Mission Geography Skills

Spatial Thinking and Remote Sensing

Mission Geography Skills

• Key geographic skills…

• Five skills

• Remote sensing

Spatial Relations

• Skills needed to recognize spatial distribution and spatial patterns

• Identify shapes

• Recalling and representing layouts

• Connecting locations

• Associating and correlating spatially distributed phenomena

Spatial Relations (cont.)

• Comprehending and using spatial hierarchies

• Regionalizing• Comprehending distance decay and

nearest neighbor effects• Imagining maps from verbal descriptions• Sketch mapping• Comparing maps• Overlaying and dissolving maps

Why skills are important

• Provide necessary tools and techniques for thinking spatially

• Necessary for making wise personal, community, governmental, and business decisions

Community, government, and business decisions

Life skills

Five Core Skills

• Asking geographic questions– Where?

• Acquiring geographic information– Gathering data

• Organizing geographic information– Maps, reports, and more

• Analyzing geographic information– What does it mean?

• Answering geographic questions– What have I learned?

Asking Geographic Questions

• Why things are where they are and how they got there…– Where is it located?– Why is it there?– What else is there, too?– What are the consequences of the location and

associations of things there?– What is being observed?– What are my perceptions of it?

Asking Geographic Questions

Skills… Students identify geographic issues and

define problems Students ask geographic questions Students can plan and organize a

geographic research project• Specify a problem• Pose a research question or hypothesis• Identify areas in need of investigation• Test the hypothesis/answer the question

Acquiring Geographic Information

• What is geographic information?• Information about locations, • Human and physical characteristics of locations, • About the geographic activities and conditions of

humans who live there

• Kinds of geographic data?• Primary

• Field work, community-based learning

• Secondary• Texts, maps, statistics, photos, multimedia,

computer-based databases, telephone directories

Acquiring Geographic Information

Skills… Locating and collecting data

Maps, images, and a variety of other sources

Observation and systematic recording of information

Interpretation of maps and other graphics

Organizing Geographic Information

• Many ways to organize and present geographic information– Maps– Graphs, tables, spreadsheets, and timelines– Oral and written reports– Multimedia: pictures, maps, graphs, captions,

web pages– Poems, collages, plays, journal writing, and

essays

Analyzing Geographic Information

• Seeking patterns, relationships, and connections within geographic information

Maps/Images spatial patterns

Graphs trends/relationships

Data sequences, correlations, trends

Texts explanations/syntheses

Answering Geographic Questions

• Developing and making generalizations– Key ideas that students should learn at the

culmination of a process of inquiry– Requires that students

• Use the information they have collected, processed & analyzedOR

• Take the evidence they have acquired to make decisions, solve problems, or make judgments on a question, problem, or issue

Answering Geographic Questions

Organizing geographic information

Analyzing geographic information

Answering geographic questions

Askinggeographic questions

Acquiringgeographic information

• Last step in the process of inquiry…

Examples of MG Skills

• Graphing

• Measuring

• Regionalizing

• Map comparisons

• Nearest neighbor effects

• Connecting locations

Remote Sensing

‘science and art of identifying, observing, and measuring an object without coming into direct contact with it’

--a tool and technique

Remote Sensing

Process:– Detection and measurement of

ELECTROMAGENTIC RADIATION at different wavelengths reflected or emitted from distant objects/materials

– Data provides ability to identify Earth features & materials

Remote Sensing

• Purpose:– Identify and categorize by class/type,

substance, and spatial distributione.g., features in a scene (presented as image)

classified into categories or classesImage-->thematic map e.g., land use, vegetation types, rainfall

– Can also abstract information about an object

Color…

•Objects appear different at different wavelengths and produce different information, •Computers can be used to produce a color image from a black and white remote sensing data set.

Remote Sensing

• MethodsPLATFORM e.g., pigeon, balloon, airplane, satellite

Remote sensing instrument e.g., radiometer, radar, spectrometer [AVHRR, MODIS, ETM+]

Object, area, phenomenon viewed by sensor system

Remote Sensing

Platform + instrument: Satellite + sensor

Data from Earth orbiting satellites transmitted using radio waves to ground stations-->digital image.

Digital image-->tiny shapes “PIXELS”(represent the energy reflected

or emitted by each pixel)

Remote Sensing

• PIXEL = area on ground (& image) that is a measure of the sensor’s ability to resolve (see) objects of different sizes

15 meters

15 meters

Higher resolution (smaller pixel area)-->able to see smaller objects# of pixels in an image-->calculate area of a scene

Satellites

• Human-made spacecraft placed in space to orbit another body– Crewed e.g., space shuttle, ISS– Uncrewed e.g., TERRA

Satellite Orbits…

• Each satellite has a set path above Earth= orbit

• varies with satellite’s purpose– polar orbit (circular above poles to survey all

or portion of Earth as it turns below)– geosynchronous orbit (above equator at

35,888 km to match and “floating over” a point on equator

– Low Earth orbit e.g., Space shuttle– Elliptical orbit

Why bother?

Provide way-cool information…