Explorer, GIS Day, and Geography Awareness Week

ArcGIS-Explorer-Team — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 20:12:00 GMT

Yesterday was GIS Day, and we've still got a couple of days left in Geography Awareness Week. About.com informs us that:

Geography Awareness Week was established in 1987 when U.S. President Ronald Reagan signed legislation that established the third week in November as Geography Awareness Week. Geography Awareness Week is sponsored by the National Geographic Society and other geographic organizations at the national, state, and local level.

We've received some screenshots and descriptions of Explorer being used on GIS Day and throughout this week. If you have more examples that you'd like to share, let us know by sending a screenshot and description via e-mail to arcgisexplorerblog@esri.com

This first example is from Adam Pittman, who prepared a presentation for the fourth grade class at Cambridge Elementary School in San Antonio, Texas. The students are learning about explorers of North America, and ArcGIS Explorer was used to look at the explorations of Coronado, Lewis & Clark, and LaSalle.

Here's a screenshot of the Lewis & Clark exploration ending up at Fort Clatsop, Oregon, where Capt. William Clark wrote in his journal "Ocian in view! O! the joy." While they weren't quite at the ocean, they were close, having reached the Columbia River estuary. Various camps are shown along the route.

Coronado travelled up from Mexico, heading to the Grand Canyon and then heading east through Texas and up to Kansas. He stopped just outside Lindsborg, Kansas, erecting a small fort on top of a hill, shown below. The fort has been rebuilt and can be seen in Explorer's default map.

GIS tools were used to analyze terrain and view other layers of information that could have helped these early explorers, like weather, topography, vegetation, and others.

And Ray Carnes presented at the Highland (California) Library and Environmental Learning Center as part of a "See Highland Through Maps" GIS Day exhibit. Shown below is a part of the city with average household income information. Images like these helped visitors understand the characteristics of their local community.

ArcGIS Explorer Blog : Coronado

Explorer, GIS Day, and Geography Awareness Week