 and 2011 may be hard to spot, but changes are
easily seen when comparing 1997.
1997
• Remote sensing can also be used to detect vegetation and land types and even natural disasters.
• When using an infrared (IR) sensor, vegetation appears bright red and is easy to spot.
• IR sensors also allow tornado tracks to be easily seen.
LANDSAT ETM+ IR composite image of
Delaware Inland Bays
Photo from NASA Science News; ASTER sensor
Remote sensing and GIS together
• We can combine remote sensing and GIS together for analysis
• Example: – Looking at bicycle
and pedestrian safety in Newark