My NASA_Data_Exercise_Fall2023

Name: Class: Geology 122: The World Oceans Instructor: N. Rousseau Generating satellite maps for you project proposal through MyNASAData.com Assignment objective : Prepare two dataset map exercises using actual NASA satellite data. My NASA Data ’s data visualization tool, Earth System Data Explorer (ESDE) , is a tool that allows anyone to visually explore and download satellite data maps around the world. The ESDE is continuously updated with new data and is organized by the spheres in the Earth System – the Geosphere, Hydrosphere, Cryosphere, Biosphere, and Atmosphere. PART 1 : Generate a single map image of the United States 1) Go to: https://mynasadata.larc.nasa.gov/ 2) Watch the video “ Tutorial 1: Getting started with Earth System Data Explorer .” This is about a 9- minute video that will give you a better idea on how it the tool works and how to compare images you generate. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrbszRXz8H8&t=12s 3) After watching the video, go back to the My NASA Data homepage and click Visualize Data at the top, then click Earth System Data Explorer . You will see a map layout. 4) After clicking “ OK ,” go to the left and choose a data set. Click the “ Data Set ” bar on left of screen. You can then explore data within Atmosphere, Biosphere, Cryosphere, Geosphere, Hydrosphere, or Earth as a System. 5) Select a data feature of your choice either in All Data or Featured Phenomenon . This may be several drop menus. For example, maybe I want to look at areas around the world where it shows variation in Soil Moisture (Soil Moisture is a depiction on how saturated an area around the world is with water. This data is often used to understand places more at risk for wildfires). To see this, I would select Geosphere > All Data > Soil Moisture > Daily Soil moisture . This will bring up a satellite data set on my global Map. 6) After the data set map loads, you will see the entire world with the dataset in map view. Zoom into the U.S. using the small World Map on left screen (Click the square box to zoom into the United States, then click Update plot. Some maps might be very pixelated, and that is okay. It is real satellite data! 7) Download your map onto your computer (refer to the video at 8:22 in how to do this ). 8) Replace the example image below with your new U.S. image by right-clicking it and selecting Change Picture . Lastly, add a caption for your figure. You can just use the available caption

using the Annotations you see above your map in the Earth System Data Explorer (See example below). (Replace map and caption below with your own data): PART 2 : Compare 2 maps together To understand how satellite data is used and interpreted, remote sensing scientists do not generate 1 map, but several maps depicting daily or monthly changes to a given area using the Compare features of the Earth System Data Explorer. For this part, we will be using the Compare 2 feature only. Refer to the video once again at around 7:20 to understand how to use the Compare 2 features. 9) For your second map, repeat the steps above. This time, use a different dataset that is related to your topic in the project. Zoom in to an area that you are using in your project. 10) Go to the left where it says “One plot and click the dropdown to Compare 2. (You can also follow the guiding steps in the video once again to display two images of different time periods.) 11) Add the caption for your figure using the caption above the Earth Data Explorer map. 12) The maps you create for the Compare 2 feature will be used for your project poster as a main figure.* (EXAMPLE Caption): Satellite Source: MODIS. DESCRIPTION: This quantity describes the concentration of chlorophyll in oceans. Chlorophyll is a pigment that plants use to absorb sunlight, key to the process of photosynthesis. The higher the concentration, the greater amount of plant life in the oceans. These data have a grid spacing of 0.08 degrees longitude and 0.08 degrees latitude.)