Frozen Planet

Frozen Planet: Explore the Polar Regions features an interactive display through which you can view the history of polar exploration and the science of the polar regions. The interactive display is created through the use of the Google Earth browser plug-in and a timeline. You can click along the timeline to see and read placemarks on Google Earth. You can browse through and click on a list of important places in both polar regions. For further investigation and analysis of the polar regions you can activate a number of Google Earth layers within the Frozen Planet display. The display also includes videos about each region although the playlist for the Antarctic region is much longer than the playlist for the Arctic region.

Applications for Education Frozen Planet: 
Explore the Polar Regions could be a good resource for both science and history teachers. In fact, Frozen Planet could be the basis for an interdisciplinary unit at the middle school or high school level.

Here's a fun fact that I learned through Frozen Planet: Explore the Polar Regions, five years after being the first person to stand on top of Mount Everest Sir Edmund Hillary was part of the team that completed the first complete crossing of Antarctica .

See the GIS Interface by Clicking here

Geospatial Hydrologic Modeling Extension (HEC-GeoHMS)

The Geospatial Hydrologic Modeling Extension (HEC-GeoHMS) has been developed as a geospatial hydrology toolkit for engineers and hydrologists with limited GIS experience. HEC-GeoHMS uses ArcView and the Spatial Analyst extension to develop a number of hydrologic modeling inputs for the Hydrologic Engineering Center‘s Hydrologic Modeling System, HEC-HMS. ArcView GIS and its Spatial Analyst extension are available from the Environmental Systems Research Institute, Inc. (ESRI). Analyzing digital terrain data, HEC-GeoHMS transforms the drainage paths and watershed boundaries into a hydrologic data structure that represents the drainage network. The program allows users to visualize spatial information, document watershed characteristics, perform spatial analysis, and delineate subbasins and streams. Working with HEC-GeoHMS through its interfaces, menus, tools, buttons, and context-sensitive online help allows the user to expediently create hydrologic inputs for HEC-HMS.

HEC-GeoHMS can also generate tables with information on the physical characteristics of water bodies and watersheds. This information is useful when estimating hydrologic parameters.

Additional features include:

• Data Management: This feature aids in managing the locations of different projects and can also be used for error checking and detection
• Terrain Preprocessing: This can be done in two modes: step-by-step or batch. In step-by-step mode, the user can examine the model outputs and modify the data set as needed. If the user is confident in their data set, they can opt to run this feature in batch mode which eliminates additional steps and runs unattended.
• Basin Processing: The user can divide the basin into subbasins (or merge subbasins together) with the results displayed instantaneously. This allows the user to make modeling decisions on the fly, rather than waiting until the end to run the model and then make modifications.

Basic Inputs:

• Watershed and subbasin information (boundaries, sizes, stream locations, etc)
• Pre-preared data to apply over the watershed grid
• Topographical features and drainage information

Basic Output:

• Spreadsheets and datasets describing watershed and subbasin characteristics
• Spatial analysis result datasets
• 2-D and 3-D images including topography, and stream and water body locations
• Data that can be imported for simulations run in HEC-HMS

How to Run the Model:

• Import or construct a watershed with subbasins. You can import a file made with HEC-HMS, or use HEC-GeoHMS to build a new one.
• Modify the watershed, subbasins, and their characteristics as needed
• Import pre-assembled data to associate with the site. Be sure that the data is compatible with GIS data structures. If you are unfamiliar with GIS data analysis methods and techniques, you may wish to read over some examples in the HEC-GeoHMS users manual.
• Run a simulation/ perform you analysis and view the results. You may also export the data to HEC-HMS to perform additional hydrologic modeling

Download From Mediafire  password: engineeringsofts.com

Maps give Europeans close-up picture of emissions from industrial facilities

Online maps published by the European Pollutant Release and Transfer Register (E-PRTR), allow users to pinpoint the key environmental data and the main sources of air pollution from industrial facilities across Europe. The European Pollutant Release and Transfer Register (E-PRTR) is the a Europe-wide register that provides easily accessible key environmental data from industrial facilities in European Union Member States and in Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, Serbia and Switzerland. It replaces and improves upon the previous European Pollutant Emission Register (EPER). The register contains data reported annually by some 28,000 industrial facilities covering 65 economic activities across Europe. The interactive map shows where certain pollutants are released from individual industrial plants. . The Europe-wide register aims to help Europeans actively engage in decisions affecting the environment. The map search option provides a geographical approach to the E-PRTR data. The map can even be viewed here in maximized version.

Free GIS Datasets

About Website Author (rtwilson)

As a PhD student working in Remote Sensing and GIS, I have spent a lot of time looking for free datasets that I can use in my research. All of the datasets below are free to use for academic and non-profit work, and don't require any special academic registration, although most of them ask you to cite their papers/website. Some datasets will be free to use for commercial work too - please check the terms of use on each dataset's website.

http://freegisdata.rtwilson.com/

OrbView-3 satellite images

OrbView-3 satellite images collected around the world between 2003 and 2007 by Orbital Imaging Corporation (now GeoEye) at up to one-metre resolution can now be downloaded at no cost through USGS EarthExplorer.

LISS-III(24m) data available for download

Resourcesat-1 LISS-III Ortho(24m) is now available for all Bhuvan users to download upto 16 tiles/day. However, data available for download is limited to Middle and Southern part of India(http://bhuvan-noeda.nrsc.gov.in). Full India will be made available shortly.