Last month it was Science Friday, this month it’s Co.DESIGN: NASA Creates Insanely High-Res Map Of America’s Trees, And Offers A Lesson In Information Design. Tim Maly describes our map of tree biomass in the U.S. (based on an exquisite data set from Woods Hole Research Center), and lets me rant a bit about color […]
For those of you who played geographical detective with the MISR image quiz, here are this month’s clues and answers: 1) Within this country lies a picturesque desert, located at the bottom right of the image. This desert was home to a group of enigmatic ancient people who were known for their skill and resourcefulness. […]
Much of the ice that blankets Antarctica is tied up in glaciers that slide slowly toward the sea. Fed by these glaciers, ice shelves form along the Antarctic coast, floating as thick, frozen plates on the sea surface. Every so often, these ice shelves calve large icebergs. In March 2000, a colossal iceberg calved off […]
Last week, Flora Lichtman of Science Friday put together a short video about the views of Earth NASA has produced over the years. She began with the famous Earthrise photo taken by the crew of Apollo 8, then interviewed me and NASA scientist Gene Feldman. We discussed the differences between photographs and data visualizations, and […]
A Less Hardy Hardiness Map The USDA has unveiled a new version of its plant hardiness map, which gardeners use to gauge which plants will survive in which climate zone. (Check your nearest seed packet.) In the newest iteration, many zones have shifted northward because winters aren’t as cold as they were 22 years ago […]
It’s been a really active time for the Earth Observatory and volcanoes. In the past three weeks, we’ve posted images of a night-time eruption of Shiveluch, ongoing activity at Puyehue–Cordón Caulle, daytime activity at the Kizimen Volcano, and my own favorite, a brand new island in the Red Sea. And those are just the images […]
The new feature story, Seeing Forests for the Trees and the Carbon, discusses the need to form a three-dimensional picture of the world’s forests. Such a three-dimensional picture includes tree canopy height (below). Although canopy height in the Amazon Rainforest doesn’t match those of the Pacific Northwest or Southeast Asia, it still far exceeds the […]
On January 11, 2012, Google celebrated the 374th birthday of geology pioneer, Nicolaus Steno, with a special Google Doodle. Steno was a 17th-century anatomist and pioneering geologist. After dissecting a shark head, he realized that “tongue stones” — believed to belong to snakes turned to stone — were actually shark teeth. In Steno’s era, […]
For a month in the fall of 2011, NASA staff conducted an experiment of a different kind. They shared satellite images and maps with Chicagoans, but not in a classroom or a museum. The images of Earth were posted at malls, at bus and train stations, in O’Hare Airport, and on roadside billboards. The experimental question […]
Along with half the Earth scientists at NASA, I’ll be at the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting next week. If you’re interested in getting together to talk scientific visualization, drop a note in the comments, or stop by my poster: Methods to Enhance Climate Change Imagery for Communication (5 MB PDF). It’s got a few […]
