Embedded Files
Avery Davis
I first learned about urban heat and mapping temperature data at UCLA COSMOS, a summer program for high schoolers. There I met Professor Joshua Fisher, who worked on NASA ECOSTRESS which is a radiometer on the ISS that captures high resolution temperature and emissivity images of the Earth's surface.
To map urban heat, I downloaded land-surface temperature measurements collected by ECOSTRESS. The data is all hosted on NASA's AppEEARS (Application for Extracting and Exploring Analysis Ready Samples) platform which holds geospatial data from a variety of federal archives. I open an data request by creating a shapefile of the area of interest, then select which data types I would like to access. After a wait, which can get quite long depending on how much data you request, the data and its metadata is ready for download.
After downloading the data from AppEEARs, I sort through the data with the autogenerated csv file that details when each TIFF file was pictured. When looking at multiple instances, it's best to consider how time of day affects data as temperatures fluctuate drastically.Â
Once I select which TIFF files I want to use, I use QGIS, a free and open source GIS program, to visualize them. Within QGIS, I use the HCMGIS extension to underlay the Google satellite map to put data within its proper context.
Going through each TIFF file, I adjust the symbology by changing the render type to singleband pseudocolor, usually using a red color ramp to visualize temperature range. Once applying, I adjust the minimum and maximum values of the color map to ensure proper contrasts, that way differences in temperature can actually be seen. If I want to understand information from multiple TIFF files at once, I use raster analysis to calculate and visualize mean, median, maximum, and minimum values from a set of TIFF files. After selecting a region of the area I wish to render a map of, I create an inset map with elements to properly label its context. I always add a title, key, scale bar, and north arrow to give viewers adequate information about the map.
Remembering the exact process and troubleshooting without any references would be inefficient, so I use Observing Earth From Above tutorials to review AppEEARS and QGIS processes and JPLraw's ECOSTRESS tutorial videos when troubleshooting. Both go over the basics to more advanced skills such as applying cloud masks.
Without either, my maps would not be clean and cohesive visuals that effectively communicate data.
Original Proposal
Original Proposal
Proposal.pdfPage updated
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