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Spring, 2002

The following article is by Joseph J. Kerski, Geographer Education/GIS US Geological Survey, Denver, CO jjkerski@usgs.gov Please see rockyweb.cr.usgs.gov/public/outreach/

USGS Agreement with Microsoft Brings Topographic Maps and Aerial Photographs To Your Classroom

The USGS is the nation's largest science agency, offering nearly 100,000 individual titles of maps, earth images, books, booklets, posters, websites, and CD-ROMs. Many of these resources can be used in teaching and learning about cultural and physical geography.

If I had to select the best educational resource out of this wealth of information, I would select the "Terraserver" site. Since mid-1998, Terraserver terraserver.microsoft.com has been serving up millions of images each month from compressed USGS Digital OrthoPhoto Quads (DOQs), Russian SPIN-2 imagery, USGS topographic maps in digital format (Digital Raster Graphics), and links to the USGS stream gaging stations from these DRGs. The Microsoft TerraServer web site is one of the world's largest online databases, with 25 terabytes of disk storage, allowing anyone to quickly and easily use maps and images to explore the United States and certain places around the world with a standard web browser. An average of 40,000 users request 4,000,000 images from the site everyday. This magnificent site grew out of a USGS cooperative research and development agreement with Microsoft to compress terabytes of images using MrSID compression routines. Some images have been available for download and in all cases, for purchase.

Why use this site in a science classroom with your students? The ability to examine the local setting with topographic maps and imagery is a powerful lesson in itself for students. What is the land use like in our area? Additionally, students could look at how settlement patterns differ in different areas of the

country, or what a bajada, an esker, a river delta, and a host of other features look like from the air. They could look at famous places as well, such as the San Andreas Fault, the Florida Keys, and Pikes Peak.

Why use this site in a science classroom with your students? The ability to examine the local setting with topographic maps and imagery is a powerful lesson in itself for students. What is the land use like in our area? Additionally, students could look at how settlement patterns differ in different areas of the country, or what a bajada, an esker, a river delta, and a host of other features look like from the air. They could look at famous places as well, such as the San Andreas Fault, the Florida Keys, and Pikes Peak.

Using the scanned maps and aerial photographs are excellent backdrop images on which to place coordinates that your students collect with Global Positioning System (GPS) units. To use Terraserver, go to terraserver.microsoft.com Enter the name of populated place. Select topographic maps, and zoom in to desired level of detail on the map. Switch the image size to "large". Switch to "Image" and examine an aerial photograph.

You can search for the topographic map and the aerial photograph of the Green Mountain High School area, Lakewood, Colorado for example. Go to www.terraserver.microsoft.com, enter the town name for which you are requesting information. Please contact me if you have any questions on its use, at jjkerski@usgs.gov, or 303-202-4315.

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