Crossing Boundaries

"GIS is used as an inquiry-driven, problem-solving, standards-based set of tasks that incorporates fieldwork and provides career pathways that are increasingly in demand. It helps students think critically, use real data, and connects them to their own community. It does so in informal, primary, secondary, and university settings and appeals to today's visual learners. Geotechnologies, along with biotechnologies and nanotechnologies, are the three key skills and job markets identified by the US Department of Labor for the 21st Century (Gewin 2004)."

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Taza set up this crowd-funding site to fund satellite transmitters for better tracking of Clark's Nutcrackers than she's been able to do with the hand-held units. "Clark's nutcrackers are pivotal players in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, dispersing whitebark pine seeds and enabling the trees to reproduce and regain their population amid a decline. The whitebark pine trees are critical to the ecosystem because of their role in feeding wildlife and stabilizing the water supply. In light of the severe decline of whitebark pine trees, tracking the movement of the nutcrackers will yield crucial findings which will help managers ensure persistence of the Clark's nutcrackers, whitebark pine and the nutcrackers' important seed dispersal function. Please help support this first-ever satellite tracking of Clark's nutcrackers by giving to this project, which will cover the satellite transmitter costs for one full year. Read on for more information!"

An article and video clips about Crossing Boundaries Conservation Scientist Taza Schaming's research on Clark's Nutcrackers in the Yellowstone ecosystem.

list of 50 education technology tools -- for leveraging social media, spicing up lessons, lesson planning and student projects, and to help teachers "stay connected, organized, and increase the ease of building multimedia lessons and learning tools." Some, like Grockit, Schoology, and OpenStudy are designed specifically for use in education.

Update to Anna Savage's research: "Some populations of frogs are rapidly adapting to a fungal pathogen called Batrachochrytrium dendrobatridis (Bd) that has decimated many populations for close to half a century"

Fostering Learning in the Networked World: The Cyberlearning Opportunity and Challenge A 21st Century Agenda for the National Science Foundation. Report of the NSF Task Force on Cyberlearning June 24, 2008

"Birds instinct to migrate is often influenced by sudden shifts in temperature, amount of available daylight, moon phases and when strong tail winds are present. Like air quality, pollen count and UV reports, the FLAP Tracker is a Bird Migration Intensity report that alerts you to the concentration of birds as they fly through your region. "

A great variety of unusual maps to trigger discussion, especially if you trim off the labels and ask students to speculate on what they are seeing. - World Map of Earthquakes Since 1898 - Map of Where 29,000 Rubber Duckies Made Landfall After Falling off a Cargo Ship in the Middle of the Pacific Ocean - The 7000 Rivers that Feed into the Mississippi River - Worldwide Annual Coffee Consumption Per Capita - Earth's Population by Latitude and Longitude

Students learn about a few key migratory bird species and the USFWS National Wildlife Refuge System that conserves them, as well as the impacts of oil spills on the Gulf Coast ecosystem and its human communities. Introduces a variety of natural resource careers and the academic experience and job skills needed to be successful in these conservation positions.

By Joseph Kerski at ESRI, a series of 10 short videos discussing uses of a book about the now-extinct bird species, the Great Auk. He discusses cross-disciplinary connections, use of ArcGIS Online to explore the geography of events in the book, and implications of connecting geography and language arts.

"Global, zoomable time-lapse map... View stunning phenomena such as the sprouting of Dubai's artificial Palm Islands, the retreat of Alaska's Columbia Glacier, the deforestation of the Brazilian Amazon and urban growth in Las Vegas from 1984 to 2012 Using Google Earth Engine technology, we sifted through 2,068,467 images-a total of 909 terabytes of data-to find the highest-quality pixels (e.g., those without clouds), for every year since 1984 and for every spot on Earth. We then compiled these into enormous planetary images, 1.78 terapixels each, one for each year. As the final step, we worked with the CREATE Lab at Carnegie Mellon University, recipients of a Google Focused Research Award, to convert these annual Earth images into a seamless, browsable HTML5 animation. Check it out on Google's Timelapse website."

A new census found this winter's population of North American monarch butterflies in Mexico was at the lowest level ever measured. Insect ecologist Orley Taylor talks to Yale Environment 360 about how the planting of genetically modified crops and the resulting use of herbicides has contributed to the monarchs' decline.

This fun reflection prompts me to ponder the impact of Urban parks on Birds Cities may not seem like hotbeds of evolution. Tropical rain forests, maybe. The Galapagos Islands, certainly. But Central Park? Yes, even Central Park. Wherever there is life, there is evolution. Organisms reproduce, passing down their genes to their offspring. Some variants of those genes may become more common over the generations thanks to lucky rolls of the genetic dice.

Jaret Daniels / University of Florida via AP file ORLANDO, Florida - After six years of searching, an entomologist has concluded that three varieties of butterflies native to south Florida have become extinct, nearly doubling the number of North American butterflies known to be gone. "These are unique butterflies to Florida.

TopoView is a searchable collection of historical U.S. topographic maps, published before 2009.

Multimedia, lessons, data, and background information about the Great Lakes. Includes a "Listen to the Lake" podcast and several webcams. Lessons to download relate to watershed land use, fish life cycles, invasive species, human population, and others.