I just launched a broader project of geojournalism at O Eco (http://www.oeco.com.br/geonoticias). It is called Geonotícia (Geonews, translanding from Portuguese). It is much more complete than the previous experience (http://www.oeco.com.br/monitor) because finaly I managed to use the Earth directly on the website. The idea is to produce a story over the Google Earth.
But also I will be exploring the satellite images in a simple way. Basicaly the idea is to bring ground information to what the pictures are showing from the sky.
This week NASA´s Earth Observatory used an shocking image of fire pixels in Southeast Asia. The image was captured by the Modis Sensor used both in Aqua and Terra satellites. I fowarded the image to some friends at Climate Change Media Partnership and got interesting feedbacks. Navin Khadka, from BBC Nepali Service, wants to see if such a thing was also happening at the Hindu Kush Himalayan range. I fowarded some images that I could find at the Modis Rapid Fire Subsets website.
Then Hilary Chiew, reporter from The Star, in Malaisya, decided to contact some sources in Cambodia to check if the information that honey gatherers were really responsible for fires as NASA has stated on their image explanation. But their sources, remembered that there is no evidence that honey collection could cause large forest fires.
Well, the thing I would like to highlight here is that joining the image with some good questions we can build some interesting stories.
The trends of geojournalism and citizen journalism are quite similar. Both are increasing and starting to involve more people. Here I give two examples.
First, it was really interesting the post by Andrew Revkin at his Dot Earth Blog about the launch of the Ocean`s layer on the Google Earth. Some of you might have seen that now it is possible to travel around the world’s marine environment. What Revkin is discussing its is whether or not this effort of bulding a virtual world is going to lead to more conservation.
The other thing that has impressed me a lot is the Ushahidi software. It is a kind of automatic mapping of facts reported by citizen. They have amazing experiences already completed on the Congo and the Gaza conflicts. It is worth having a look on it. Here
One of the best ways of doing geojournalism is to use the images of MODIS Subsets (http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/subsets/). I know some people, with GIS background, might raise some caveats about the resolution of the images, but the information available is just amazing.
Distribution of NASA´s Modis subsets
By clicking in one of these red squares you can find almost everyday images of everysingle part of the planet. Even better you can ask to see the fire pixels on the image.
And more, as we journalists are not the experts in GIS, the Subsets images can be automaticaly overlayed on Google Earth. Just click on the “Download KMZ file to Google Earth” and you can place yourself on the map. I mean then you can find what the satellite image is telling us about.
This is specialy good for monitoring forest fires. On a previous http://geojournalism.wordpress.com/2008/11/30/monitoring-a-protected-area/ I have just show you how to find shapes of protected areas. If you cross this shapes and the Modis images, you can really built a new content for you readers. You do not even need to be a GIS expert!
After being in Poznan, during the 14th UN Climate Change Conference, I got even more aware of the importance of using geographical tools (and GIS in general) as a means to foster transparency.
I had the chance during two weeks to talk with different journalists from tropical countries and they told me how dificult it can be to find information about what is happening within their native forests.
I am happy to say that the Brazilian Spacy Instititute has been doing an incredible job for 20 years on providing information about deforestation in Amazon. This has been material of large interest in Brazil and the media has also played its role by monitoring and using the data for deep investigative stories.
Journalists from other countries also can bennefit from this information. And more important than that, they can call for more transparency on forestry data. This is essencial.
Due to the incredible amount of data available in the internet, anyone can monitor protected areas around the globe. For journalists, looking closer to what is happening in parks and other kind of reserves can just give a lot of material for good stories. If you read the previous post, on “Tracking Forest Fires”, you saw how simple is to download updated fire pixels into Google Earth.
Now once you just have the firepixels on your computer, you can cross this information with the limits of national park for example. The best way of doing it is to go the World Database on Protected Areas. Overthere you go to the Advance Search Area and then just look for you country. After is just to search in one of the countries protected areas categories and finally they will open a page with the parks names. Once you click in one of their names you get a lot of good information. But the main thing is to download the Google Earth -KML file with the shape of the area. And well, one click is everything done. I used this resource a lot to illustred our O Eco Monitor on Fires at the Protected Areas (in Brazil).
I get pictures like this one, from the Bom Futuro National Forest. This is how it look like on last august.
