UAF-SAR

Team Members:

Anupma Prakash, Rudi Gens, Candace O'Connor, Gary Cooper, and David McGraw.

Meeting Room:

Pre-meeting Sharing Space

Please introduce yourself to your team members. Give a brief description of your role in facilitating the use of data in education. You can also post links, files, or images.

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Greetings fellow UAF-SAR team members. My name is David McGraw. I have been a high school science teacher in Vermont's capital city of Montpelier for the past 25 years. Since my involvement with the Center for Image Processing in Education (CIPE) in the early '90s I have been an active proponent for the use of technology in the classroom. My activities have included training and implementation of virtual reality landscape rendering and geographic information systems in addition to image processing. For the past few years I have been reviewing Earth Exploration Toolbook lessons for TERC. I look forward to meeting you in Portland!

Greetings Anupma, Rudi, Gary and David. My name is Candace O'Connor. My education and research background is in soil chemistry (undergraduate) and thermoregulatory physiology (graduate). I currently serve as Scientific Editor for the Geophysical Institute at the University of Aalska Fairbanks, and have been invited to join this team as the curriculum developer. It is a pleasure to work with you all!

Session 1 - Thursday Morning
Meet your team members. Learn about the data, tools, and expertise represented on your team. Review DataSheet(s) and explore data and tools.

Team members meet each other and share their experiences and viewpoints on using data in education. Review and discuss DataSheet(s) begun by the data representative(s) for your team. Explore datasets and tools and consider how the expertise on the team can complement them. If you haven't already done so, narrow down the range of datasets the team is considering using to a manageable number.

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UAF-SAR Team Notes Thursday Morning

Introductions of participants.

Anupma Prakash, Rudi Gens, Candace O'Connor, Gary Cooper, and David McGraw

SAR=synthetic aperture radar

No EET chapters presently use SAR data.

SAR DATA

1. What is it?

2. How is it different from optical?

3. Advantages of SAR data?

4. What we will not cover.

(Terrain correction and complex geometry)

5. Applications

ship detection

sea ice

pollution (oil spills)

forest fire scars

bathymetry

waves and ripples

sub-surface "waves" or currents

waste water

ship wakes

vortices near islands

Session 2 - Thursday Afternoon
Brainstorm data-use storylines

Brainstorm a set of possible storylines for valid investigations of the dataset(s) you have selected. Come up with at least one compelling scenario that will give users a reason to work through the technological steps necessary to perform an analysis of the data.

The Activity Outline Guide (Microsoft Word 42kB Apr9 08) provides an outline for the minimum information needed for the team's activity outline.

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UAF-SAR Team Notes Thursday Afternoon

How do scientists utilize SAR?

Fire monitoring

Flood monitoring

Geologic mapping

Land cover

Motion tracking

Oceans

Oil spills

Sea ice

Ship detection

Soil moisture

Wind

Glacier movement

We need to select a topic that will use SAR and be appealing to teachers and students. Water pollution seems to fit into environmental studies. Wave physics would fit into a physics class. The pattern of rainforest destruction in the Amazon could relate to global warming as well as species diversity.

Possible title: shrinking forest growing problem.

Sessions 3 and 4 - Friday Morning
Select a data-use scenario and perform a proof-of-concept check

Use the complementary expertise on the team to check that the task you are envisioning can actually be completed in an educational setting. Identify a target grade level for the activity and choose a working title.

Please limit the scope of the activity to tasks that can be accomplished by accessing existing data and tools. Discuss and agree upon the content limits of the activity as well. Consider that the major goal of these activities is to develop user familiarity with the data and tools.

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Friday UAF-SAR Morning Notes

Goal is to find radarsat data from SD2 at 2-year intervals from 1996 to 2006.

Tool will be Google Earth since it is universally available and has a gradual learning curve.  An alternative tool would be Image J but this would require more teacher/student expertise.

Development of Storyline:

-single Quito native family

-human impacts

-landscape shift

-cost/benefit analysis

- individual vs societal

-Brazil vs global issue

-broader impacts of deforestation

negative impacts:

soil, C02, temperature/climate, flooding, famine, species diversity

positive impacts:

increased food supply,

-sustainable population levels,

-humans are driving many global changes

Sena Madureira / Rio Branco Brazil

provinces: Acre and Amazonas

SAR data are available for this area including years:

We will utilize data from underlined years.

