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Delaware Geographic Alliance University of Delaware Houston, TX; Landsat-7

GIS stands for Geographic Information System A tool people can use to map and analyze geographic data Organizes data by where it occurs What is a GIS?

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

Why is Geography Important? Relative Location: Where you are in relation to known Landmarks “I’m in the Wawa parking lot across from Christiana High School on Salem Church road.”

Why is Geography Important? Absolute Location: Where you are using longitude and latitude. “I’m at Christiana High School, the GPS coordinates are Latitude 39° 39’ 50” North by Longitude 75° 41’ 46” West. ”

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! Examples include aerial imagery, infrared (IR) and microwave sensors, and sonar, but there are many more! remote sensing 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! One way that remote sensing can be used is in tracking land use changes through time.

This is the mall in Can you spot any changes between 2007 and 2011?

Here is a picture of the mall from The changes between 2007 and 2011 may be hard to spot, but changes are easily seen when comparing

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. 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 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: Example: – Looking at bicycle and pedestrian safety in Newark

Think About It Differentiate a map from a GIS.