Producing stories and graphics with forest fire information is one of the most interesting applications that journalists can do using the satellites information. The slideshow you see above was very simple to do. I just colect all the fire alerts that Fire Information Resources Management System (FIRMS) send everyday on my email. Once you get in the website you can sign for a newsletter with your area of interested and they send you all the fire spots registered.
The FIRMS is done by the University of Maryland, a well known center of geo-technologies which work with NASA and a lot other institutions. One thing that helps me a lot on their website is Web Fire Mapper. It is pretty good deal for finding stories if you just ask to see the latest fire spots with the Protected Areas Layer. Go to the right hand side, click on ‘Layers’ and choose ‘Protected Areas’. You might see, if you live in tropical country like Brazil that, protected areas has been very much affected by fire.
And finally, do not forget testing the data on Google Earth. Just go the Web Mapping Services and choose ‘KML/Google Earth`. Once again you can choose the fire spots by region. Download the KML file (suitable for opening in Google Earth) and once it is open in you computer, try to cross the information. See which cities are close to the fire. Or even more interesting just import some protected area limits and see how they burned lately. Next post I will show where to get parks and reserves on KML format very easily.
If you interested on using geographical tools in your stories or in your projects, I think Google Maps is effective and easy way of doing it. The only thing you need really is to create an account in Google, which does not harm so much. Once you are able to log in on Maps website, you choose the option of creating a new map and then you just have to put some place marks where you want you readers to have look at.
The example bellow shows how I am editing the map of forest fires in Brazil. Once I get the location of the fires (subject for a following post) I put a place mark there and add some picture and links.
After that, if you go the right side where is the word “Link”, you can get the URL for embed the map in your website. That what we are doing at O Eco. See here.
Beyond that, you can use your skills on design and mix your map with Flash. Well take I look on this storie me and my good friend Aldem Bourscheit created after doing a two day trekking on the southeastern mountains of Brazil. We took pictures and place then on the points we spoted on GPS. Then we just put it over the Google Maps and our skillfully designer, PA Vieira, mashed with Flash. Just click here for the whole storie.
To finalize. It is also nice using Google Maps with a lot of people editing togheter. When you create your own map just click on the “Collaborate” button and invite other people to plaice some data there.
I am myself inviting everybody who wants to participate in the GeoNewsMap . The idea is just send me an email and then you will be able to edit the map and geotag the news and the content you want other people to see. Let`s try.
I have been saying to a lot of people that US’s National Aeronautics and Space Agengy (NASA) are not only good on building rockets. Believe me, the people who put the man on the moon, are doing also good journalism.
Just take a look on the images bellow. These are satellite images from the Artic and show a large ice melting within a short space of time in last august. The whole story can be read on Nasa’s Earth Observatory website.
Huge melting going on
My point here is `This is a tremendous compelling image!’.
But it is not only about image, I must recognize. When you read the full story, you see that good information make the whole thing even better.
I have to tell you that the NASA’s Earth Observatory was kind of a shock to me. These guys are producing amazing information and yet giving us beautiful (free!) images. I signed their newsletters right away and everyweek they are sending amazing material. Specially if you sign up for the Natural Hazards section, you might find a lot of stories to write about only by looking at a map. Try.
I have been reading Arthur C. Clarke and there is no doubt that he was ahead of his time when defending that space research and, more specifically, sattelites are tools of peace. He was writing a couple articles in the middle of the Reagan´s Star Wars, in 1980s, and had foreseen the huge impact that satellites would have on peoples way of working, travelling, producing, talking. Much more important than military use.
Besides, it is nice listening to Clarke remembering us how beautiful can be the pictures took from the outerspace. I would say here that we should also considering how powerfull these images has been on communicating Earth´s most urgent problems.
Take the example of this images bellow. It was obtaneid (for free, it must be stressed) on Nasa’s Earth Observatory.
Forest fire in Los Angeles
This is something that everybody could understand. It is huge forest fire and huge columm of smoke. Does not need translation.
But where the journalism came to forefront? Well, I think that we, journalist, are not taking advantage of having all these free imageries and immense flow of information on Earth events. The interpretation of sattelite images is, so far, seen as duty of GIS (Geographical Information Systems) experts. This is true when we talking about information that is going to lead public policies or some private investment. But we can do a great job interpretating ourselves some of the image and delivering to our public .
