I stumbled acros an interesting article today about the expansion of GIS education into Middle and High Schools. The article in the Gainsville Times describes the process of training teachers and ways to discover new applications of GIS. Exposing kids to GIS seems to be the next step in the evolution of GIS as a commonly used technology. As of now it seems that GIS has remained useful only to professionals who gained training while in college. The early exposure will get more kids, and hopefully parents, interested in discovering the world through science and technology. As technology continues to invade Middle and High schools I suspect that we will see more GIS in the future. I think all people have a natural interests in maps, and it seems like a great way to get kids involved and interested in school.

The rising cost of energy has left many countries around the world in search of alternative sources of energy that are more environmentally friendly and cheaper than carbon based fuels. The expansion of renewable energy sources has many applications to GIS. Mapping can be used to determine the best places to install energy sources such as wind and solar, and can also be used to monitor where these types of power plants are located.

Apple has posted a number of great tutorials for users who are converting from PC to Mac. The tutorials give basic tips about how to use the Mac and provide references to the ways that functions done on a Mac are done on a PC. The tutorials talk about everything from controlling the dock to the ways that specific programs work. The mac tutorials are important because many of Cartographica's users have switched from the PC to the Mac, and these lessons might make life a little easier. Click on the link to the Mac Tutorials to take a look. Look under the section "How to get more out of your Mac"

Not done with Cartographica, but a good visualization of the spill so far, the NY Times has put together a animated series of maps of the oil leak showing the extent and (to the right) the comparison with the Exxon Valdez and the "largest accidental oil leak into a body of water", also into the Gulf of Mexico, but lasting 10 months before it was stopped.

The field of public health is one that has benefited greatly from technology related to GIS. A very famous early example of use of maps to combat a public health problem is when John Snow mapped the outbreak of Cholera in England during the 1850's. The ideas used by John Snow have been greatly enhanced in the nearly two hundred years since his innovative use of maps. In this post data Public Health data on Cancer in the United States is mapped using Cartographica.

We are now nearly a month into this years hurricane season, which ranges from the first of June until the end of November. Hurricanes are extremely large, wide-spread storms that are naturally difficult to study. GIS has been used for a long time to track, monitor, and measure the effects of hurricanes. Recently I found a data set on the National Atlas website that has data for historic hurricanes from 1851-2004.

The FBI's Uniform Crime Report provides statistics on the number of crime that are committed in American cities and counties. These data are archived at the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR). The crimes knowns as Part 1crimes are typically composed of Murder, Rape , Robbery, Aggravated Assault, Assault, Burglary, Larceny, Auto Theft, Theft, and Arson. This post uses data collected from The National Atlas that includes information for a series of years 1994-2000.

Agriculture is one industry that has great interest in using Geospatial analysis for improving production and conserving and protecting land quality. Monitoring such things as water usage, growth, crop production, and many other related features of farming can greatly impact what is grown, how it is grown, and the ways in which agricultural products are processed.

The BP oil spill continues to plague the Gulf of Mexico. President Obama addressed the nation yesterday explaining the many challenges that oil spill presents, and the cost that it is having on the U.S. This post highlights the use of NASA satellite imagery of the oil spill and shows how to perform some basic analysis on how large the oil spill is. Specifically, you will see how to add and create your own layers for analysis.