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October 27 · Issue #10 · View online
Email digest of all things spatial, remote sensing, and GIS
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Welcome to (almost) November and issue #10 of Spatial Reader (is that a milestone?)! I’m excited about this issue - from the great uses of geography in news articles, to the remote sensing tools and cartographic techniques, and all the way through to the tutorials at the end. I hope you’ll find something interesting, and if not, reply to the email and tell me what kinds of articles you’d like to see!
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Living in China’s Expanding Deserts
This New York Times Interactive article on the changes in China’s deserts makes incredibly effective use of aerial video and imagery, along with traditional maps, to illustrate what life is like in the region.
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Before and after: Areas damaged by Hurricane Matthew
The Washington Post uses an increasingly common technique with remotely sensed imagery on the Internet - a before/after slider for quickly showing landscape changes.
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Rocket Satellite Imagery
Another day, another slick interface to find satellite imagery - this one bringing together numerous sources. I’ll definitely be giving this one a test drive next time I need to download some imagery.
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Viewing satellite imagery in VR | Mapbox
Speaking of slick, the whizzes over at Mapbox have made a VR demo for looking at satellite data from Himawari-8, a weather satellite from the Japan Meteorological Agency. Works with new VR systems, or smartphones with a Cardboard viewer.
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Commercial Drones FM
If you fly drones for a living, or are planning to soon, this might be the podcast for you. Episodes cover both the technology and business sides of the drone industry, including a recent episode on 3DR’s exit from the physical drone space.
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Five years of observations from tandem satellites produce 3D world map of unprecedented accuracy
A pair of satellites operating in tandem for five years have produced an incredibly detailed digital elevation model of the entire Earth. Access is expensive unless it’s for research, but the concept alone is fascinating.
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Overview: A New Perspective of Earth Offers a Stunning Look at the Planet
If you’ve been feeling that satellite imagery is too digital for your tastes, and really just want something out of the analog era, this book is for you - WIRED reviewed “The Blue Marble”, a book full of beautiful satellite images.
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There’s More Than One Way to Map an Election
National Geographic provides an overview of all the ways that cartography can lead and mislead us when it comes to mapping elections.
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How Mapmakers Make Mountains Rise Off the Page
I love a good hillshade, but it’s hard to do - this article from National Geographic covers some of the many ways that depth is shown on maps.
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Why Monet Never Used Black, & Why You Shouldn't Either - Design for Hackers
Despite the headline that’s begging for a fight, the article is an interesting study in color, applicable to mapping.
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Object Detection on SpaceNet – The DownLinQ – Medium
If you, like me, were fascinated by TerraPattern a few months ago, and how it could find similar objects to one you selected, anywhere in a region, here’s how something like that is built. While not explicitly about Terrapattern, it is about object recognition in remotely sensed imagery using neural networks. The article includes extensive code on how they accomplished the task.
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Out on the streets, leveraging geographical data in PostGIS - Part 1
As a huge lover of relational databases, I’ve always loved the idea of PostGIS, but haven’t had enough occasions to use it. Here’s a quick tutorial on getting started with it, including sample data and code. I’ll be going through this on a weekend soon!
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