Crossing Boundaries

How do you effectively prioritize conservation decisions for migratory species? Is it better to target species when breeding, wintering, migrating or some mix? How do you build forecast changes in climate and land use when making these decisions?

Google Chrome recently introduced Land Lines, a delightful new way to explore the gorgeous satellite images from Google Earth. Landlines invites users to discover new satellite images in two ways: Draw and Drag. With the Draw feature, visitors simply create a small doodle on their monitor or personal device. Next, Landlines, with the aid of machine learning, presents visitors with a satellite picture that contains this line or shape in some form: perhaps as a gridded street, the shape of a mountain range, or the curve of a lake. A caption in the bottom left hand side of the browser alerts readers as to what they are looking at and allows visitors to explore each area in more detail via Google Maps. With Drag, users can "create an infinite line of connective rivers, highways, and coastlines." Both modes of exploration offer innovative and highly enjoyable ways to see the world from one's own computer.

High-resolution earth imagery has provided ecologists and conservationists with a dynamic new tool that is enabling everything from more accurate counting of wildlife populations to rapid detection of deforestation, illegal mining, and other changes in the landscape.

"A good essential question Is open-ended; that is, it typically will not have a single, final, and correct answer. Is thought-provoking and intellectually engaging, often sparking discussion and debate. Calls for higher-order thinking, such as analysis, inference, evaluation, prediction. It cannot be effectively answered by recall alone. Points toward important, transferable ideas within (and sometimes across) disciplines. Raises additional questions and sparks further inquiry. Requires support and justification, not just an answer. Recurs over time; that is, the question can and should be revisited again and again."

"The interactive crop map displays the native origins and primary regions of diversity for selected major agricultural crops."

"First report of its kind assesses state of world's plants, including baseline information on all vascular plants currently known to science, new plant discoveries and threats. The report estimates that there are about 391,000 species of vascular plants in the world."

Animated dots represent moving ships, paths show routes, and filters focus on areas of interest. Narration guides you from area to area.

Live webcams at Mpala Research Center in Kenya, and lessons for grades 3-8

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"

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.

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

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!"

Google Earth tour and video showing scientists tracking migration routes of Arctic Terns between Greenland and the Antarctic

"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)."

Kenyan girls who grow up in traditionally nomadic, pastoral communities often roam the arid plains of the country with their families in search of grazing grounds for their goats, cows, and camels. But the journey is usually at the expense of an education-moving around so often, and especially to remote areas, makes it difficult for many to attend school on a regular basis.

"It's a simple question: how many trees are there on Earth? The answer required 421,529 measurements from fifty countries on six continents. Now this new data has been combined to produce a stunning visualisation of our planet as you've never seen it before."

The EPA released its "Report on the Environment," a comprehensive set of indicators that track environmental changes over time. The website has interactive graphs and maps.