1. Mission Geography Skills
Spatial Thinking and Remote Sensing

2. Mission Geography Skills
Key geographic skills…
Five skills
Remote sensing

3. Spatial Relations
Skills needed to recognize spatial distribution and spatial patterns
Identify shapes
Recalling and representing layouts
Connecting locations
Associating and correlating spatially distributed phenomena

4. Spatial Relations (cont.)
Comprehending and using spatial hierarchies
Regionalizing
Comprehending distance decay and nearest neighbor effects
Imagining maps from verbal descriptions
Sketch mapping
Comparing maps
Overlaying and dissolving maps

5. Why skills are important
Provide necessary tools and techniques for thinking spatially
Necessary for making wise personal, community, governmental, and business decisions
Community, government, and business decisions
Life skills

6. Five Core Skills Asking geographic questions
Where?
Acquiring geographic information
Gathering data
Organizing geographic information
Maps, reports, and more
Analyzing geographic information
What does it mean?
Answering geographic questions
What have I learned?

7. Asking Geographic Questions
Why things are where they are and how they got there…
Where is it located?
Why is it there?
What else is there, too?
What are the consequences of the location and associations of things there?
What is being observed?
What are my perceptions of it?

8. Asking Geographic Questions
Skills…
 Students identify geographic issues and define problems
 Students ask geographic questions
 Students can plan and organize a geographic research project
Specify a problem
Pose a research question or hypothesis
Identify areas in need of investigation
Test the hypothesis/answer the question

9. Acquiring Geographic Information
What is geographic information?
Information about locations,
Human and physical characteristics of locations,
About the geographic activities and conditions of humans who live there
Kinds of geographic data?
Primary
Field work, community-based learning
Secondary
Texts, maps, statistics, photos, multimedia, computer-based databases, telephone directories

10. Acquiring Geographic Information
Skills…
 Locating and collecting data
Maps, images, and a variety of other sources
 Observation and systematic recording of information
 Interpretation of maps and other graphics

11. Organizing Geographic Information
Many ways to organize and present geographic information
Maps
Graphs, tables, spreadsheets, and timelines
Oral and written reports
Multimedia: pictures, maps, graphs, captions, web pages
Poems, collages, plays, journal writing, and essays

12. Analyzing Geographic Information
Seeking patterns, relationships, and connections within geographic information
Maps/Images spatial patterns
Graphs trends/relationships
Data sequences, correlations, trends
Texts explanations/syntheses

13. Answering Geographic Questions
Developing and making generalizations
Key ideas that students should learn at the culmination of a process of inquiry
Requires that students
Use the information they have collected, processed & analyzed OR
Take the evidence they have acquired to make decisions, solve problems, or make judgments on a question, problem, or issue

14. Answering Geographic Questions
Last step in the process of inquiry…
Organizing
geographic information
Acquiring
geographic information
Analyzing
geographic information
Asking
geographic questions
Answering
geographic questions

15. Examples of MG Skills Graphing Measuring Regionalizing Map comparisons
Nearest neighbor effects
Connecting locations

16. Remote Sensing --a tool and technique
‘science and art of identifying, observing, and measuring an object without coming into direct contact with it’
--a tool and technique

17. Remote Sensing Process:
Detection and measurement of ELECTROMAGENTIC RADIATION at different wavelengths reflected or emitted from distant objects/materials
Data provides ability to identify Earth features & materials

18. Remote Sensing Purpose:
Identify and categorize by class/type, substance, and spatial distribution
e.g., features in a scene (presented as image) classified into categories or classes
Image-->thematic map
e.g., land use, vegetation types, rainfall
Can also abstract information about an object

19. Color…
Objects appear different at different wavelengths and produce different information,
Computers can be used to produce a color image from a black and white remote sensing data set.

20. Object, area, phenomenon viewed by sensor system
Remote Sensing
Methods
PLATFORM e.g., pigeon, balloon, airplane, satellite
Remote sensing instrument e.g., radiometer,
radar, spectrometer [AVHRR, MODIS, ETM+]
Object, area, phenomenon
viewed by sensor system

21. Remote Sensing
Platform + instrument: Satellite + sensor
Data from Earth orbiting satellites transmitted using radio waves to ground stations-->digital image.
Digital image-->tiny shapes “PIXELS”
(represent the energy reflected or emitted by each pixel)

22. Remote Sensing
PIXEL = area on ground (& image) that is a measure of the sensor’s ability to resolve (see) objects of different sizes
15 meters
15 meters
Higher resolution (smaller pixel area)-->able to see smaller objects
# of pixels in an image-->calculate area of a scene

23. Satellites Human-made spacecraft placed in space to orbit another body
Crewed e.g., space shuttle, ISS
Uncrewed e.g., TERRA

24. Satellite Orbits… Each satellite has a set path above Earth= orbit
varies with satellite’s purpose
polar orbit (circular above poles to survey all or portion of Earth as it turns below)
geosynchronous orbit (above equator at 35,888 km to match and “floating over” a point on equator
Low Earth orbit e.g., Space shuttle
Elliptical orbit

25. Why bother?
Provide way-cool information…