About GIS Day

GIS Day Watch - August 2007

In This Issue

GIS Day 2007 Registration Challenge

GIS users are planning their events, and registrations are coming in. The next 10 GIS Day participants to register their GIS Day event will be awarded a complimentary GIS Day T-shirt. Register your GIS Day event now. Winners will be notified by e-mail.

Registering your GIS Day event is a great way to gain publicity for your GIS Day celebration and makes your event searchable from the GIS Day event finder.

Get more ideas for your event by reading the 2006 success stories, viewing GIS Day Web sites from around the world, and downloading ready-to-use materials.

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GIS Day Resources

Consider utilizing the following resources to enhance your GIS Day event:

The Power of Place - Geography for the Twenty-first Century

View a series of instructional videos that teach geographic skills and concepts to help students appreciate and understand the world around them. Maps, animation, video footage, graphics, interviews, and academic commentary bring into focus case studies from 50 sites in 36 countries including Asia - the 2007-08 theme for National Geographic's Geography Action! program. A coordinated Web site provides further content information and connection to the National Geography Standards.

New ArcLessons
ArcLessons are created by educators for use in GIS instruction in the classroom. You can browse a list of more than 200 lessons by category or search for lessons on a particular topic, geographic area, or level of GIS knowledge. Consider using a few of the latest ArcLessons during your next GIS Day celebration.

Are Your GIS Day Attendees Geospatial?
Find out by taking the short quiz on Denver, Colorado's Geospatial Industry Workforce Information System (GIWIS) (pronounced "gee-whiz") Web site. This quiz could be a great introduction at your GIS Day event for K-12 and university students. If it turns out that your attendees are naturals for a geospatial career, encourage them to learn more about GIS career opportunities.

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Featured Events

ESRI Romania to Celebrate GIS Day in the Danube Delta

ESRI Romania plans to celebrate GIS Day by organizing a three-part educational program. On August 13-17, a group of 10 university student researchers and several ESRI Romania employees will embark on an exciting environmental research journey of the Danube Delta aboard GeoEcoMar's Halmyris Floating Laboratory. GeoEcoMar is a governmental research and development institution that conducts research in the Danube Delta using ESRI software.

The students will receive training on how to use ArcView and 3D Analyst to help with their research. Web pages, posters, brochures, and other marketing materials designed by the students will be presented on October 12 during the ESRI Romania User Conference. On GIS Day, November 14, students will present their research projects to K-12 students and the general public.

Supported by the National Institute of Marine Geology and Geo-ecology and GeoEcoMar, ESRI Romania is planning a truly exciting three-month GIS Day celebration. See event details.

Vermont Ski Museum to Celebrate GIS Day 2007 by Mapping Old Ski Areas

The Vermont Ski Museum will celebrate GIS Day this year by hosting a two-month program called Lost Ski Areas Camp. Louise Lintilhac, program coordinator at the museum, and Dana Allen, a GIS consultant, will lead a group of Lamoille County 4-H members around Stowe, Vermont, to map old ski areas.

Participants will travel to a different ski area site each week and complete GIS and GPS lessons. The program will conclude on November 14 with a GIS Day party and the opening of the Lost Ski Areas Mapping Project exhibit, created by the campers as an addition to the Lost Ski Areas Remembered exhibit. Museum visitors can view a time line of Vermont's skiing history, local ski areas, skiers, pioneers, and technological innovations.

Lintilhac has researched local lost ski area locations for some time. "A while ago, it occurred to me that it would be fun to map some of these old ski areas, as there are no official maps on record," she said. See event details.

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Space Week 2007

United Nations-declared World Space Week is celebrated annually in October. This year's celebration, October 4-10, marks the 50th anniversary of the onset of the space age. GIS technology has been instrumental in the scientific exploration of space. Consider incorporating space exploration into your next GIS Day event.

Examples of GIS in Space

During the Magellan mission to Venus in the 1990s, the Magellan satellite visited Venus and transmitted radar images and altimetric measurements from 97 percent of the planet. ArcView was used to display remotely sensed data from the Magellan spacecraft. Read more about using GIS to study Venus.

The Mars exploration rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, trekked across the Martian landscape for more than 300 days in 2004. GIS technology was an essential part of the support for that amazing feat. The implementation of a GIS Internet mapping server to help test landing-site hazards based on surface roughness, elevation, and dust cover was part of the premission aspects of landing-site selection. During the mission, the team uses GIS for 3D visualization to help plan daily events and create specialty horizon routines to maximize solar energy collection. Learn more.

For more information and ideas on how to celebrate World Space Week, visit http://www.spaceweek.org/index.html.

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GIS in Action

Kenya-Based Green Belt Movement Adopts GIS

Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Maathai recently embraced GIS technology for use in her environmental organization, the Green Belt Movement. She eloquently described her tree-planting mission and the role that GIS plays in mapping and managing the plantings when she spoke at the 2007 ESRI International User Conference in June. Read the article.

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