Monday, December 18th, 2017
Along with the larger forces of climate change, another contributing factor to the fierce wildfires in California has been the dry soil conditions. Light rainfall, combined with heavy use of aquifers by large farms, has created perfect conditions for an inferno. Stories of homeowners saving their homes by turning on sprinklers remotely are not as
Tuesday, December 5th, 2017
Esri will donate personal-use licenses of its ArcGIS software for each GISCorps volunteer who takes a GIS Service Pledge to volunteer for a good cause. GISCorps is a program of the Urban and Regional Information Systems Association (URISA) and has been providing a range of mapping and disaster response services for more than 14 years
Monday, November 27th, 2017
Monitoring ocean salinity is essential for understanding its impact on ocean circulation, Earth’s water cycle, marine ecology and climate change. Ocean salinity in the Arctic is of particular interest, because it changes significantly with seasonal ice cover and is expected to decrease as the Greenland ice sheet melts and releases massive amounts of freshwater. Despite
Monday, November 20th, 2017
Legislative sponsors Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) and Senator Mark Warner (D-VA), U.S. Representative Bruce Westerman (R-AR-04), and U.S. Representative Seth Moulton (D-MA-06) collaborated with GIS organizations across government and industry to advocate for common data standards, interagency collaboration and transparency to taxpayers on shared national data services. Agreeing to a common vision will make it
Monday, November 13th, 2017
Boeing completed the acquisition of Aurora Flight Sciences Corp., which will operate under Boeing Engineering, Test & Technology as a subsidiary called Aurora Flight Sciences, A Boeing Company. It will retain an independent operating model. Headquartered in Manassas, Va., Aurora has more than 550 employees and operates in six locations, including research and development centers
Monday, November 6th, 2017
Members of the California Citizen’s Redistricting Commission went to Washington, D.C. in July 2017 to accept the Roy and Lila Ash Innovations Award for Public Engagement in Government for its California Redistricting Panel, which used Caliper’s Maptitude for Redistricting to draw its 2012 Congressional and State Legislative boundaries that have been recognized for effectively eliminating
Tuesday, October 31st, 2017
The European Space Agency (ESA) and Radiant.Earth will jointly enhance geospatial data literacy in the global development community to help track the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). “Geospatial information is central to accurately tracking and measuring the global progress of the SDGs,” noted Radiant.Earth Founder and CEO Anne Hale Miglarese. The ESA and Radiant.Earth cooperation focuses
Tuesday, October 17th, 2017
In support of CAL FIRE’s firefighting efforts in Northern California, the California Air National Guard’s 163d Attack Wing operating out of March Air Reserve Base is using MQ-9 Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UASs) with full-motion video (optical and infrared) and ground imaging Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) capability, which can see through clouds and smoke. “The 163d
Monday, October 9th, 2017
NASA’s Aqua satellite and NASA-NOAA’s Suomi NPP satellite analyzed the temperatures in Hurricane Nate’s cloud tops and determined that the most powerful thunderstorms and heaviest rain areas were around the center of the tropical cyclone after it made landfall near the mouth of the Mississippi River on Oct. 7, 2017. Infrared light provides valuable temperature
Monday, September 25th, 2017
Forest fires in Southeast Asia during the El Niño droughts of 2015 caused considerable disruption to the biodiversity of the region due to the smoke-induced haze they created, according to new research published in the Environmental Research Letters journal and led by Benjamin Lee at the University of Kent and the National Parks Board in