1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2002, 2003,2005, 2006,

Fishbone pattern of deforestation is evident as roads extend into the rainforest.

Sessions 5 and 6 - Friday Afternoon
Develop your case study storyline and outline the procedures for data access and analysis Case Study Development

Record ideas, bullet points, or actual text that will become part of the case study to introduce users to the issues and concepts of the activity. Gather links for appropriate images, diagrams, and background text.

Data Access and Analysis Procedures

Record the name and URL of all datasets and access/analysis software tools to be used. List the major tasks users will complete, then perform a deliberate walk-through of each task to capture the full sequence of procedures. Give special attention to the most difficult or least intuitive steps, and note points in the sequence where additional information will be helpful.

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Friday Afternoon SAR Notes.

SAR data are available for this area including years:

1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2002, 2003, 2005, and 2006.

We will utilize data from 1996, 1999, 2003, and 2006.

Fishbone pattern of deforestation is evident as roads extend into the rainforest.

KMZ files of SAR data will become layers in google earth.

2006 layer is a solid color.

2003 layer verticle lines or different solid color

1999 layer horizontal lines or different solid color

1996 layer is ? or different solid color

Analysis of area is problematic. Google Earth does not easily allow area calculation.

We are concerned that our lesson is ending up with little but calculations.

Percent of change per year.

Amount of reduction in co2 sequestration.

Correlation of less effective carbon sink to car emissions or electricity consumption.

Correlate with biodiversity loss.

The idea of graphing changes to provide a visual representation is good.

Web Addresses for info on rainforest destruction.

http://ceos.cnes.fr:8100/cdrom-00/ceos1/casestud/sar/rainfor.htm

http://www.jstor.org/pss/2991994

http://www.bnsc.gov.uk/lzcontent.aspx?nid=4812

<a href=http://www.mongabay.com/brazil.html>http://www.mongabay.com/brazil.html</a>

PROVISIONAL OUTLINE

Tentative Title: Shrinking Forests - Growing Problem

Brief Overview: Earth's tropical rain forests have been called "the lungs of the world".
Is rampant deforestation, in essence, giving our planet a case of emphysma? We will present Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) images from a limited area of Brazil over the period 1996-2006. Students will measure areas of deforestation, compare those areas from year to year, and calculate rainforest areas lost, and some effects of that loss. An underlying theme will be the idea of costs and benefits. Each individual usually acts to maximize his/her benefit when choosing from a palette of possible behavioral choices. In context of the rainforest, how does the cost or benefit to an individual relate to the cost and benefit to the society as a whole (in this case, Brazil), and how does the cost or benefit to a society relate to the cost or benefit to the world community?

1. Background

a. Deforestation - what is happening

1. What benefits accrue to an individual farmer (why)?

2. What benefits accrue to society (why)?

b. Why use SAR to study this?

2. Our study area

a. Download .kmz files - images of target years for analysis

1. pc users download gmap (?) to calculate area of loss

2. mac users given area - calculate rate of loss year to year

3. Both - calculate yearly total length of road system

4. Both - graph area and road length changes year to year

3. Put loss into perspective

a. A football field is 1 sq acre. How many football fields are lost?

b. If one hectare absorbs 1 t CO2/yr, how much CO2 absorption is lost?

c. Graph Brazil's total deforestation vs this local deforestation.

1. Does local follow country trend?

4. What does this mean?

a. What short- and long-term costs are paid by the individual?

b. What short- and long-term costs are paid by the society?

Session 7 - Saturday Morning
Enhance your step-by-step procedures by adding "About" sections that provide extra information; List several ideas for "Going Further" with the data or tools

Fill in any gaps in your activity outline and add sections that can help users make meaning of the data. Suggest several ideas for the "Going Further" section that challenge users to work with the data and/or tools in other investigations. These suggestions provide launching points for scientific inquiry which is facilitated by the skills learned in the activity.

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Session 8 - Final Team Breakout
Finalize your Activity outline and DataSheet, Generate PowerPoint slides for the report out session, Upload all resources to this page

Create a 2- or 3-slide ppt file for the report out session.

• Slide 1: Team name, names of team members, and a brief phrase to describe each individual's contribution
• Slide 2: Working title for your activity, names of dataset(s) and tool(s) utilized
• Slide 3: Your choice of something to illustrate your team's vision of the completed activity

Attach the file plus any other documents produced by the team to this page. Include final versions of the team's DataSheet.

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